Originally published in

(The following has been edited to correct mistakes in the original article)

Living Right May Not Be Enough

David Persons
07/28/00

This is the second of three columns based on interviews and sessions from Fisk University's 33rd Race Relations Institute held July 10-16.

NASHVILLE - Catherine Wyatt-Morley doesn't look like she's been infected with human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS. As she left the stage, walked down the steps and began to prowl the floor, she looked and sounded healthier than I am.

But that's an illusion. She's not healthier.

Wyatt-Morley has full-blown AIDS. She was diagnosed with it in 1994. She was infected by her husband.

Religious fanatics who claim that AIDS is the judgment of an angry God are wrong.

Wyatt-Morley is the proof. She didn't share needles or use intravenous drugs. She'd been monogamous, married to the same man for over 10 years at the time of her diagnosis.

She'd been faithful, even when he hadn't been. Tim, her husband, had also struggled with alcohol and drug addictions. Somewhere along the way - unknowingly - he was infected with HIV.

And he had infected her.

Tim Morley is dead now. Their marriage died even before he did. In her book, "AIDS Memoir: Journal of an HIV-positive mother," Wyatt-Morley wrote that Tim began to withdraw behind the bottle after his HIV-positive diagnosis.

To her credit, she never did. Instead, she has raised her three children, has written one book and is working on another, has founded a non-profit AIDS education organization, and has produced a video, "Reasons To Live: Women, Their Families and HIV."

And she's done it all, she said, while losing a job and a church because of her infection. And she said her family, too, has rejected her.

But looking at her in Jubilee Hall's auditorium on the Fisk campus, none of that is apparent.

What is apparent, though, is that Wyatt-Morley is a beautiful, passionate, intelligent woman who has willingly placed herself on the front lines of a life and death battle.

"Over half of my immune system is gone," she told the audience.

Even so, she's not just fighting for her life anymore. She's fighting for the lives of black people, who have become increasingly vulnerable to AIDS.

"AIDS is killing black folks," she told us. "It's killing people of color."

Most of us have heard about the effect of AIDS on Africa. The life expectancy in some nations has been cut in half. Nearly 40 percent of the people in some African populations have been infected with HIV.

Millions of African children are, or will be, orphaned. AIDS is holding the Motherland hostage like a plague.

Black America may not be far behind.

Citing Centers of Disease Control figures, Wyatt-Morley said that one in 50 black men and one in 160 black women are infected with HIV. Some 53 percent of all HIV-AIDS cases [involve people of color].

AIDS is the leading cause of death for blacks 25 to 44 years old.

Black women are increasingly vulnerable to infection. The reason seems to be linked to the black community's deep-rooted homophobia, which keeps us willfully ignorant of the presence and problems of [homosexual] and bisexual men.

"We turn a blind eye and try to pretend that there are no gay black men," Wyatt-Morley said.

Denial of sexual behavior leads to the spread of disease.

Few are safe

Connect the dots: men having sex with men, some of whom have sex with women, most of whom in turn have sex with other men. Add one more: older men, assumed to be safe, not sexually active or monogamous, having regular sexual contact with women and/or men, including prostitutes of either sex.

Age may make a man discreet, but it doesn't make him safe.

Wyatt-Morley wants us to know all this. She wants us to believe it and live it. And if we have any doubts, she wants us to look at what happened to her. She did everything right, and it still wasn't enough.