Rev. Don Abram on Black Churches and HIV Stigma

Rev. Don Abram told me something plainly, and he said it twice, in the same breath: the policies gutting HIV funding right now are “death dealing.” He leads Toward Pride, formerly known as Pride in the Pews, and his organization just wrapped a three-year, university-backed study on what happens when Black churches get the tools to talk openly about HIV and LGBTQ+ inclusion. I sat down with him to walk through what the data found, and what it means for a subject most congregations still will not say out loud.

A Study Three Years in the Making

Toward Pride partnered with more than 60 Black churches over three years, reaching over 3,200 congregants. Researchers from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville tracked how those churches moved along what Abram calls the Institutional Church Continuum, a five-point scale that runs from “Antagonizing” to “Advocate.” The idea, Abram told me, started with a belief: that a constituency inside the Black church already wanted to improve life for Black LGBTQ+ people, but did not know where to begin or what questions to ask.

These policies and legislation, they are death dealing.

Rev. Don Abram, Toward Pride

What Churches Actually Did With the Data

Every participating church received a $4,000 general operating grant through the Faith, HIV and AIDS Advocacy Fellowship (FHIV), aimed at churches in the South, where HIV diagnoses are concentrated and rising. Abram told me churches used the funding to partner with federally qualified health centers, launch social media campaigns to fight misinformation, and hold their first-ever World AIDS Day commemorations. Abram told me congregations that worked with Toward Pride saw an average 28 percent increase in the adoption of affirming policies and practices.

That number matters because, as Abram put it, religion functions as a social determinant of health for Black LGBTQ+ people. And the stakes are not abstract.

Black women are half of new HIV diagnoses.

Rev. Don Abram, Toward Pride

Federal data backs him up. The CDC’s most recent HIV surveillance figures show Black women accounted for half of HIV diagnoses among women in 2024, a rate eleven times higher than white women. Abram says the current wave of federal cuts to HIV funding and testing access is already forcing people to ration medication and skip care they cannot afford, and that the churches in his program are among the few institutions positioned to close that gap.

The Cost of Silence, and What Changed My Mind

I grew up in a church where conversations about sexuality were met with judgment and scripture, not dialogue. That was not true of everything. Women wearing pants, wearing makeup, those were once forbidden too, and both eventually became normal with at first controversy — but change. Sexuality never got that same room. I never had that conversation with my own family, because I knew exactly how it would go.

What shifted something for me in this interview was hearing Abram describe congregations that used their FHIV grants to run HIV testing partnerships and social media campaigns openly, in public, under their own church’s name. That is not full agreement. It is movement, from judgment toward love, and I did not expect to hear that from inside the Black church.

After the interview ended, Abram told me something I was not expecting either: he is a PK, a preacher’s kid, like me. I was raised in the North. He was raised in the church in the South. I braced for the rest of that sentence. Instead, he told me his father was supportive of his path, not rejecting of it. That surprised me, and then it gave me something close to hope, that more Black ministers might one day protect the LGBTQ+ members of their own congregations the same way.

Why This Conversation Can’t Wait

People raised in the Black church already know what gets said about LGBTQ+ issues from the pulpit. The ones who refuse to discuss it further are exactly why more conversation is needed. HIV does not discriminate. Black women are half of new diagnoses. And until the church addresses this in love instead of judgment, more people will get infected, and more people will die.

Bring This Into Your Classroom

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