Gays & disabilities have one thing in common - corporations pretend they don't exist. So what do you do when you're disabled and gay? Perhaps Stonewall can teach us a lesson here too: that ignorance, irrelevance, and invisibility cost dearly - and add financial insult to medical injury.

As with gay rights, the first solution is taking back the power - in this case, the power to determine if an illness or accident are disabling. Who has the power now for lack of activism? Doctors, therapists, benefit managers, social workers, family & friends, government bureaucrats, and insurers. Today, that decision can be yours.

This is especially true with the new AIDS drugs. Disability benefits can be a recovery room for better health - not a waiting room for death. Good as the drugs are, their ballpark statistics don't give aisle & seat numbers; they risk being used to wrongfully deny claims - and to push people back to work too soon. At no time has disability planning been more crucial to keeping the power to run one's own life.

No one I've helped has regretted taking these steps; most have asked "why did I wait so long?" While it's a doctor's job to nurture hope, in finances the best rule is: plan for the worst and hope for the best.

If illness is impacting your work, it's time to learn about alternative ways of getting an income. Don't let an incident or infection make the decision for you. The myth is that disability befalls us; the reality is that with today's illnesses like HIV we can take preventive and pre-emptive action much earlier than has been the practice in the past. Illness can be something we live with - and work around.

Today's 110% jobs can aggravate disabling conditions. Technology like the internet has only made work faster and careers more temporary. The 90s are not a great time to be sick. Today's clients and companies like to pretend people don't get sick. In sanitized corporate cultures, disabilities don't exist - except perhaps as decoration attesting to corporate good taste and high values.

If downsizing is in the offing or a job search too demanding, the better part of valor may be locking in disability benefits now. A lot more may be at risk than a job: the funds and time to fight illness without corporate stress.

What's needed for illness is time; what's needed for careers is continuity. Disability benefits supply both. Do you have fire insurance? Of course. So let's not pretend that illness - disabling illness - doesn't happen. People do pretend. We all know many living along the banks of DeNial. But without benefits disability move the sick inland - into the desert, away from life.

Disability benefits make all the difference between plunging into another socioeconomic class - learning how to live on welfare - and simply taking time out to get better with the least disruption to life. Is there really a choice?

The big barriers are inside us. For many being gay or being disabled still means laboring under guilt, shame, and anger turned inward. This closeting of illness and gayness can prevent prevention, can stifle early detection, can delay pre-emptive financial and medical measures, can make health problems more complex than they have to be and can generate financial fallout more lethal than necessary.

We need to neuter notions about disability. Pure and simple, it's mostly a financial issue - not just a moral or psychological dilemma or drama. Being disabled and gay can be a double-coming out. The Americans with Disabilities Act only protects people after they've informed their employer. Silence can = death here too.

In today's world fighting disease costs money, jobs can kill, and employee benefits can save lives.