So how did this happen?

What have we learned from the Cirque de Soleil mess?

By now you may have heard about Matthew Cusik, the gymnast fired by Cirque de Soleil because he is HIV-positive. After eight months, intervention by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as the threat of litigation, Cirque de Soleil has agreed to rehire Cusik with no restrictions on the type of acts in which he can perform.

“We are ready to welcome him back,” Cirque du Soleil spokeswoman Renee-Claude Menard said, emphasizing that the circus was convinced after consulting medical experts who said “the risks are minimal” that an acrobat infected with HIV would pass the virus on to another performer. “We have had a sufficient amount of time to go in depth with the research on this and be thorough in getting a better understanding of the risks of HIV.”

Menard said Cirque would consider hiring other HIV-positive performers if they met all physical and talent requirements, but, “For quality we are not going to go the other way now. We are not going to have a special HIV show.”

So what does all of this really tell us?

The quick answer is that it shows that a lawsuit can be a very effective way to make a point in a discrimination case. You could also argue that the widespread protests and support from celebrities certainly helped drive the point home.

But why did this happen in the first place? How could anyone argue that being HIV-positive and non-symptomatic makes a gymnast a health threat? Cirque du Soleil is based in Montreal, Quebec. Periodic threats of secession aside, it’s a very liberal place. Gays can actually marry there. And this is a circus, for crying out loud; it’s show business. Anyone who sincerely believes that any show put on by Cirque isn’t “chock full o’ gays” is in a serious state of denial.

So how did this company in a notably gay-populated business, from a notably gay-friendly country end up being sued for discrimination against a gay man? Is it possible that they honestly believed his HIV status made him a health threat? After all, they never denied that they fired Cusik because he is HIV-positive.

The answer is yes, whether or not it is what actually happened, it is possible.

The GLBT community has spent so many years at the center of the fight against AIDS that we forget that others haven’t. Let’s face it, we’ve spent the last two decades trying to teach members of our own community what activities carry a high risk of HIV transmission and what precautions are most effective, and even so transmission rates are rising. Out of necessity our emphasis has been on the dangers, rather than reassurances. And really, didn’t we think we’d covered all of this years ago? Remember all the movies, the TV shows, the after-school specials? Drinking out of the same glass as your HIV-positive friend won’t give you AIDS, hugging your HIV-positive friend won’t give you AIDS, a quick kiss from your HIV-positive friend won’t give you AIDS — but having unprotected sex with them probably will. That message was everywhere in the early ’90s. But if you think about it, it hasn’t been very prominent for a while now.

Could it be that, while we’ve been busy trying to keep our community from reliving the devastation of the early days of AIDS, we overlooked the simple fact that the broader community doesn’t necessarily pay any attention to AIDS until they are forced to? Could it be that the broader community hasn’t been getting the message? Could it be that the owners of Cirque du Soleil really believed they were protecting their other employees?

Most of us in the GLBT community have at least some accurate knowledge of how HIV is spread, so it’s easy to forget that there are plenty of people who don’t. There are still loud voices in positions of authority claiming that AIDS is some kind of divine punishment for being gay, and that the very presence of gays is some sort of pollutant that may spread to the God-fearing world — and there often is no one there to counteract that message.

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot of stories about young men just coming out who contract HIV the first time they have unprotected sex. We wonder why they didn’t know any better, but if you take a closer look it becomes obvious. Public education is hardly a reliable source of information on HIV. We have an entire generation of schoolchildren and young adults who are being taught that not having sex until you’re married is the answer to every sex-education question. It’s hard to imagine that they are getting any accurate information on how HIV is spread.

It’s time we paid closer attention to what the broader community is being taught about HIV and AIDS. After all, we are part of that broader community — it is where we come from. We need to fight harder to make sure that accurate information is moving beyond our community, rather than letting the issue of sex education in public schools slide because it’s not “gay-specific.” Sadly enough, schools have become the most viable place for us to teach a new generation not only tolerance, but truth.

Maybe it’s time for another after school special.