Today's youth have it very rough, but it's not hopeless. Many generations of Americans inherited a broken world—and a responsibility to fix it.

Drawing on firsthand experiences and hard-won victories hof an AIDS survivor, anti-gay violence survivor, LGBTQ+ political activist & lobbyist, Stuart argues a provocative, emotional, and unapologetically honest call to action for younger generations of LGBTQ+.

Generations of LGBTQ+ people grew up searching for the elders who never came. In this powerful Pride episode, Stuart Merrill and Adaline Reid explore the legacy of AIDS, queer isolation, and the healing power of chosen family.

This is not a regular episode. It is an open letter to the Oregon Safer Workers Coalition, (OSWC).

The OSWC is facing a moral and financial crisis very similar to one Gay Rights organizations faced over 30 years ago. At that time it was essential for the survival of our movement that we faced our own bigotry.

The current OSWC Board is an exclusionary and segregated world of confirmation bias and bigotry. The ideal board consists of a diverse range of people and ideas. Diversity is a superpower, not something to be avoided out of bitterness, ignorance and fear.

It is simply not possible to run an organization like the OSWC with the stated goal of addressing bigotry if the OSWC Board consists of bigots. The OSWC is the problem they claim they are trying to correct.

Link to OSWC strategy paper:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yl98L4xUQZkeZd0kPayRp2v_QfHRXuTqeDBXmbnGOmE/edit?usp=drivesdk

During those nightmare years at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, I started to notice a pattern. It wasn’t a pattern of sickness or death—it was a pattern of survival, even of quality of life.

Every person I knew with AIDS who somehow lived two, three, sometimes five years longer than expected had one thing in common: their attitude. Their approach to life—and to living with AIDS— was relentlessly positive. At times it seemed irrational, even illogical, but it was undeniably real.

In this episode, I share how I first learned, then lost, and ultimately relearned a positive approach to my health. After 25 years of severe HIV-related illness, I have my life back—and I owe it all to a positive attitude.

OSWC Community Care Backpack fundraiser:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1upkCZK8VW0tPykQJ3CW6O?si=vxm5FXNNR8OF_0DpzBCM-Q&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A49MR9Y0b7qTSbP9tEzmhIW

In this episode I recall how the members of the LGBTQ+ community tried to prevent me from saving the lives of gay men with AIDS, how we finally got federal legislation to pay for HIV medication as well as how and why i finally left Utah for good.

This is a very humorous story of how I strongarmed the Utah State Legislature into paying for HIV/AIDS medication during the intensely homophobic Bush years.

Even though all my friends in the Democratic minority made it clear to me that I had a snowball's chance of hell of succeeding.

I wasn't so sure my goals were quite that unattainable. I had one very powerful tool most democratic politicians in Utah did not possess, NEPOTISM!

When the Mormons in Utah saw the way my Russian Mother was raising me they rolled their eyes and called her "That Crazy Foreign Woman." Mum was always the smartest, best educated, best looking and by far the best dressed person in every room. She looked like Ava Gardener with curly black hair and stunning blue eyes. Women hated her and men were terrified of her. Everyone from our cousin the governor on down knew her well enough to admire and fear her.

For a woman in misogynistic Mormondom, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, my mum accomplished some truly amazing things. She taught me life wasn't about conformity. It was about discovering who you are and learning to love the person you are meant to be, no matter how eccentric, different or even gay.

As an adult, armed with the lessons my mum taught me, I found that quirky, somewhat eccentric individual I am and a world where people appreciated me for who I am. Though to be perfectly honest, during my childhood I often wondered if this mythical world really existed.

Most westerners think the end of Communism was the end of the story, but it wasn't, not for me, not for the Russians I loved and I left behind.