Bay Area Reporter - September 14, 2000
Bob Roehr

Should there be mandatory HIV testing of prisoners upon entering a jail, asked one participant? "Yes," said Jackson without hesitation, "There are no up sides to ignorance."

He pointed out that "among the privileged, there are health care checks now." He used the examples of Magic Johnson who had to take a health exam to play basketball, and corporate executives who often have to do the same on an annual basis.

"I'm not sure that everybody in America is ready to take it [an HIV test] now, but they ought to take it," said Jackson. "But the results should be private."

"Some people will never stop lying about how they got it. à 'I am not gay, it must have been two bulls, and I ate the infected hamburger or something.' à They will not stop lying." Jackson said. "We have to get past that foolishness."

An African American physician in the audience vented his frustration with public health policy in the state where he works that "restricts our ability for preventative medicine." He mentioned the lack of HIV reporting and legal restriction from informing sexual partners of the patient as he would with other sexually transmitted diseases.

"By some foolish law, he can't tell the household that help is needed and death is on the way," recounted Jackson. He called for protests and demonstrations to "fight the politics of fear," perhaps by an organized series of press conferences by doctors "to dramatically demonstrate foolish laws."

Jackson explained that the Rainbow Coalition and Operation Push, organizations that he leads, are coordinating a thousand African American churches to make HIV a major focus of their work. Pastors are being urged to take an HIV test in front of their flocks, and challenge the men in their congregations to do the same.

"If Magic Johnson had not taken the HIV test early, HIV would have matured into AIDS, he would have spread it to his wife and children. But early detection has led to suppression," he said.

"We must have mass testing and mass educational and modified behavior," said Jackson. "We have to get beyond the foolishness of not teaching health and sex education."

Jackson called it "a moral challenge for people of faith" to reach down to people to lift them up. He used the example of Jesus, who in his last act, chose to stay the night "in the quarantined shelter of Simon the leper. We don't quite know if Simon really was black, or white, or brown. We know he was sick and he needed to be cared for."

Jackson asked the audience "to challenge this notion of quarantining people." He remind them that, "People of character are measured by how they treat the damned, the disinherited, and those in despair."
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