World AIDS Day 2025

This year the UK cut its contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by 15% (about £150 million). This act will lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The Trump Administration in addition to having appointed one of the most unqualified Health Secretary to date; has also decided that it will not observe World AIDS Day. This is the first time the US government has not observed the day since it was established on Dec 1, 1988.  Ronald Regan briefly mentioned AIDS in 1985 and then did not give another speech about it until 1987; during this team well over 10,000 (estimates are closer to 15,000) had already died in the US alone.

Douglas Coupland wrote in Generation X, "Nostalgia is a weapon." There is a glossing over of the 80's without acknowledging that for many people, mainly minorities and people considered undesirables, the decade was like looking through the bottom of a dirty brown glass ashtray.

Governments in the 80's did not care that gay men and drug addicts were dying. Instead, they created an atmosphere of shame with the media calling it a judgement from above. God did not let HIV+ individuals; including my own father in 1986 die. Government failure to invest and pursue programs to help people who were sick is what killed them. Government failure to educate and advocate killed them. Here we are in 2025 and as Shirley Bassey famously sang "It's all just a little bit of history repeating."

The shame is not on those we have lost but is firmly on governments and religious authorities around the world who continue to promote a silence and ignorance that is still causing undue harm and death.

Today I will honour all those taken from us like my own father John Daniel Lugo, Sr who was only 30 years old when he died in 1986. I will honour those who continue to defy the medical odds and live full lives.

Tomorrow though, we continue to hold all those accountable for the deaths of millions. Tomorrow, we continue to speak out against the homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, racism and social engineering that governments and religion use as justification to deny access to HIV/ AIDS education and medication.