Sean Strub, 53, wasn't supposed to live very long. In fact, he was supposed to die of complications from HIV within a few years of testing positive in 1985.
Today, the very much alive Strub is one of the most well-known activists in both the LGBTQ community and the HIV-positive community, and POZ, the magazine he founded, is a popular HIV-focused publication.
But Strub's introduction to activism did not start with gay issues, or HIV/AIDS-related issues in a large public forum. Rather, it began with his interest in talking about general world issues with the members of his community along his paper route in Iowa City, Iowa.
"We lived in Iowa City, which is a university community, and we lived in a neighborhood with a lot of faculty from the university, so my paper route sort of gave me a more intimate exposure to wider range of people and ideas than just from classmates in elementary school or other members of our parish," said Strub in a phone interview.
As a child, Strub often felt as though he did not fit in with his classmates, and had difficulty speaking with his family members about his feelings. "I just sort of created these adult relationships with people who were in varying degrees kind of mentor-like to me, and I got involved in anti-war, feminist and local political activism and created my own life there," he said. "Finding people who were so loving, and so interested in me and my ideas and opinions, and could teach me … opened up a whole different world to me."
In the 1970s, Strub moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Georgetown University. It was in Washington that Strub first became active in the gay community and participated in the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Though Strub transferred to Columbia University in New York, his involvement in activism on behalf of the gay community did not lessen. At first, he ran campaigns in Democratic organizations. But as time went on Strub became more focused on what he calls "issue-based politics".
"Between running campaigns and being involved in activism, I started writing fundraising copy for direct-mail fundraising firms, and started my own firm doing that work," said Strub. "We were doing a lot of work for a lot of the gay organizations. We were … the first direct-mail fundraising firm that specialized in the gay market."
Strub's work in the LGBTQ community and his own HIV-positive diagnosis drew him close to the epidemic, and more and more of his work became focused on HIV/AIDS. By the late 1980s, Strub was the fundraising co-chair of ACT UP/New York, whose website describes the group as "a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis." And in 1990, Strub ran for U.S. Congress, becoming the first openly HIV-positive person to run for a federal seat.
The magazine POZ is perhaps Strub's most lasting physical contribution to HIV activism. POZ, which Strub founded in 1994, focuses on living with HIV/AIDS, but does so in a way that is meant to give hope and foster communication among those living with HIV. It also seeks to educate the broader public about HIV/AIDS, something to which the American public has only recently been receptive: During the early days of the epidemic, education was not something on the forefront of America's mind. Rather, the gut reaction of the majority of the public was repulsion and avoidance.
"When I was very ill, and was … concentration-camp gaunt, and covered in Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, my disease was visible on my face. It announced it for me," said Strub. "So that … prompted this immediate, visceral revulsion very often in people that … was evident."
The American media did nothing to counter this popular revulsion. Rather, it helped to foster the impression that those afflicted with HIV were nothing but miserable, suffering individuals. But the HIV-positive community Strub knew was not the one created by the media.
"While I was living amidst profound loss, I also saw people with HIV leading vibrant lives, falling in love and breaking up, getting promoted, building families, raising children, etc.," said Strub in an email. "I wanted to show that vitality of those lives in the magazine, as an inspiration and example to others."
Thus, Strub founded POZ. And though the magazine has since had great success, it, like HIV-positive individuals, has faced its own set of challenges and forms of discrimination, from all areas of society.
"There were times there were issues with printers who had concerns about things that we were printing," said Strub in a phone interview. "We enclosed a condom one time with the magazine, and Barnes and Noble wouldn't allow it to be distributed to their stores, until we … made a stink about it."
Government officials, who were ostensibly working to help the HIV-positive community, were also a source of derision. Speaking of POZ's 10th anniversary edition, Strub said that the magazine ran into some trouble regarding the 80 naked, HIV-positive individuals on the edition's cover.
"One of the people on the subscription list was Sen. Tom Coburn, who, at the time, was the co-chair of President Bush's AIDS commission," said Strub. "His office contacted us, and they wanted to be removed from our mailing list, because they found that cover so offensive. I just love that … a doctor who's co-chair of the AIDS commission was repulsed by a picture of people with AIDS that showed their bodies and what the disease and treatments do to them."
The magazine also attracted unwanted attention from certain public sectors in the form of verbal hostility that, to date, has not been acted upon.
"There were times when we would get hate mail at the office, or when Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church started sending us faxes that were kind of threatening," said Strub. "You're reminded of the … hatred out there in ways that gave one pause."
POZ even faced criticism from members of the LGBTQ community.
"One of the most prominent gay political columnists … in the country at that time wrote a column in the New York Native and sort of made fun of it, and said that it would be like Holocaust victims starting a magazine called GAZ," recalled Strub. "The publisher of the The Advocate at the time … told one of the leading trade publications he didn't know why anyone would want to read a magazine about such a grim topic. So there were community problems."
But despite all the initial obstacles—and those that the magazine still faces—POZ has continued to grow, becoming a stronger magazine as the years have gone on.
"What people discovered—whether they were positive or negative, it didn't matter—the magazine was just so gripping and engaging, that people would sit down and read it from cover to cover, all the way through, in one sitting," said Strub. "It just grabbed reader's imagination, and translated the epidemic into something they could understood in human terms."
Under the Clinton administration, said Strub, POZ had a wide readership in the White House. But when the second Bush era rolled around, White House POZ readership dropped dramatically—a move Strub sees as mimicking Reagan-era politics regarding the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
"During the Bush administration—they could have cared less … . People sort of just accept the epidemic as one of those awful, intractable social problems deeply intertwined with poverty, and racism, and all those other things, which it is," said Strub. "But it didn't have to be. This was totally controllable. Totally. And it was really the Reagan administration's utter intentional neglect—it wasn't just that it wasn't on their radar screen. It was on their radar screen, and a decision was made just to let people die."
Though he no longer owns POZ, Strub remains active in his activist efforts. For the last several years, Strub has been combating HIV criminalization, and working to empower those living with HIV. He is a senior advisor to the Center for HIV Law & Policy, and helped to launch the Center's Positive Justice Project to help fight criminalization.
Strub is also on the board of the North American regional affiliate of the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, and regularly blogs about his efforts against HIV criminalization, and HIV/AIDS-related issues.
