Soul Search

Behind the AIDS statistics, a mother and son share their pain and hope

TELLING MOM was one of the hardest things Reginald Diggs ever had to do. He was infected with HIV. He'd been living on the "down low," having sex with other men against the teachings of his church and his mom, his life-long comfort and strength.

Would she still love him?

Sex, spirituality and secrecy are a tangle for men on the "down low," and one of the reasons (along with poverty, drug use, incarceration and poor access to health care) for soaring HIV-infection rates among African Americans. Consider:

• African Americans are 12 percent of the U.S. population, but about half of the million people infected with HIV.

• In King County, blacks are 5 percent of the population but 22 percent of the HIV cases.

• African-American men are infected with HIV at seven times the rate of white men; African-American women at 19 times the rate of white women. In both cases, transmission is mostly through sex with men.

By coincidence (she'd call it divine intervention), Reginald's mother, Mary Diggs-Hobson, had received her calling as a minister of health years before her oldest son was diagnosed with HIV. She was already working on AIDS issues, but having the disease in her family added urgency.

In 2002, mother and son founded the African Americans Reach and Teach Health Ministry with the help of retired Tacoma physician DeMaurice Moses, an active board and volunteers. "When we started out, some didn't believe the numbers were as high as what was being reported" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says Diggs-Hobson, a former Xerox executive. "Some felt it was something the medical profession should deal with, not the church. Some believed it was a sin issue. It was a mixture of denial, judging and just rejecting the whole thing."

Her ministry has held health fairs and AIDS workshops, and has trained health instructors in many congregations with support from the American Red Cross, the University of Washington's AIDS Education and Training Center and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.

Now, mother and son talk about the life behind the statistics, in their own words, distilled from recent conversations with Pacific Northwest magazine writer Paula Bock.

MARY DIGGS-HOBSON

Have you ever been to a place where you felt: This was where you should be and there's not a logical explanation, but you knew you just belonged there? That's the feeling I got when I came to Seattle, even though I knew no one here. It opened my spiritual world. There are all these divine connections, appointments you don't schedule, but they happen. This is where I received my calling into the ministry.

I was at Xerox for 21 years working primarily with computers. I started out as a keypunch operator, and my last job was as a regional training manager working out of Seattle, California and the East Coast. Straight corporate mindset. But it was a good career, served my family well.

Then I just got to the point where my life was changing in terms of things I felt were satisfying and gave me that sense of self-worth. In my teens and early 20s, I was one of those people like Barbra Streisand in "The Way We Were," out on the street passing out fliers for this cause and that cause. I needed to be more directly in touch with people in need.

I often go to the Oregon Coast to get away, to reflect, read the Bible, commune with God. I was there when this voice inside spoke as I was reading the Scripture, in Mark, where Jesus is instructing the disciples to go out and teach his word. The word that came up was, YOU. Mary, YOU go out and teach my word. It was very personal and moved from being a Scripture on the page to being an audible charge in my spirit.

This was all part of my decision to leave Xerox to go to Bible school, get training as a minister. I pondered on it for a couple years. I've got a family. I'm a single mom. I have responsibilities. But the thing about being in a relationship with the Lord is when you're given assignments, you're given some time to prepare.

(After completing a two-year ministry program at RHEMA Bible College in Tulsa, Okla., Diggs-Hobson enrolled in a clinical pastoral education program at Virginia Mason Medical Center.)

My first assignment was at Bailey Boushay. Unlike now, where people are living positive (with the virus), back then, they were dying positive. I had an opportunity to minister to a number of individuals. For some, it was their last rites or a memorial. I didn't realize how this experience would make a difference in my life.

In 1995, my son was diagnosed as being HIV positive. If I had not gone through ministering at Bailey Boushay and Virginia Mason, I wouldn't have had the knowledge and awareness, the attitude and ability to accept.

(Because she was a single parent), Reginald became the little man of the house. I depended on him to watch out for his little brother, Ronald. As he grew and I grew, the relationship was still mother-son, but it expanded into friend-friend, kind of like a confidante. We could share things. Decisions about where he was going to college. Frustrations he felt about his height; people assumed he was an athlete, and he had no desire to be an athlete.

