(Photo Credits: Orawan Pattarawimonchai from Shutterstock)
HIV-positive men gathered on Sunday next to the U.S.–Mexico border to stage a public kiss-in protest in honor of World AIDS Day. The event — organized by MPact Global — took place at Friendship Park, was part of the 2025 annual International HIV Kiss-In. Organizers said the demonstration was meant both to commemorate those lost to AIDS and to demand that HIV-positive people be seen and loved, not shamed.
HIV-positive men hold kiss-in next to Trump’s border wall for World AIDS Dayhttps://t.co/PEbCtU6JrC
— PinkNews (@PinkNews) December 2, 2025
Photos captured moments of raw emotion — men embracing and sharing public displays of affection against the imposing backdrop of border fences. The timing comes after renewed concerns that governmental recognition of World AIDS Day has waned in the current administration. Activists say the kiss-in is a meaningful way to reclaim visibility and solidarity at a moment when official silence speaks loudly.
HIV remains one of the world’s most serious public health challenges. According to the latest data from UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO), by the end of 2024, approximately 40.8 million people were living with HIV globally.
Despite decades of progress, the epidemic persists. In 2024 alone, an estimated 1.3 million people acquired HIV, and 630,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses.
According to UNAIDS, advances in treatment mean many living with HIV can now lead long, healthy lives. By 2024, about 31.6 million people were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART), which helps suppress the virus and prevent onward transmission.
Still, stigma, discrimination, funding cuts, and political neglect remain serious obstacles, especially in marginalized communities. The kiss-in by HIV-positive men next to a symbol of division is a powerful statement: human dignity, love, and solidarity transcend borders, walls, and fear.
For many participants, the protest was about more than symbolism. It was about reclaiming visibility at a time when public recognition and compassion for people living with HIV seem increasingly fragile. The border wall—often seen as a barrier to refugees, migrants, and immigrants—became, for a moment, a backdrop for unity, resistance, and love.
A representative from the organizer—Alex Garner, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives & Communications at MPact—said in a statement, “MPact works in collaboration with local communities to create the International HIV Kiss-in because it’s a bold, provocative, and revolutionary act to publicly demonstrate the sexuality of people living with HIV and declare the human rights of queer migrants.” He added, “We’ve transcended borders of sexuality and of gender and borders cannot restrict our fight for queer migrants and people living with HIV as we utilize the power of a kiss.”
As global HIV infections keep climbing and public funding for treatment programs is threatened in many regions, the kiss-in is a vivid and intimate protest: love in defiance, visibility in the face of erasure, and hope when many want to forget. Read here and here for more information.
Just the kind of stupid, hurtful behavior that held back progress on treatment for so many years.
Childishness.
Having a “kiss-in protest” (how is that a protest) in honor or World AIDS Day is about as effective as a bunch of obese women posing in their underwear by the bull statue on Wall Street (it happened) to show their “empowerment. This type of activist activities does nothing help gay people or people with HIV.
Well, look at the bright side of it? It could have been an “Anal-In-And-Out-Penetration-Protest”!