For years, I have concealed my true identity as a gay man and living with HIV. What might seem like deception was a desperate attempt to protect myself from judgment, rejection, and the burden of losing my livelihood. This inner conflict has left me physically and emotionally exhausted, and I am grateful to finally reach a point in my life to claim my God-given identity and human dignity.
February 28 marks HIV is Not a Crime Awareness Day, established in 2022 to confront HIV criminalization laws. These laws, present in 30 U.S. states and 92 countries, wrongfully heighten criminal charges based on HIV status, disproportionately impacting Black and Latino communities, LGBTQIA+ people, and other marginalized groups. As a gay man, husband, father, grandfather, pastor, and person living with HIV, I am grateful that medical advances have made my condition manageable. Treatment granted me a life expectancy similar to HIV-negative individuals and eliminated transmission risk.
While science has advanced, outdated attitudes persist. Faith communities have often been complicit in the criminalization of this disease through silence, judgment, and theological frameworks that treat HIV status as evidence of moral failure rather than a medical condition. Such treatment keeps people living with HIV (PLHIV) from embracing our God-given identity. Thriving with HIV requires more than just healthcare — we need life-affirming communities that embrace us with love and acceptance.
Faith communities have often been complicit in the criminalization of [HIV] through silence, judgment, and theological frameworks that treat HIV status as evidence of moral failure.
Yet, PLHIV rarely find belonging in wholly accepting communities. Out of my 23 years as an ordained Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor, these past eight years of living with HIV have brought profound loneliness. While churches are presumed to be sanctuaries of support during health challenges, I have never felt safe disclosing my HIV status in these spaces. This fear isn’t unfounded, sharing that one is living with HIV can lead to stigma, isolation, loss of job security and social status, and in some cases, violence.
Even within progressive faith communities that claim to be inclusive, I’ve frequently encountered subtle judgments and condescension rooted in moral superiority from siblings with good intentions but different lived experiences. After I came out as gay, my wife and I received a note from someone in church leadership that encapsulates such an attitude: “May your desires be fulfilled in ways that are harmonious, carefully considered, and beneficial to all concerned, to the best of your ability.” In my experience, churches, and the people in them, fail to offer full acceptance and support to PLHIV by neglecting the work of self-examination and sustaining a damning silence around sexuality and HIV.
However, I must confront the fact that this stigma hasn’t just been external in my life. As I’ve come to accept my full identity, I have had to fight a vicious cycle of stigma, shame, and self-imposed secrecy in how I view myself. For too long, I attempted to forestall assumed judgment and contempt because I had contracted HIV through unprotected sex with another man while married to my wife.
Growing up in apartheid South Africa’s White supremacist culture and belonging to the Dutch Reformed Church ingrained in me that homosexuality is sinful and immoral. Arriving in the United States in 1998, I found the same homophobia and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ individuals exemplified by the brutal murder that year of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s refusal at that time to ordain LGBTQIA+ people for ministry.
I was devastated to experience intolerance similar to what I wanted to leave behind. For years, I lived with a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance as I desperately tried to conform to societal and religious expectations, only to hate myself even more and feel worthless. To hide my true self took tremendous vigilance. This constant effort to self-police led to destructive behaviors that pushed me toward self-medication and outlets that offered temporary escape and relief of the tension within me yet put me at greater risk of contracting HIV.
To hide my true self took tremendous vigilance.
When I was diagnosed with HIV in 2016, I felt like the moral failure I feared. Having grown up in a church that viewed AIDS as God’s punishment for homosexuality (Romans 1:26-27), I carried the weight of believing I sinned against God by destroying my body, the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Disclosing both my HIV status and sexuality to my wife was harrowing for us both, and despite excellent medical care, we navigated this devastating reality in isolation. Still living in denial, I could not admit to myself that I was gay, and I continued to believe I could be attracted to men and in a physical relationship with a woman through prayer and willpower.
By March 2022, crushed by the hidden truth of my identity as a gay man, I contemplated suicide. Ultimately, this tremendous turmoil led me to find the mental support I needed. With the help of a counselor and the support of my wife and family, I came out publicly as gay in February 2023. It was affirming to receive the support of my denomination throughout my coming out process. However, a denominational leader recommended that I keep my HIV status private — and that was heartbreaking. Without knowing any circumstances, they assumed it might be a violation of my ordination vows. Their response made me feel criminalized for living with HIV, revealing the persistent stigma in faith communities.
Now, sharing my truth openly, I reject the burden of secrecy. Still, there are mornings when I wake up envying people who have died of late-stage HIV. I ask myself: What takes more courage — to live or to die with HIV?
The courage to live authentically comes at a high price. As a person of faith living with HIV, I need the church’s spiritual and emotional support to flourish. Yet, if a leader in the church says my HIV status could risk my ordination, I am caught in a bind. Even facing such fear, my yearning to share my true self and claim my dignity has become paramount. It is precisely my role as an ordained minister, the very status I risk, that compels me to speak out and challenge the church’s ongoing complicity in perpetuating stigma and judgment that contributes to the broader criminalization of PLHIV.
The courage to live authentically comes at a high price. As a person of faith living with HIV, I need the church’s spiritual and emotional support to flourish.
My journey shows how deeply the church must reckon with the spiritual trauma it inflicts in its failure to address issues of sex and sexuality, its oppressive theology of sin, its idolatry of traditional family values, and its sanctification of heteronormativity. At its core, the church proclaims a message of reconciliation, yet it remains blind to its complicity in criminalizing and marginalizing PLHIV. Through silence, judgment, and moral condemnation, it has contributed to a culture that criminalizes HIV, failed countless siblings and their families who died from AIDS-related complications, and continues to silence PLHIV, like me.
Despite these challenges, I find hope in the church’s capacity for transformation. Even amid struggle, I have experienced glimpses of wholly accepting communities of love and care in my current congregation and others I have served. I believe that by honestly sharing my story and expressing my authentic self, I am claiming my dignity as a child of God and contributing to healing the wounds of past trauma from the church’s unresolved struggle with human sexuality and moral judgment. By fostering such environments of compassion and acceptance, the church can fulfill its sacred calling to fully embody Jesus’ inclusive ministry of extravagant love and acceptance.
Medical care alone is not enough for people living with HIV to truly thrive … churches can play a vital role in decriminalizing HIV and dismantling the unjust laws and attitudes that perpetuate stigma and discrimination.
In this vision of embodied, life-affirming spirituality, we have the power to break the stigma of living with HIV and create spaces where everyone finds not just acceptance but true belonging and spiritual nourishment. As I’ve come to experience, medical care alone is not enough for people living with HIV to truly thrive. It is the sacred calling of communities of faith to welcome us with open arms, affirm our worth, and empower us to embrace our identity as created in the image of God.
By fostering such inclusive and supportive environments, churches can play a vital role in decriminalizing HIV and dismantling the unjust laws and attitudes that perpetuate stigma and discrimination. On this HIV is Not a Crime Awareness Day, I share my story, believing that churches can move from spaces of judgment to communities of genuine care where people living with HIV truly flourish and embrace their sacred worth.
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