“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
This year we’ve seen Vladimir Putin quashing gay rights and political criticism, the return of laws in Greece that call for the arrest of anyone suspected of being HIV-positive, laws in India that make gay sex illegal, laws in Uganda that make being homosexual a crime, increased stigma of people living with HIV and more.
The pendulum swings, yes, but sometimes too quickly. On the one hand we see parts of the Western World becoming more accepting and egalitarian (for example gay marriage in the States and Britain), and on the other hand, in the Eastern World (and I include Russia here), there has been a movement back to a repressive state that sees anyone who is not “normal” as bad and deserving of horrible things.
Hate seems to be a very human value.
Perhaps because I work in the AIDS world, I expect too much from society. I am surrounded by caring, loving people, and those people seem to “get it”. But the majority of the rest of the population doesn’t “get it”. It’s as though a rampant conservatism is returning, completely oblivious to basic human rights or even the suggestion of understanding and compassion. There is very little “peace on earth” and a scarcity of “good will to men” (and women).
As people living with HIV in Canada, we have a government that would probably prefer we be locked away (of course they’d never say that). Now we are also faced with increasingly complicated issues about disclosure – when we do it, with whom we do it, why we do it. We were pariahs in the 1980s and we seem to be replaying that tired old role. The general population must be protected from the vectors of disease; as Dickens put it “if they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”.
On Facebook I’ve seen a multitude of petitions and I’ve signed my fair share, but I wonder what effect they have: governments that don’t want to listen aren’t going to – period. We can all change our profile pictures a million times, which will have no effect on the world, but in doing so we simply show that we care.
Perhaps that’s where it starts.
Perhaps the more we show that we care, as individuals and as groups, and in whatever small ways we do those single acts, we can begin to shift things – ever so slightly. Where we see injustice we must show another way to be. It’s not about railing against authority – that just gets you pepper-sprayed. If we do nothing, we allow things to continue as they are and silently condone it. But if we can do one small thing, one singular act of kindness, caring and support, one small phrase that says “no – not any more”, then perhaps, bit by bit in miniscule increments the world will change and people will change.
Like the Grinch, maybe the hardened hearts will grow three sizes one day.
And the birth of the Christ will not have been in vain.