World AIDS Awareness Day came and went.

Did anyone notice? Did anyone know that Dec. 1 was AIDS day?

If I hadn't seen a brief in the back of some magazine, I wouldn't have noticed or known at all. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

One in 300 Americans is HIV positive or has AIDS. AIDS is the second leading cause of death among all Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. In the United States, half of all new HIV infections occur in people under age 25. And one-third of Americans who are HIV positive are unaware of their infection.

That's pretty staggering.

Yet a day dedicated to making people more aware about the disease and the people affected disappeared before it even came.

One reason could be that too many people think there's a cure out on the market and the scare is over. Wrong.

There is no cure yet for AIDS or HIV.

Another reason could be that people are just "tired" of hearing about "that disease." Well, that's a bunch of nonsense considering that a third of the American population has it and doesn't know they have acquired it.

Besides, as the AIDS toll rises, and it is continuously rising, there will be more and more people who realize that being "tired" of a disease won't make it go away. It will be here for eternity. Even if they do find a cure for AIDS and HIV, people will still be able to get it and pass it. They might live through it, but a cure won't stop them from getting it.

Some people might not even care because they think HIV and AIDS only happens to homosexuals, drug users, prostitutes or other minorities.

Tell that to the woman who got the disease from her cheating husband and now is afraid that she may pass it to the unborn child she is carrying. Tell that to the hemophiliac who, during a rare case, received HIV by blood transfusion. Tell that to the boy who received HIV when his father stabbed him with the virus in a needle so that he wouldn't have to pay child support.

Even if HIV and AIDS were just a "gay," "hooker" or "druggie" problem, does that make it any less important? It is about human suffering and all "kinds" of people are humans. You know, your brother or sister, your uncle or cousin, or your son, daughter, mother or father.

You don't have to believe what they do is right. Drugs may even be illegal. Sodomy, in many states, is still illegal too. Prostitution is illegal. But if you can't have any compassion for a person while they are dying, then you don't qualify as a human being.

The Bible tells everyone that they should not judge, it's God's job. Jesus preached about being compassionate toward others. He may even have said that people who used intoxicants and homosexuals were sinners, but he also said that only those without sin can cast the first stone.

A segment of people is casting those stones, but I don't see any one of them who can create the heavens and the earth. They can't walk on water, and they can't raise the dead.

So until someone can do all of that, I know of no one who should be casting stones.

Of course, there will be those people who say that the law of the land is based fundamentally on religion. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not lie, are all religious laws that have been translated into legal demands. And rightly so.

But, there is no law, legally or religiously, which says one man is the moral judge of another. Each man finds his own morality and ethics himself through life, through family and through others. But each man finds it himself.

Nor is there any law which says that a man who dies from "unsavory" means has to die without the kindness of others.

Think about that. Would you want to die alone, isolated and hated just because you lived your life the way he believed was right? Or would you want to die that way because society told you weren't good enough to live your last days with other human beings?

I don't.

What if I was told I had to die without mercy, without compassion or without anyone with me just because I liked red-haired women? Or that you were told that you had to die that way because you are a divorcee, a single mother or that you were simply too tall?

AIDS day came and went, but people living with HIV or AIDS are still hoping for one more day to come and go.

They're hoping for a little compassion to make the end of their days feel OK. A little compassion goes a long way, and for people who don't have a long way left to go, compassion goes a little further.

Society will never agree on issues that deal with homosexuals, prostitutes or drug users. Conservatives, Republicans, liberals and Democrats each have their ideas, opinions and lists of "facts."

But the one thing that society should agree on regardless is that every individual -Êevery saint, every sinner, every Pope, every prostitute - deserves the decency of living and dying in dignity and in compassion.

And if people don't believe that to be true, then that's pretty sad, disappointing and inhumane. [[In-content Ad]]