Churches Join Effort to Give AIDS Alert

In the parking lot of St. Brigid’s Catholic Church in South- Central Los Angeles on Sunday sat a 35-foot trailer from Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, offering free HIV testing.

Inside the church, Father John Harfmann walked the aisles, thundering a message of abstinence to a congregation whose members were handed red ribbons to commemorate World AIDS Day.

“I have anointed people, some priests, some lay people, who have died of this disease,” he said. “It’s not a pretty thing to see. When we wear this [ribbon], it’s not just a symbol. It means be aware.”

St. Brigid’s was one of more than 40 predominantly black churches in Los Angeles County that commemorated World AIDS Day on Sunday, some with the message of safe sex, others with abstinence, offering the victims compassion and mercy.

The African American community has been especially hard hit by the epidemic of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, blacks, who make up 9.5% of the county population, account for 20% of the AIDS cases and 34% of the pediatric HIV cases. Nationally, blacks account for 65% of HIV infection among 13- to 24-year-olds.Inside the Drew medical trailer, Cynthia Davis, director of the university’s HIV Testing and Outreach Project, said the highest human immunodeficiency virus rate in her testing is among Hollywood street youth, where it reaches 10%, and on skid row, where it ranges from 3% to 5%.

She said black women have been especially hard hit by HIV, with a rate of infection 20 times higher nationally than white women.

Davis expected to test 20 people in the six hours the trailer would be parked at St. Brigid’s. “That’s a good day for us,” she said.

Those who are tested must return in a week to get the results. Only about half are expected to show up, said HIV counselor Madison Brown.

Though St. Brigid’s might still be called a black church, about 30% of its members are Latino, Harfmann said.

Maritza Aguilar, 32, was walking with her two young children on Western Avenue when she saw the trailer. Although she is married, she decided to get tested for the first time. “With husbands, you never know,” she said. “Once in a while, it’s good to be sure.”

Edna Williams heads St. Brigid’s HIV/AIDS ministry, which delivers food, companionship and supplies to AIDS sufferers. After she watched her son waste away from a robust 6 foot 4, 190 pounds to less than 100 pounds before dying of complications of AIDS in 1993, she knew she had to do something. Laurence Williams was 32.

“It’s my ministry, my mission,” she said. “I don’t want any mother to suffer the way I suffered during his illness,” she said.

She said that even now, 20 years into the epidemic, AIDS still carries a tremendous stigma among blacks, many of whom hold the erroneous belief that the disease can be transmitted through casual contact.

As a result, they don’t want to be tested. “People figure, ‘If I don’t know about it, it won’t happen to me,’ ” she said. “It’s a complete reversal of facts.”

A few miles south of St. Brigid’s, at the First New Christian Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, the Rev. Norman S. Johnson attacked Christians who said AIDS was God’s way of punishing gays. “If God was like that, then why do we have cancer, and tuberculosis and diabetes?” he asked.

The stereotype of AIDS being a disease of gay white males no longer holds, he said.

“It can be anyone. In your family. On your job. Among your friends. Even in the church. Tear down the barriers,” he said. “Don’t classify folks according to stereotypes.”