Five Years On: My Diagnosis and Mission Living As HIV-Positive

By Scott Foval, Huffington Post. Posted December 29, 2008.

New, serious questions popped in to my head, though, while watching him officially announce that his former political opponent, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, would become his new secretary of state, and his choices of Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security, current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to remain as SecDef in the new administration, retired Marine Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser, former Clinton administration Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder as attorney general, and Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador.

With his focus on the major national security and economic issues he faces, what will he actually do to halt the scourge of HIV/AIDS and secure true, unquestioned, federally mandated civil rights equality for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, economic class or marital status?

With all of Mr. Obama's talk of real change, one key area where he has been somewhat hypocritical during the campaign, and silent since the election, is exactly what he's going to actually do for the millions of GLBTQ citizens in this country that unified to become a major bloc of activist-oriented supporters of his candidacy and turned out an unprecedented percentage of voters for him? During the campaign, he parsed his answers to GLBTQ civil rights, marriage rights, civil unions and employer anti-discrimination laws to protect us.

He has also been mum on real numbers behind his universal health care proposals, major funding of HIV/AIDS research, testing, diagnosis, treatment, social services programs to support HIV/AIDS carriers, fair and non-ideological sex education, gender-equity education and GLBTQ tolerance and sensitivity education and training programs for schools and businesses, and has not announced his choice of surgeon general. The selection of former Sen. Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, however, bodes well to signal that the direction could be a positive one for the GLBTQ and progressive communities that overwhelmingly reject anti-discrimination laws like Proposition 8 in California and support social justice and equal rights for all Americans in the areas mentioned here and coalesced to elect him in a landslide.

Will he actually take his mandate for real change and unity out for a spin by demanding equality for all of the people who supported him, donated money, made phone calls, became activist organizer, and ultimately stepped up to vote for him as their president? Will he truly put his power and position as the great new leader of our country in gear when it comes to representing the best interests of all Americans? Will he commit to re-aligning our country with the significant number of civilized nations that have enacted real equality through national legislation, produced enhanced funding for HIV/AIDS programs to combat the epidemic and find a cure? Will he decriminalize drug laws while simultaneously reinforcing policies that endorse treatment of addiction as a medical condition, instead of treating users as criminals and throwing them in jail where they often are exposed to even greater risks of HIV/AIDS?

Finally, will he really commit to exposing and stamping out all forms of religious extremism by authorizing his Justice Department, the IRS and FEC to aggressively investigate, expose and punish those religious institutions within our own country that have crossed the line of separation of church and state, violated campaign-finance and tax laws by surreptitiously diverting their religious organizations' time, money and church resources toward political causes like Prop. 8, Anti-GLBT and gender discrimination campaigns, anti-stem cell research legislation and anti-choice legislation?

Each of these questions are left unanswered and are truly battlegrounds across which our country must cross if we are ever to become a nation of true equals and real civil and social equality. We must not allow our voices to be quashed or ignored or allow our elected leaders to ignore our calls for a reformed set of national priorities that includes us in the overall plan for change. We must turn up the heat and redouble our efforts to invigorate our communities towards demanding real equality and elimination of HIV/AIDS and institutionalized discrimination in the workplace, and in society as a whole.

Above all, we must ensure that the last eight years are fresh on the minds of all of those who think we can do better than we have to truly lead in the global community, and convince them one on one that all forms of discrimination and hatred are wrong. We must put our faces in their heads as the people who are hurt by the divisive policies supported, trumpeted and championed by the Reagan, Bush, Rove, Gingrich, Reed, Atwater, Thurmond, Helms, Buchanan, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, Ailes, Dobson, Ingram, Cheney, and yes, Palin, camps. Not one of these hateful and shamefully dishonest brokers of intolerance should ever be allowed to regain power by disseminating hate speech and sowing division through subversive campaigns laced with code words, class warfare and blatant legislative power plays aimed at marginalizing groups of people under the guise of their ideological reinterpretations of the U.S. Constitution.

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Scott Foval is a writer, media host, presenter and producer living in Chicago.

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