http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-hiv6dec06,1,2654848.story
African American women with HIV find they must also endure social stigma.
By Daniel Costello, Times Staff Writer
The church across the street from Paulette Hogan's apartment has long been her rock and so have the friends she's made there.
It was her friends from ACTS Full Gospel Church of God in Christ who prayed with her when her mother passed away. They visited her in the hospital after she had a heart attack in 1997. When Hogan needed a new apartment, the church helped her find housing in a church-owned building nearby.
Then, three years ago, Hogan discovered she was HIV-positive. Several of her closest church friends stopped talking to her. Others would no longer shake her hand or exchange hugs. Many wanted to know how she contracted HIV, and several bluntly suggested, incorrectly, that she'd been promiscuous or had used drugs.