Televangelist, talk show host, one-time Surreal Life housemate and AIDS pioneer Tammy Faye Messner died Friday morning from lung cancer at the age of 65. The former wife of famed televangelist Jim Bakker, Messner was one of the first people on Christian television to embrace people living with HIV/AIDS, urging viewers to pray for them.
She abandoned televangelism in the 80s after her husband was defrocked for adultery and imprisoned on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy, and returned to the air in 1996 on a syndicated talk show entitled The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show, which was co-hosted by gay, HIV-positive actor Jim J. Bullock.
On March 19, 2004, she was invited on Larry King Live—much like she invited people with AIDS onto her own program—to announce that she would be undergoing chemotherapy for inoperable lung cancer. She appeared again on the show just last week, very sickly, weighing only 65 pounds, and bearing a single message for viewers: “I genuinely love you and I genuinely care. And I genuinely want to see you in heaven someday.”
Beth Benne, RN, is HIV negative, but
the virus has impacted her life. She currently supervises a biannual HIV/AIDS awareness week as
the director of the student health center at Pierce College, a
community commuter school in Woodland Hills, California.
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Overheard in the Women's Forum
"I recently met a guy who is negative. I did tell him about my status and he decided to kiss me anyway (we didn't go further than that). But a day later, he called and said that he actually had a mouth ulcer that time when we kissed and he was very worried. Asked if he can get the virus from me that way. For that moment, I felt so insulted and yet I felt so bad. It was my first time having a contact with a "negative" guy."
