My alma mater, West Virginia University, held a vigil Thursday night for the victims in Orlando. I was asked to write a statement to be read by the director of the WVU's new LGBTQ Center at the close of the vigil. This is the text of my statement:
I wish I could be there with you to read this statement myself.
My name is Hank Trout. I was a student at WVU from 1970 through 1977. I am 63 years old now. Since the early 1980s, I have lost dozens of friends to AIDS – I stopped counting when the number hit 30 in 1989, the same year that I was diagnosed with HIV. My friends are still dying – two more just this month.
And now, 49 more of us are dead.
I’m tired of counting our dead.
I didn’t know those 49 young beautiful people, but I know what killed them.
They were killed by a virus just as insidious and as deadly as the HIV that has killed too many of us already.
The virus that killed those 49 people was born and cultivated in outworn fears, doctrine, and superstitions; coddled in legislatures full of self-serving bigots who want to make our love illegal; and set to murderous use by self-loathing monsters with too-easy access to weapons of mass murder.
I know the virus inside me is only temporary. I know there will be a cure for HIV in my lifetime.
Curing that other virus is up to YOU.
Don’t ever stop loving each other. Hold each other. Protect each other. And never, ever lose your courage, your strength. I know that you here in Woodburn Circle can defeat that other virus. You can do it. In memory of those 49 young beautiful people taken from us in Orlando, you must defeat it.
My long-battered heart is with you tonight.