By: Rev. Dr. Harold Marrero
Dear UU Miami family,
There are moments when collective silence becomes collective sin.
The Florida Department of Health has invoked “emergency” power, not for a hurricane, not for an outbreak, but to strip HIV medication from thousands of Floridians. Eligibility for ADAP has been cut from 400 percent of the federal poverty level to 130 percent. Insurance assistance eliminated. Up to 16,000 people will lose access beginning March 1.
This was a choice.
To use emergency authority in this way is not neutral governance. It is an act of aggression against an entire community. It is the state saying, with policy instead of words, that some lives are more expendable than others. It is turning a blind eye while knowing exactly who will suffer.
Florida is the only state making cuts this deep.
We know what happens when treatment is interrupted. Viral loads rise. Transmission increases. Drug resistance can become permanent. We have seen this before.
We remember when AIDS was called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency). We remember the delay. We remember the more than half a million Americans who died while leaders minimized, moralized, and did nothing.
Our message should be clear: Do not tell us this is fiscal housekeeping. It is a moral decision made with human bodies.
And to those with the power to change this and claim love every Sunday, hear this clearly. If you do not love your neighbor, you do not love the God you claim to worship. Love is not a simple word. It is a budget. It is a vote. It is whether you refuse to abandon the vulnerable when it becomes politically convenient.
UU Miami, this is our moment:
Public comments close Wednesday, March 4. Volume matters.
Submit your comment now:
https://flrules.org/Gateway/View_notice.asp?id=30517381
Click “Make a Comment.”
Say this plainly: Emergency powers are for hurricanes, not for dismantling life-saving care. Stable patients should not be sacrificed to bureaucratic decisions. Florida must not become the state that lets history repeat itself.
Call your legislators. Demand bridge funding. Refuse to let this gap become a death sentence.
The prophetic voice does not whisper when lives are on the line; it screams into the wilderness.
Speak Up. Write Up. Show Up. Act Up.
Stand on the side of life and let us show the world our values through actions, not just with the empty words those who are responsible for this moral disgrace claim to follow.
Because we already know what happens when good people look away. We refuse to be asleep when the world requires us to be awake, to be woke in the fullness of the word.