Love and Death and Tolerance and HIV

I have lost a child and held her cold little body in my arms and seen my father die right in front of me on the way to the hospital. My girlfriend, Lisa, contracted leukemia when she was 22 and died 5 years later and, as a psychic, I deal with questions of life and death every week of my life. But the thing I want to talk about tonight is AIDS.

Back in the eighties and nineties many of my closest and dearest friends contracted the HIV virus and died. They were beautiful souls, eccentrics with a happy glow or tortured spirits beaten down by their family or society at large (or both) because they were gay. They were artists, all of them, and as artists we shared a love of so many things that the "average" person perhaps does not care for.

It is very disheartening to me after all these years that gay men and women (my beautiful daughter is gay and is the most wonderful child a parent could ever hope for) are still being discriminated against and it is long past time that we, as a collective, wake up and recognize that we are all brothers and sisters on this planet--all of us.

It doesn't matter what color we are, what language we speak, or what our sexual orientation might be. We are all spiritually connected, each and every one of us. God is within every soul here on earth and to hate another person (and that divine spark within them) is, to me anyway, akin to hating one's self.

AIDS is still a pandemic claiming millions of victims each year, both here and throughout the world, especially in Africa. Many AIDS victims are children. It breaks my heart to think of any child suffering and it is also very distressing to know that AIDS victims not only suffer physically from this deadly disease, but also suffer due to the ignorance and intolerance of others who too often show nothing but scorn and condemnation to those who are afflicted with the virus.

Love is the answer--the only answer many times--to most of life's problems. It is critical, I believe, that we love those of us who need love when they need it most. I miss all of my friends who died, due to HIV, so much. You never forget.

I loved them and my hope is that all of those souls on this planet who are sick or discriminated against in any way can find some love, somewhere, in their lives. It will make the world--and the one who loves--better . . . in every way.