We did shopping together. My clothes were conservative because I worked at Xerox at a time when women and blacks were fighting for a role in the corporate world. He helped me change the colors in my wardrobe. He was a model and he'd studied grooming and makeup and started a modeling school. He gave advice about relationships and the guys mom dated. He was a good friend.

So when he told me he was HIV positive, at first I didn't know what I was hearing. It was like listening to a movie: It's not really happening to me or to us as a family. I just started crying. I grabbed him and I hugged him. I could see in his eyes he felt scared. I knew, as a mother, I needed to let my son know I loved him.

I told him we'd have a dinner and have the family over. He'd be the one to tell them, but I'd be there to support him. We potlucked. I'm not sure what I made, probably a macaroni and cheese dish they all love. It was so wonderful because everybody reached out and he was in the middle and we just laid on each other and cried. To think he felt we wouldn't love him was painful. He must have gone through torture.

All those years before, we'd shared so much, but not that. I really didn't know directly, but I sometimes felt there was something else going on with him as far as his sexuality, his lifestyle. There were these blank spots. A mother has a sixth sense. Now it's in vogue for men to come out and talk, which is good. It's healthy.

Even though I'd spent time ministering to and caring for people who were HIV positive, it does make a difference when it's at home. I had to do a lot of soul-searching. What do I have to change in my views about this virus to really support and embrace my son? I had thoughts about the lifestyle, about men going both ways, that it was, y'know, totally sinful. I still believe the actions are not pleasing to God; my personal belief is everything we do is a choice. But in the midst of that, each one of us has something we carry that is not necessarily pleasing to God. Nobody is perfect.

Like doctors, ministers have an obligation to share compassion. Ministers don't have the right to withhold the love of God. God loves us because he created us and his love is unconditional. It's not governed by all the trappings of human nature, all the strings and carrots and performance measurements.

We started African Americans Reach and Teach Health Ministries in 2002. The primary focus is increasing awareness and taking health resources to the people. It's about increasing capacity at the grassroots level. Our medical system now is overwhelmed. People are hurting in churches whether their pastors know or not. As they discover somebody sitting next to them in the congregation is dealing with the same issue, a lot of the stigma will be torn away. You have to get to the human need. I have seen change in just the past two or three years. People see it isn't happening just in somebody else's community or Africa. It's happening in my own house.

You reach and you teach. You hope some will hear. But some will step out and do whatever they do even though they may know the dangers. In our predominantly black universities, the numbers are very high for HIV infection. We're talking about our next lawyers and doctors and teachers. People you think should be educated and enlightened, they still wind up HIV positive. They know, but they believe: It's not going to happen to me. It happens. Human issues happen.

Mary Diggs-Hobson, 58, the executive director of AARTH and a minister at Outreach Christian Center is married to Lee Hobson, who "makes me smile and is my strength and support" and has four grandchildren.For details on her ministry, see www.aarth.org.

REGINALD DIGGS

I could say it began when I found out I'm HIV positive, but it would have to be before that. As a child, I always wanted to please my mom and please God. In the church, very early on, it was all lumped together: God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. God hates homosexuals. Mom never talked about homosexuality. That was my upbringing.

People look at me, 6 foot 8 black guy, blessed to have nice features. Especially growing up, I wasn't pink and flowery. Nobody would think I was anything different. I wasn't like: men men men, but there was something there, very wispy.

When I got to be 16, 17, 18, about the age of my manhood, it became a struggle personally with me because in my relationship with the Lord I always wanted to do things that were pleasing to him, and I knew that being a homosexual was not pleasing.

I came out to Seattle when I was 18. My 20s were really volatile, trying to deal with all my emotions and feelings about men along with all my biblical and spiritual teachings.

Men can have animalistic tendencies. You meet them anywhere: the park, bath houses, downtown, the little peep shows, the supermarket, at church. They're people, they're there, they're everywhere. The Look: It's an eye thing, very subtle. When you walk into the room, it's the way people look back at you, a spirit or energy that's around it. I didn't consider myself gay. Bisexual is what I considered myself. I enjoyed being with women just as much as I enjoyed being with men.

