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Compassion and AIDS by Anson Laytner Although life is tragic, I have learned one need not despair. Click to read Essay Profile of Author Bio of Author from ETG Essay, Late-breaking Developments Author's Comment on the ETG Experience Updated Bio Click to Purchase Send email to the author (The copyright on this essay is held by the author.  For permission to duplicate: copyright@cunepress.com)

Compassion and AIDS
I direct an organization that provides subsidized housing for people living with AIDS. We work out of an old brick church on Capitol Hill in Seattle. What do we accomplish? We draw together people of good will from many faiths. We help other people in need of love and care.

AIDS is only a disease. It is erratic—some individuals get infected, others do not. But more judgment is passed on people with aids than on victims of any other disease. Many of us still unleash upon victims of aids all the loathing once reserved for those afflicted by leprosy. I have seen: condemnation when love and compassion were called for; good, decent human beings rejected by family and friends; clergy walking past the open doors of hospital rooms where AIDS patients lay longing for comfort. This makes our work all the more important. For many of our clients, we become surrogate families.

Having a terminal disease does not transform people into saints any more than it turns them into sinners. People with AIDS are just ordinary people. But in the course of helping many of these "ordinary people," I have learned some great lessons and sensed the presence of the divine. My work with people who live with AIDS has changed me, making me more aware of life’s immediacy and preciousness.

One thing I have learned from firsthand experience: life is tragic. Life is tragic because we live life individually, separately, and alone. Life is tragic because from the moment of birth until the day of death, life is made up of innumerable minor losses and a number of great ones, each with its own special grief. Then there’s death itself—the ultimate separation. Although life is tragic, I have learned one need not despair.

Life’s experiences can be either a mill stone or a stepping stone, depending on what one chooses to make of them. Contracting AIDS brings some people low, yet it also raises some people up. I think of J., a thirty-nine-year-old man, already emaciated when he came to live at our Rainier Valley House, but still brimming with vitality. Since his teens, J. had lived on the streets, wandering from city to city, a heroin addict, always looking for his next fix. Once infected with AIDS, he was forced to confront the consequences of his actions. The awareness of his impending death made him value the time that remained to him. It gave his life new meaning. He kicked his drug habit and sought to warn young people about the dangers of drug use and unsafe sex. His crusade gave his life purpose. It helped keep him physically and spiritually alive. Not only that, his dedication and courage inspired those who knew him.

Others have shown me that maintaining a sense of humor and an appreciation of the little joys of daily life are effective antidotes to despair. "What design pattern do people with AIDS prefer?" asked a man whose face was spotted with Kaposi sarcoma. The answer to his riddle: "Polka dots."

What have I learned from people living with AIDS? I’ve learned to cherish the people I love, to live in the present, to never give up hope, and to laugh when facing adversity.

But now comes the dilemma. Shall those of us who base our faith on the Bible condemn the many people with AIDS who are homosexuals because the Bible, in the book of Leviticus, is unambiguously hostile to male homosexuality? Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha’i all traditionally view homosexuality as a grave sin. But through my work with people living with AIDS, I have come to know many gays and lesbians. They are good, decent people—not sinners.

How can I reconcile my experience with the traditional prohibition against homosexual behavior? Some traditional Jews and Christians I know suggest that we should "hate the sin, love the sinner," but I can’t separate a person from his or her sexual identity, and besides, I’m not sure homosexuality really is a sin. A Muslim acquaintance suggested that, even if homosexuality is a sin, it should be weighed in the context of a person’s entire life. However, I don’t believe God operates like a divine scorekeeper. Some Jews and Christians would interpret the Biblical prohibitions in their ancient historical and cultural contexts as a way of abrogating the force of these laws. But I can’t do that either, because I do not know why my ancestors—or as traditionally believed, God—made the law in the first place. Nor can I, as a Jew, simply ignore a prohibition that has been in place for some three thousand years.

I can only resolve the dilemma by considering how God might respond. In the book of Exodus in the Torah, the first part of the Jewish Bible (also called the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses), God is self-described as "a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness, extending lovingkindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin." Commanded to emulate God, we are also enjoined: "Love your neighbor as yourself," or, as more correctly translated: "Love your neighbor; he is like you."

In the Jewish tradition, the word for this sort of behavior is called hesed. The word means lovingkindness, faithfulness, righteousness, and more. Every religion has its own terminology for hesed, but the behavior described is identical and universal. Love means standing together, living together, building together, and caring for one another. Love is the only thing that binds us to one another. We must learn how to love and to love well.

Ultimately, I must confess to being an agnostic about homosexuality. I don’t know why the anti-homosexual commandments in Leviticus (or similar sentiments in the New Testament) are there. I don’t know for sure if homosexuality is a genetic predisposition or something freely chosen. I don’t know if it is a sin or not. I only know that I don’t know how I can judge people who are homosexual. Let God pass judgment, if we think judgment is needed. In the meantime, let us love our fellow human beings. It is no sin for us to err on the side of compassion. 

Profile
I would say that Anson Laytner is the funkiest rabbi that I’ve ever met, except that I’m a Quaker from the Midwest and haven’t hung out with many rabbis. On the surface he appears to be a mild-mannered dude from Canada. But I know that Anson likes blues and the Stones and was a hippie in his twenties—or close to it. Is Anson a rebel, an adventurer? Or does he just promote those images to offset pre-judgments about what a rabbi should be?

Anson has compassion and also courage. He is not afraid to address difficult subjects like anger at God. What should we do when things don’t go as we planned? Misfortune can toss everything in life to the floor. Anson beseeches us to realize that misfortune and suffering do happen, sometimes in horribly unjust ways—but that it is our goal to somehow loft a kite of hope in the sky, and not lose hold of the string.

—Beth Balderston

Bio
Anson Laytner
Place of residence: Seattle.
Birthplace: Toronto, Canada.
Grew up in: Toronto, with formative years in Beijing and Jerusalem.
Day job: Executive Director of the Multifaith AIDS Project.
Education: B.A., York University. Rabbinical Degree, Hebrew Union College. M.A., Seattle University.
Books: Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition, Jason Aronson (1990).
Current project: An adaptation of the medieval Hebrew/Arabic environmental tale, The Letter of the Animals.
Favorite book: Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain.
Belief: Iconoclastic Jewish.
Cravings: The basics—food, sex, love, confrontations with God.
Comment: I bake challah bread as a spiritual practice.

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