Views
Who Has Truly Kept Faith?
Who Has Truly Kept
Faith?
by Lynn Martin
The
administration of George Bush has diverted two-thirds of HIV prevention
money distributed by the Centers for Disease Control to "faith-based"
organizations. What is left will be divided among the rest, including
Community Based Organizations like the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont.
The AIDS Project of Southern Vermont has been providing Southern Vermont
with HIV prevention services since 1995.
I have no quarrel with faith-based
HIV prevention programs. Any program that keeps someone from getting infected
with HIV is welcome. I have no quarrel with an organization that teaches
abstinence first, as long as they include condom use and the use of clean
needles in their message. What I do object to is the assumption that Community
Based Organizations such as the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont are not
"faith-based." Faith has many meanings, and it is not limited
to a church building, or any specific religious body.
Randy Shilts writes in And the Band
Played On, "By October 2, 1985, the morning Rock Hudson died,
the word was familiar to almost every household in the Western world.
AIDS. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome had seemed a comfortably distant
threat to most of those who had heard of it before, the misfortune of
people who fit into rather distinct classes of outcasts and social pariahs.
But suddenly, the summer of 1985, when a movie star was diagnosed with
the disease and the newspapers couldn't stop talking about it, the AIDS
epidemic became palpable and the threat loomed everywhere."
Do you remember? Here we are in 2004, 19
years later, and the threat of this epidemic is still "palpable and...
everywhere."
And who was it that had the faith
we could, if not cure this disease, help those infected and affected to
find the direct services they needed to live the best they could? Who
was it had the faith we could raise enough money from individuals, foundations
and government grants to do this? Who was it had faith we could help people
know what put them at risk and support them in life changes to reduce
that risk? Who was it that had faith we could find the people who cared
enough and had enough love and compassion for others to do the work necessary
to provide direct and prevention services? It was community-based organizations.
Since 1988 when the AIDS Project of Southern
Vermont began its work, we have provided direct services for hundreds
of people infected and affected by AIDS. We have provided three targeted
prevention programs since 1993. They are for men who have sex with men,
women and youth at risk, and for users of injection drugs. These programs
have been primarily funded, but not totally, by the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC). We have faithfully fulfilled the requirements for these
programs by the CDC. But even beyond that, we have raised thousands and
thousands of private dollars - money our town governments did not have
to raise. We have always had the faith we could do that. And we have year
after year. This year, 2004, we are writing a new three-year grant. This
is for CDC money distributed by the Vermont Department of Health. We may
not be funded at all. We may be funded but with large cuts.
Whatever happens, I am outraged by
a government that will punish us, and Vermont CARES in Burlington, and
ACoRN in Lebanon, New Hampshire, with less dollars because we are not
connected, as an organization, with any church. I've lived in this world
for 69 years. I feel blessed every day to work with the people I do, and
with the clients we have. They have taught me that love, compassion, friendship
and caring are the primary values in this world. They have taught me that
life is precious. They have taught me what faith, real faith, is all about.
How much more faith-based can you get?
Lynn Martin belongs to Putney Friends Meeting. She has worked at the
AIDS Project of Southern Vermont since1991 and as an HIV Prevention Specialist
since 1998. Her book of poetry Visible Signs of Defiance was
published in 1995.