WeAreHIV.org - The Social Support Network for People Living with HIV and AIDS

Keith ready to share his HIV status with voters

On May 1, John Keith, independent candidate in the
3rd Suffolk District special election for state representative on June
16, hung a rainbow flag, a symbol of gay pride, in the front window of
his Tremont Street storefront campaign headquarters, the former home of
South End Photo.

His intention in raising the flag was to
demonstrate "self identification, self pride and confidence," he said,
during an interview that morning. While the South End resident has
spent most of his 44 years living as an openly gay man, and has made no
secret of it on the campaign trail, there’s another important piece of
his life about which he’s been much less public: Keith was diagnosed
with HIV in 1988.

Keith said a combination of "luck and
medication," has kept him healthy for the last two decades, with a few
minor exceptions. And he is well aware that his HIV status has little
to do with his political campaign, given the electorate’s focus on the
economy, jobs, transportation and a host of other pressing issues. In
fact, Keith admitted that the decision of whether or not to go public
with his HIV status produced differing opinions between his campaign
staff and HIV/AIDS advocates with whom he consulted while making his
decision. In one camp -- perhaps bucking conventional campaign wisdom
-- Keith’s staff encouraged him to discuss the issue publicly,
believing it could draw more support and resources to the campaign
locally and perhaps nationally. In the other camp were friends from the
HIV/AIDS organizations Community Research Initiative (CRI) and
Community Servings, who argued that it was irrelevant and expressed
concern that disclosing his HIV status would marginalize his candidacy
or bias voters against him. For instance, one advocate with whom Keith
discussed the issue asked him if he would make such a disclosure if he
were living with diabetes instead of HIV.

"I said, oh, you know I get it," Keith recalled of the conversation. "I said, no, I wouldn’t."

Ultimately,
Keith decided that because HIV is part of his life -- albeit just one,
small part -- it was worth disclosing given his campaign promise of
complete openness and transparency. He also said that given his
determination to win the election, which will be decided on June 16
(the Democratic primary is May 19), he wanted the news to come out
sooner rather than later.

"I expect to win the office so it’s
worth saying now," he said. "If I wasn’t sure, if this was just a
campaign for fun I would probably say it’s not important."

Massachusetts
has never elected an openly gay, HIV-positive candidate to office
although in 1994, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Bob Massie
drew national attention when he disclosed that he was HIV-positive.
Massie, a heterosexual man and a hemophiliac, contracted the virus
through a blood transfusion. Massie and his gubernatorial running mate
Mark Roosevelt lost in a landslide election to the incumbent Republican
ticket of William Weld and Paul Cellucci. Nationally, there are
currently two openly gay, HIV-positive lawmakers: New York State Sen.
Tom Duane and Illinois state Rep. Greg Harris, both Democrats. Harris
won his Chicago seat after the 2006 retirement of Larry McKeon, another
openly gay, HIV-positive man. McKeon passed away in 2008. Denis Dison,
vice president of communications for the Victory Fund, a national
organization dedicated to helping openly gay candidates win elected
office, said that in his experience an HIV diagnosis hasn’t been
directly related to an openly gay candidate’s loss at the polls.

"I
will say that there are plenty of candidates who run and don’t win and
there are many reasons why they don’t win," said Dison, whose
organization endorsed both Duane and Harris when they sought office.
"There are times when you can point to sexual orientation and say
either the reality of it or the way the candidate dealt with the
reality of it may have contributed to their loss. But I have never
heard in my three years...of [a candidate’s HIV status] being
determinate in any way."

That’s likely because the disease is
now viewed by many people, particularly in the gay community, as a
chronic, manageable disease, said Dison.

In Dison’s view, the decision of whether a candidate should disclose his or her HIV status, comes down to politics.

"And what is true of all politics is it depends on where you’re running, and who you’re running against," he said.

For
a candidate running in a district where voters aren’t used to openly
gay candidates, adding HIV to the mix might not be sound strategy. If a
candidate is running in a liberal district or one with a large gay
population said Dison, "obviously there’s a different set of
circumstances."

Keith’s disclosure could also be a benefit to his campaign, said Dison.

"I
think a lot of people are impressed when people share very intimate
details about their life, including their health status, and they also
see them as people who can speak more authentically on these issues
once they are in office," he explained.

Keith, a real estate
agent, expressed a willingness to become an advocate on HIV/AIDS issues
at the State House should he be elected, although to date his only
activism has consisted of financially supporting organizations like CRI
and Fenway Community Health Center, which are the forefront locally of
researching a cure for HIV/AIDS. He acknowledged that as an elected
official he would need to develop relationships with HIV/AIDS
organizations that he does not currently have.

"The thing is,
that now that there is the knowledge it should be a natural
relationship that develops," he said. "I mean, my issues are their
issues, their issues are my issues."

Though his decision to
disclose his HIV status comes in a political context, it caps something
of a personal journey for Keith. He was diagnosed with HIV in his early
20s, while he still lived with his parents, just months away from
earning an undergraduate degree at Northeastern University. His
parents, never the type to express much emotion, offered little support
to Keith after he first shared the news with them.

"And then they went out to dinner," he recalled.

For many years, Keith could not escape the feeling he had brought the disease on himself and thus was unworthy of support.

"I
didn’t want to ask for help," he said. "I didn’t want to ask for
sympathy, I felt like I didn’t deserve sympathy, you know? I was 24 or
25, there was no secret about how you get HIV. It was no secret. It was
very clear. So I was like, you did this, this is just the way you’re
going to be."

It wasn’t until both of his parents passed away,
his father in 2000 and his mother in 2001, that Keith’s sense of shame
began to lift.

"I think partly then I felt freedom," he said
of the loss of his parents. "I felt like I had really let them down, I
felt like I had disappointed them."

Keith is happily married
to Terry Lighte, whom he met in 1992, and says their life together has
been filled with "good times." Nonetheless, the sense of freedom he
felt following the loss of his parents led him to the conclusion that
he had in some ways limited himself from doing more with his life
because of the shame surrounding his HIV status. In recent years, he’s
spread his wings a little more, for instance by starting a real estate
blog and occasionally contributing columns to South End News.

"Then
the race came along and I said this is a little earlier than I would
have preferred because I’m not really prepared to disclose [my HIV
status]," said Keith, adding, "I don’t have the friend base, I don’t
have the gay base, I don’t have any base. But it was like no, no, no.
I’m just going to do this."

"It’s sort of like, if I’m here for
20 years don’t I -- I don’t want this to sound political, but -- don’t
I have a responsibility to do all the things I always wanted to do or
to be the person I always wanted to be?" said Keith.

"It’s not like a Milk
moment," he added, referring to last year’s Oscar-winning film about
openly gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk. "But I also want
to throw that in. In Milk he’s 40-years-old before he gets
involved in politics -- and oh, by the way, he worked in a photo shop,"
he said with a laugh. "I think that maybe I’ve been lazy long enough."

LINK: http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=91152