Such pejorative attitudes, say critics within the community, are behind the silence that has musicians and choirs appearing at AIDS benefits for other affected communities, but holding paltry few for their own.
"I've been on the air for 17 years and not once has anybody approached me about doing an AIDS announcement of religious program to support or a benefit," said George Witcher, host of TCI Cable's Gospel Expression show and manager of Jay Caldwell and the Gospel Ambassadors.
"Understanding the nature of our business, the Good News never [condoned] homosexuality or sexual promiscuity of things that perpetuate the outbreak of disease," said Rev. Mitchell Taylor, director of promotions for Savoy Records, the oldest traditional gospel label.
"That's why you don't see benefits--because it's almost like sanctioning it." Flunder's concert in San Francisco last December, which drew the titans of Billboard Magazine's gospel music chart, was a rarity because it included acknowledgment that those singing were among those dying.
When more than 1,300 gospel music lovers attended the GospelAIDS benefit at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church in Philadelphia in April, they were treated to performances by some of the finest names in regional and national gospel music.
Tony-award winner Melba Moore and gospel veteran Dorothy Norwood were among the performers who lauded the audience for supporting Action AIDS, Philadelphia's largest volunteer-based AIDS organization.
But throughout the five hours of singing, dancing and clapping, no one from any of the 12 choirs got beyond the generic admonition that "no one is immune from this disease" to acknowledge that they had lost members to the disease as recently as this year. The only group to publicly return its performing fee was the Wilmington-Chester Mass Choir. <p Relatives, friends say choir has lost at least four members to disease since 1991, including its founder, the Rev. Ernest Davis Jr.>Alan Bell, publisher of BLK, a Los Angeles-based magazine for lesbian and gay African Americans, said the record companies are in the best position financially to establish a fund for a community it has richly mined. <p has the ?David Geffen white been very supportive,? Bell said, ?He thrown his money behind lot programs benefits. Someone our should take lead do something similar.?> Sickness in seclusionThe silence often makes black gospel community AIDS patients put off seeking medical treatment.
"They go off in seclusion, just like a sick animal of something," said one Wilmington minister who denies persistent rumors about the nature of his own health problems. "Matter of fact, you heard of the term a loner? That's what they become. They are ashamed to go to places that provide help."
Flunder calls these people "church burned." She sees them when they come for classes and services offered by The Ark of Refuge, an agency she founded in San Francisco to provide housing, education, training and care partners for HIV/AIDS patients.
Flunder said she has a harder time convincing churchgoers with AIDS to seek health care than other AIDS patients. "When they come for services, they usually already have full-blown AIDS," she said.
Very often, these are men who grew up perfecting three-part harmony in high school and church choirs. Men like Gregory Cooper, a personal attendant to gospel legend Sally Martin and a protege of Cleveland and Thomas A. Dorsey, the father of gospel music. " He didn't hang out on the corners. He would go around taking folks out of their classes so they could go to rehearsal," Judith Cooper, of Chicago, said of her late son.
Being stereotyped as an "AIDS choir" is a growing concern. That's why some choirs require prospective members to supply a letter certifying church membership and a recommendation from a pastor. Some go as far as rejecting tenors with short-cropped hairstyles, studded fingernails and too much body "swishing" to avoid being stereotypes as a "gay choir."
Bobby Jones, host of a syndicated gospel music program watched by more than 4 million viewers each Sunday, speculates that James Cleveland's career might have been ruined if followers believed he was HIV positive.
Jones acknowledges that some viewers may be watching his Sunday program to see which choir director is losing weight. Yet only once has a musician said on the air that his sickness was due to AIDS.
That was Judith Cooper's son. It was during a Gospel Explosion concert in Barbados more than two years ago that Gregory Cooper, a musician in Jones' choir talked about the disease. It made front-page news there the next morning.
"Then he did it on my show [in the United States] and people prayed for him," said Jones, who presided over Cooper's funeral in Nashville last September.
After his backup singers and local choirs performed at the funeral, Jones invited Judith Cooper to speak. She introduced Nashville hospice workers and an AIDS volunteer, who ended the funeral by talking about methods and rates of transmission of the disease.
"That was my idea," Cooper said proudly.
And a very rare one, said Rev. Hobbs, who advocates turning gospel concerts into forums for AIDS education.
Delaware's Tracy Shy said she feels ready to break her silence at solo concerts and address the issue.
"I'm bursting," she said. "We're making our lives short."
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