During my 20s, I dated women, too. They were always short relationships, and I always had protected sex because it was the right thing and I didn't want any children then. I didn't tell them about the men. I knew that part of my life wouldn't last. She's a girlfriend and I'm not going to do anything (with men) when I'm seeing her, which most of the time was true. When I felt I couldn't honor that, I'd come up with some lame reason for us to not be together. I wasn't being completely honest with myself.

I'm very much one for peace. Around male-male relationships, I never had peace. Most of it was just sexual. I always used a condom, except a few occasions.

(Diggs, who is on dialysis for congenital kidney disease, was told by his doctor in 1995 he wasn't a candidate for a transplant because he was HIV positive.)

I said to myself: OK, don't get surprised, you know you were having risky behavior. My mind immediately went to my mother. I'd never told my mom because, y'know, she's Mom! Of anybody's love I wanted, it was hers. I was scared she'd disown me, even though I knew she's not that kind. She was always my comfort, my strength. I didn't want to jeopardize that.

I got to my mom's house and told her I had something I needed to tell her. You could've cut the air with a knife. Then waterworks. We cried. She embraced me and I embraced her. Then it was like, OK, now what are we going to do?

I told my pastor. I said, I'm not sure when, but soon, I'm going to apologize and tell the congregation. I knew if I just stopped at him, it would be a wall between me and doing what God wanted me to do.

I learned I was a tool for people to go beyond their own boundaries. You're really surprised at how much humanity there is. If you don't share, you limit their ability to love.

The down low is more prevalent in the African-American community because homosexuality is not accepted. Actually, I think the down low should apply to anybody being secretive. It could be the husband having an affair with another woman. We're dealing with people being honest and respectful of other human beings. If you can't do that, just don't be involved. But we're talking relationships here, and relationships can be quite complicated. People, they're married, they got kids, they've got businesses, everything. They have feelings and no way to address them. They risk losing everything if they're found out. There needs to be more support and conversation for people on their journey so they can mull their way through. They may choose to be homosexual, bisexual, straight. It's not that God doesn't love the people; he doesn't love the actions.

Gay Christians, it's their life, and that's just where it is. I think the church should be for anyone. You can't say you have a love of Christ and not show that love. You can't show it to some and not to someone else. You have to take mankind where mankind is.

Some African-American churches are at a transitional point, trying to figure out what they feel the Bible to be saying, what they've grown up believing, how do we care for a body of people where everybody is not going to be "perfect." The message is evolving day by day.

When I was going through my inner struggle but not feeling I could talk openly and freely, the main thing I always wanted was sanctuary, a place of safety, a place I could go to transition through life. My life has helped me to be empathetic to people. They feel comfortable with me. It's my ministry. A sanctuary ministry, so people don't feel like they're prejudged.

My mother always said I have to be responsible for my own actions. I always knew the actions were not always going to be part of my life. I don't have to run with every sexual urge or feeling I have. It didn't settle in my spirit to be with men. I'm not saying it doesn't settle in other people's spirits. For me, it just didn't.

When I first starting dating my wife, I was already HIV positive. I hadn't been with a man for about two years. I was at the point where I wanted someone to love and wanted someone to love me. I wanted a wife. On our first date, I told Joanna everything. Sometimes people wait before telling the truth, but I didn't think it was fair for her to get attached to me first because then her emotions would be entangled. We went out to Red Robin, had dinner, talked real free and had a good time. At the end of the date, we went out to the park and sat in the car. Mentally, I already knew what I was going to say: I just want to let you know right off the bat I am HIV positive. I told her about my struggle with bisexuality. I expected her to say, OK, It's been a nice date! and get out of the car. She said, Uh huh.

I said, Maybe you didn't hear what I said.

She said, I heard.

From that day to this, it's been the same energy. She's been praying in my corner. We continue to talk, continue to share. She's my pillar. We're each other's best company and best friends.

We've taken precautions and been safe. The Lord has blessed and protected us for the last 10 years.

Reginald Diggs, 40, a former Starbucks manager, is an associate minister at Faith Deliverance Assembly who ministers to people transitioning through lifestyle challenges. He is now a candidate for a kidney transplant. He and his wife, Joanna, are raising two sons, one she brought to the marriage and one adopted.

Paula Bock is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff writer. She can be reached at pbock@seattletimes.com. Betty Udesen is a Seattle Times staff photographer.