Keith ready to share his HIV status with voters

On May 1, John Keith, independent candidate in the 3rd Suffolk District special election for state representative on June 16, hung a rainbow flag, a symbol of gay pride, in the front window of his Tremont Street storefront campaign headquarters, the former home of South End Photo.

His intention in raising the flag was to demonstrate "self identification, self pride and confidence," he said, during an interview that morning. While the South End resident has spent most of his 44 years living as an openly gay man, and has made no secret of it on the campaign trail, there's another important piece of his life about which he's been much less public: Keith was diagnosed with HIV in 1988.

Keith said a combination of "luck and medication," has kept him healthy for the last two decades, with a few minor exceptions. And he is well aware that his HIV status has little to do with his political campaign, given the electorate's focus on the economy, jobs, transportation and a host of other pressing issues. In fact, Keith admitted that the decision of whether or not to go public with his HIV status produced differing opinions between his campaign staff and HIV/AIDS advocates with whom he consulted while making his decision. In one camp -- perhaps bucking conventional campaign wisdom -- Keith's staff encouraged him to discuss the issue publicly, believing it could draw more support and resources to the campaign locally and perhaps nationally. In the other camp were friends from the HIV/AIDS organizations Community Research Initiative (CRI) and Community Servings, who argued that it was irrelevant and expressed concern that disclosing his HIV status would marginalize his candidacy or bias voters against him. For instance, one advocate with whom Keith discussed the issue asked him if he would make such a disclosure if he were living with diabetes instead of HIV.

"I said, oh, you know I get it," Keith recalled of the conversation. "I said, no, I wouldn't."

Ultimately, Keith decided that because HIV is part of his life -- albeit just one, small part -- it was worth disclosing given his campaign promise of complete openness and transparency. He also said that given his determination to win the election, which will be decided on June 16 (the Democratic primary is May 19), he wanted the news to come out sooner rather than later.

"I expect to win the office so it's worth saying now," he said. "If I wasn't sure, if this was just a campaign for fun I would probably say it's not important."

Massachusetts has never elected an openly gay, HIV-positive candidate to office although in 1994, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Bob Massie drew national attention when he disclosed that he was HIV-positive. Massie, a heterosexual man and a hemophiliac, contracted the virus through a blood transfusion. Massie and his gubernatorial running mate Mark Roosevelt lost in a landslide election to the incumbent Republican ticket of William Weld and Paul Cellucci. Nationally, there are currently two openly gay, HIV-positive lawmakers: New York State Sen. Tom Duane and Illinois state Rep. Greg Harris, both Democrats. Harris won his Chicago seat after the 2006 retirement of Larry McKeon, another openly gay, HIV-positive man. McKeon passed away in 2008. Denis Dison, vice president of communications for the Victory Fund, a national organization dedicated to helping openly gay candidates win elected office, said that in his experience an HIV diagnosis hasn't been directly related to an openly gay candidate's loss at the polls.

"I will say that there are plenty of candidates who run and don't win and there are many reasons why they don't win," said Dison, whose organization endorsed both Duane and Harris when they sought office. "There are times when you can point to sexual orientation and say either the reality of it or the way the candidate dealt with the reality of it may have contributed to their loss. But I have never heard in my three years...of [a candidate's HIV status] being determinate in any way."

That's likely because the disease is now viewed by many people, particularly in the gay community, as a chronic, manageable disease, said Dison.

In Dison's view, the decision of whether a candidate should disclose his or her HIV status, comes down to politics.

"And what is true of all politics is it depends on where you're running, and who you're running against," he said.

For a candidate running in a district where voters aren't used to openly gay candidates, adding HIV to the mix might not be sound strategy. If a candidate is running in a liberal district or one with a large gay population said Dison, "obviously there's a different set of circumstances."

Keith's disclosure could also be a benefit to his campaign, said Dison.

"I think a lot of people are impressed when people share very intimate details about their life, including their health status, and they also see them as people who can speak more authentically on these issues once they are in office," he explained.

Keith, a real estate agent, expressed a willingness to become an advocate on HIV/AIDS issues at the State House should he be elected, although to date his only activism has consisted of financially supporting organizations like CRI and Fenway Community Health Center, which are the forefront locally of researching a cure for HIV/AIDS. He acknowledged that as an elected official he would need to develop relationships with HIV/AIDS organizations that he does not currently have.

"The thing is, that now that there is the knowledge it should be a natural relationship that develops," he said. "I mean, my issues are their issues, their issues are my issues."

Though his decision to disclose his HIV status comes in a political context, it caps something of a personal journey for Keith. He was diagnosed with HIV in his early 20s, while he still lived with his parents, just months away from earning an undergraduate degree at Northeastern University. His parents, never the type to express much emotion, offered little support to Keith after he first shared the news with them.

"And then they went out to dinner," he recalled.

For many years, Keith could not escape the feeling he had brought the disease on himself and thus was unworthy of support.

"I didn't want to ask for help," he said. "I didn't want to ask for sympathy, I felt like I didn't deserve sympathy, you know? I was 24 or 25, there was no secret about how you get HIV. It was no secret. It was very clear. So I was like, you did this, this is just the way you're going to be."

It wasn't until both of his parents passed away, his father in 2000 and his mother in 2001, that Keith's sense of shame began to lift.

"I think partly then I felt freedom," he said of the loss of his parents. "I felt like I had really let them down, I felt like I had disappointed them."

Keith is happily married to Terry Lighte, whom he met in 1992, and says their life together has been filled with "good times." Nonetheless, the sense of freedom he felt following the loss of his parents led him to the conclusion that he had in some ways limited himself from doing more with his life because of the shame surrounding his HIV status. In recent years, he's spread his wings a little more, for instance by starting a real estate blog and occasionally contributing columns to South End News.

"Then the race came along and I said this is a little earlier than I would have preferred because I'm not really prepared to disclose [my HIV status]," said Keith, adding, "I don't have the friend base, I don't have the gay base, I don't have any base. But it was like no, no, no. I'm just going to do this."

"It's sort of like, if I'm here for 20 years don't I -- I don't want this to sound political, but -- don't I have a responsibility to do all the things I always wanted to do or to be the person I always wanted to be?" said Keith.

"It's not like a Milk moment," he added, referring to last year's Oscar-winning film about openly gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk. "But I also want to throw that in. In Milk he's 40-years-old before he gets involved in politics -- and oh, by the way, he worked in a photo shop," he said with a laugh. "I think that maybe I've been lazy long enough."