Red Hats, Red Ribbons

Wednesday was a red hat day in Louisville.  Sue Ellen Cooper, the founder of the infamous Red Hat Society, was in town at a local bookstore to sign copies of "Designer Scrapbooks The Red Hat Society Way."  One of the local tv channels had complete coverage of this big event on the 6:00 news Wednesday evening.  They reported that over 300 purple clad, red hatted women waited in line for hours to meet Ms. Cooper. 

The reporter went on to say that the Red Hat Society has 42,000 chapters in 32 countries, with over one million members.  I was surprised when they said that there are over 125 chapters in Louisville alone, giving our fair city the honor of being the city with most Red Hat groups in the nation.  That sure is a distinction to be proud of. 

Earlier in the same newscast, one of the news anchors briefly mentioned an item that apparently wasn't as newsworthy as the piece about the founder of the Red Hat Society being in Louisville.  In a short 30-second news item, they reported that the CDC announced that there are currently 1.1 million people in the U.S. that are HIV positive, and that almost one-third of them don't even know that they are infected.  If you compare the two stories, it's shocking, and even ironic, to find that in our country there are just about as Red Hat Society members as there are people infected with HIV.  The Red Hatters stand out in a crowd; those infected with HIV don't. 

Another ironic similarity between these two groups is the color red.  The Red Hat Society has a big red hat as it's symbol; a red ribbon is the symbol for AIDS awareness. If you wear either one of these items out in public, you'll probably get a few odd looks, as if to say "Why are you wearing that?" 

Just as you probably know a somebody's mother or grandmother that is a Red Hatter, most likely you don't know someone that is HIV positive.  It's a good thing that those that are HIV positive don't stand out in a crowd - I'm sure they would be shunned and ignored; just as society shuns them because they feel they deserved to get it as payback for being gay,  and as our government ignores them by cutting back on AIDS and HIV prevention programs.  The majority of the people in our country that are HIV positive are African American men, not gay men, as society would like to believe. 

True, there is no cure for AIDS, but we can all be aware and supportive.