(Excerpts of Remarks Given at the University of Miami School of Law, 1998)

Paul Hampton Crockett, Esq.

This is the story of integrating my personal and professional lives, and the realization of my sense of purpose. God help you if all you are is a lawyer. A law school education is great. Even if you are not going to be a lawyer, the education makes you literate in the vocabulary of power. It opens up all your options. The hope is that you will find something to be passionate about. I'm with a four-lawyer firm. This is a "gay and lesbian" niche firm: we have three gays, a lesbian, and a transgendered person in this office. Ideally, your professional life and personal life are both part of you; you become engaged in what you are doing. I started as a lawyer in 1988, and I was not yet out to my employers. Subsequently, the lawyer who hired me came out as gay. I think that's part of the reason he hired me. He was teaching me to be an attorney and I was teaching him to be gay. (Actually, he didn't need any lessons; he took to it quite naturally.) I had to come out to these people because there was a steady stream of gays and lesbians coming into my office, and an explanation seemed warranted. I am openly HIV-positive, and I have been for several years. It has been both a blessing and a curse. I started practicing at roughly the same time that AIDS was really taking off among the gay community in Miami. I began getting calls in my office from people who were anguished by the loss of their loved ones. A lot of people were dying, a lot of people were getting sick. My peers, and people a little older than me, were facing challenges that their grandparents had to face: burying all your friends, burying your life partner-the people you thought you would grow old with. I had to pick up the mess, and I realized this was a part of life-my life. I have been involved with HIV issues since 1988. In a bizarre way, HIV has become a bridge between me and people with whom I would not have perceived to have anything in common. We all have different color skin; we all have different backgrounds; but we're one soul. What do I, as a fairly privileged, white, gay man, have in common with a struggling black mother or Hispanic injection drug addict? I have HIV, a common challenge. My concept in developing a law practice was to establish a framework for HIV advocacy, since the issues do overlap-HIV involves homelessness; it involves racial issues, gender issues. A lot of people ask me, "Why do you need to talk about it?" And I tell them, "Excuse me, I really need to talk about it. This is who I am." Heterosexual men hold hands with their wives when they walk down the street. People have photographs of their spouses in their offices. Are they flaunting their heterosexuality? When did they choose their heterosexuality? Yet, I am uncomfortable walking down the street with my partner holding hands, because it's asking for trouble. So, that is a constant reality. There are certain things you learn as a matter of survival. I have spent 10 years doing this work. There is a while where you can take your passion and you burn like a flame as you try to shed light on an area of the law and its impact upon real people. Then your flame feels like it is dying. But it is better to get burnt out on something with meaning, than to waste your existence and a brilliant, powerful education on something without it.