Every year, December 1 asks us to pause. To remember…
World AIDS Day is not only a day of mourning–it is a day of honoring. A day of reckoning. A day of remembering the people, the communities, and the legacies that built the world we walk through today.
For many in our LGBTQ+ community HIV/AIDS is history. It is memory. It is lived experience. It is the echo of names still spoken, the lessons we carry in our bodies, the resilience woven into the fabric of who we are.
I think often of my mother. Of the quiet strength she embodied as she navigated her own diagnosis, long before our culture understood, or cared to understand, the extent of this crisis. I think of the people we lost in those early years, and the people we are still losing now. And I think of the communities, especially Black and brown queer communities, who continue to shoulder disproportionate burdens, often with too little acknowledgment and too few resources.
Today, we name that truth. We refuse to forget. The epidemic did not end; it changed. It evolved. And so must we.
World AIDS Day calls us back to a commitment–to remembrance and to action. To expanding access to testing and prevention. To fighting stigma in every form. To advocating for healthcare systems and policies that center equity, dignity, and informed care. To ensuring that every person living with HIV receives the support and affirmation they deserve.
At Stonewall Columbus, our work remains deeply connected to this legacy. Through the C.A.R.E.S. program, partnerships with community health organizations, and our ongoing education efforts, we continue to create pathways to resources, visibility, and lifesaving information. The fight for justice in healthcare, like all fights for justice, requires persistence, partnership, and an unwavering belief that our community deserves more than survival. We deserve to thrive.
As we honor World AIDS Day, let us also remember the activists and caregivers who refused to be silent. The chosen families who built networks of love when the world looked away. The advocates still laboring to ensure that science, policy, and compassion move together.
And let us recommit ourselves to the work ahead–because HIV stigma is not gone. Because access is still inequitable. Because racism, homophobia, transphobia, and poverty still shape health outcomes. Because remembrance without action is incomplete.
Today, we pause.
Today, we remember.
Today, we honor.
In community and with pride,
Densil R. Porteous (he/they)
Executive Director, Stonewall Columbus
