In 1983 I lost 2 friends to AIDS, both named Michael and both the first two deaths from AIDS in Fort Lauderdale. At that time it was called GRID. One Michael was an ice  skater with the Ice Capades and traveled all over the country. He left a 10 year old son whose
mother didn't want him. The other Michael was a school teacher who
cared so much for his  students that aside from all the time he spent in
school teaching he spent at least three quarters of his time away from
school working for his students to make lessons interesting and to
bring them up to their potential.

Two
years later a very unorganized group of adults started a new
organization called "Buddies" which basically was a group who helped
people who were HIV+ or had AIDS. (Sadly many adults today, 28 years
after the epidemic started, don't know you can be HIV+ and not have
AIDS!) get medical help, housing, food, check that they took their
medicines, financial aid where possible, etc.  In the late 1980s a new
statistic started to enter the medical field--teenagers who were HIV+
or had AIDS and were out on the street.

As
a group we didn't start the idea but 'borrowed it from New York and San
Francisco--we would concentrate on getting gay kids off the street,
putting a roof over their head, food in their stomachs, care for them,
let them know they were important and needed while at the same time
making sure they continued their education.

There
were a lot of legal problems and rules set up because you were dealing
with adults and teens and we were living in a world, still are, where
adults didn't know that being gay did not equate with pedophilia--just
read a recent blog.

For approximately
20 years I have personally dealt with close to 175 kids. More than 20
of them have died, 15 in my arms, and each felt as if my own child had
died. I remember calling Ken's mother to tell her that her son would be
dead within 24 hours and her response was, "Good!" Sara's father said
she had been dead to him since the day

Just for the
record I am not using the kid's real names but their street names and
why they didn't use even their first names on the street is a blog in itself. It was and is hard to get any information from these kids
and the first step is to get them to trust you which is not easy. Some
of these kids were kicked out of their homes because they were gay and
the parents didn't want their friends and church to know that, or even
worse, in the parents eyes, if they could think anything worse than
being  a homosexual, was if their community found out the kids had HIV
or AIDS. Can you imagine how the 'good christian' would act when they
were told or found out that their kid had AIDS and was a
homosexual?!?!? Trust me the kids didn't tell them as in most cases it
was an adult that the kid trusted which makes it, and made it, almost
impossible to get them to trust another adult not to mention what they
went through from the time they were thrown out of their house until
either we found them or they came to us.

Most of these
kids felt worthless and they acted like they were. They sold their body
for a ham sandwich or a shower or a place to lay down out of the rain.
For a few cents they would do things that would make you sick and
disgusted. We wanted to, tried to get these adults, male and female,
gay and nongay, who preyed
on these kids but in most cases the kids were too scared or didn't want
to go to court and this scum of the earth went on to prey, and still
do, on 13, 14 and 15 year olds.
Yes the men outnumbered the women and in the former case were much
older than the latter but both sexes took/take advantage of these kids.

I remember Jackie so sweet, so young, with
cigarette burns all over her body, and her 'protecter' Jack, a street
smart wise ass boy who saw himself as a man and yet cried like a baby
in my arms the night Jackie died. There was Frank, at 17, who took care
of the younger kids on the street making sure the old men didn't take
advantage of them and jumped in front of a car to stop a predator from
taking a kid to his home and sodomizing him.

I remember Leslie who wanted to be a woman
so badly she prostituted herself to men by giving them oral sex so they
wouldn't suspect that she was a male and saving the money to get
breasts only to die in the street killed by a man who discovered who
she was and still has not been prosecuted.

I had/have a 175 kids and with them 175 stories and all the good, bad, ugly, successes,
failures that go along with them. I am now partially responsible for
two kids, one HIV+ and the other has AIDS, but both will make it and
have a good long life. The kid with AIDS 'inherited' it from his mother
who doesn't want anything to do with him but he is smart, hopeful,
funny and one of the most positive people I have every met--and that is
NOT a pun.

It is very difficult for me to read a blog about not educating kids about sex, to hear that the church will guide
them, that parents don't want homosexuals talking to their kids in
assembly, that gays are pedophiles, not real men or women, don't
deserve to adopt kids, get married or are 'less than'. I don't want to
hear that a gay person chose to be gay when that makes no sense at all,
I don't want negative blogs about gays so a gay kid can read it and feel less about himself/herself, I don't want to read a blog about gay stereotypes that gives an idiot, he thinks, the right to
bash/kill/ a gay person. I don't want to read 'gay friendly' people blogs talking about how DADT should be kept in place because a gay man will 'look' at them as if every gay man/woman finds every nongay man/woman irresistible.

I get tired, I get angry, I get depressed, I get burned out but more than anything I want to yell at every self righteous right wing christain (yes, small c) republican to stop it--stop killing our kids with your stupid posts! Words hurt--words kill--think before you type--think before you post your blog--stop the name calling--the bullying--remember the Golden Rule or are you too good for that?