How I Became a LGBTQ+ Ally 🏳️‍🌈 … and Then a Member

Sharing My Story in Honor of Pride Month

My uncle died of AIDS in 1990. He was gay. Of course, he was much more than that — not least of which, the reason my parents met. So in a way, I owe him my life.

His death was terrible.

It devastated my mother, who had been living and working with him in the antique store he had in Houston, out of an old gas station down the street from where my dad lived.

Even though I’m currently living through a pandemic where the government was largely irresponsible and unsympathetic, I’m not sure we can imagine what it was like to know and love someone who died of AIDS during that epidemic.

My parents visited me for Christmas in 2013 while I was living in NYC, and we stopped by the big New York Public Library on Madison Avenue. In their small exhibition room, they had an exhibit about the AIDS epidemic. I remember walking around the cases, looking at the newspapers and magazines and video clips, and watching my mom’s reaction.

It’s taken me many revelations over the years to begin to grasp the depth of her loss — that his death is to her what my sister’s death would be to me.

But it’s not just the death and the loss of his life. He didn’t die of natural causes, or even in an accident. He died of a disease that ravaged his…