2021 is the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the on-going AIDS Pandemic.
From a June 1981 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,
“In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died.”
Obviously, Gay men were concerned and went to their doctors while, it being a Gay thing, the Straight community paid little attention to it other than to use it as a religious tool to scare people to Jesus and then was adopted by politicians who saw the numbers of conservative religious votes pandering could produce.
Unlike now with Covid when sympathy is extended to the victims and their families, even those who choose to avoid precautions like masks and vaccines, and much is being done to control, cure, and prevent Covid and all its variants, in those days, because people bought into AIDS being a punishment from God meted out to Gay men, and hoping this would remove the problem of the Gays, people were content to let the virus run its course and wipe out an undesirable population.
The federal government bought in to this, and it was only when Dr. Frank Kameny talked to Dr. Fauci and after the many actions of ACT/UP which rankled people did any real attention get put into dealing with a virus that was actually already in the general population.
Silence did, indeed, equal death.
Looking back in their records some doctors saw a pattern that was spread out enough to have been almost unnoticeable as it was happening in real time. However, those who looked saw that too many patients had died from treatable pneumonia. These deaths were spread out, so only remarkable when looked back on and the number of such deaths and the short window became known.
Ryan White got AIDS from a blood transfusion and began making inroads to changing the public’s understanding of AIDS, except that those who wanted to reserve some bigotry about AIDS who started referring to Straight people with AIDS as innocent victims as if Gay men went out of their way to consciously get the virus and were somehow victimizing straight people by spreading it. They were the victims of the evil Gays.
For the longest time addressing AIDS meant separating those inflicted from family and friends where they would die alone and EMTs refusing to bring people with AIDS to the hospital leaving that up to friends to get the person there only to be isolated and, as in the case of a friend, placed in unused rooms where attention was limited. It was a small bit of the population about whom most people knew little since its members had to hide in the closets into which they were forced by the greater population, not enough to care about. Just let the bad guy die according to God’s will.
Some Gay men from religious backgrounds fearing the disease and hoping to find any escape simply went away convinced by pastors that if they were to abandon their wickedness and their wicked friends God would forgive them and remove the virus only for them to die away from their friends the news of which had to seep along the grapevine until friends found out.
If you did not see someone for a while, the scariest question was to ask about them, hoping the answer would be they were on vacation or had moved.
Reopening internment camps to isolate people from family and friends was a viable proposal in California when I was there with the caveat that if a visitor showed up, while they could enter to visit, they could not then leave as they would be carrying AIDS home with them and would become involuntary inmates.
Under the plan, Gay men found with AIDS or were found to have been exposed when the post bar raid AIDS tests would be given, and the Positives spirited away with no contact with family before the disappearance. They would have to ask around for you if you were gone a few days.
Containing and isolating people with AIDS was the initial response with little research to end a very selective disease that would most likely go away with the death of the last Gay man. The only approved pharmaceutical was a rush job with federal funding going only to one company unlike today with Covid when many companies got research money. That one pill that resulted, AZT, did not cure, prevent, or lessen the virus, it just slowed it down, so you lingered longer, and was later found to have been more lethal than the virus itself because the every-four-hours-every-day-for-the-rest-of-you-life regimen was equivalent in time to overdosing.
Along with the calls for isolation and quarantine, there was one suggestion from a major Republican to have all Gays with AIDS tattooed to let others know of their condition, and trash bags became the body bags in many hospitals.
When celebrities died, if it was AIDS, it became a way to win bets on the person’s real orientation, especially because of the Rock Hudson surprise. There was a lawsuit in Palm Springs after Liberace died claiming the announced cause of death was false because he did not die of natural causes or illness but because he had AIDS. The man was dead, knowing if AIDS was involved served no other purpose than supplying further evidence that the gossips were right, and he had, indeed, been Gay.
It was after 300,000 people had died due to AIDS and Reagan left office that attention was finally paid, not to the continued search for ways to quarantine, isolate, and let people die, but to, sorta, kinda finding a cure not just a maintenance drug.
While the burgeoning religio-political evangelical base was growing because of such tactics as “pro-life” and the fear of those shadowy Gays, who, thank you, are being punished by God for their sins, hence the need for donations, the government and the demographics of it, Straight, White males, saw a threat of the way their world was supposed to be becoming a world for others as well and were not pleased with the progress with Gay rights since the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.
As for the evangelicals, the Gays had become too sinful; for the straight, white, male power structure, the Gays had gotten too uppity.
Sex among Gay men had been decriminalized in 24 states by 1980, the year before AIDS was identified, and that year President Jimmy Carter received a petition from evangelical Christian leaders demanding a stop to the advance of gay rights, warning,
“God’s judgment is going to fall on America as on other societies that allowed homosexuality to become a protected way of life.”
The “Moral Majority” just loved the advent of the virus and ran with initial information as if it were complete misleading their flocks as to the facts with their authority to do so coming from their direct contacts and conversations with God, who, apparently, spoke tom them often.
Both were glad to find a way to pull us back a peg in this life and the next.
No wonder that it makes gallbladder the primary target of this potential strength is to oppose the mechanical disturbances carried out in our body to cherish the favorable situations to support the occurrence of impotency by causing the penile tissues to run in a lack of generic cialis australia potential energy to perform lasting sexual encounter by preventing it from getting in contact of the sunlight,. It provides a better control to a man and increases the ejaculation time by up to 3 cheap prescription viagra times. In order to levitra online usa file a Propecia lawsuit, you ought to learn the side effects of using Propecia. You cannot prevent the sexual disorders that are something beyond your control but you can http://greyandgrey.com/spanish/sanjai-doobay/ generic tadalafil cipla certainly identify the problem and work to correct that root cause along with any residual effects.In 1982 Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, Larry Speakes, laughed when asked about whether the president was tracking the spread of AIDS. When he seemed unclear about the question the reporter added,
“It’s known as gay plague,”
To the chuckles of people in the room. the journalist asked. Some people in the room chuckled.
Speaks responded,
“I don’t have it, do you?”
Laughter erupted.
Reagan himself, in spite of losing Hollywood friends like Rock Hudson, waited until 1985 to utter the word AIDS publicly.
Part of the problem in limiting the spread of AIDS in the Gay community initially was that after having had to develop its own hospice system and medical networks to care for those with the virus because the greater society just did not care, and after seeing and hearing the statements from the federal government that closely matched those of the religious right, when those who were willing to just let us die started telling us how to survive, they lacked a good deal of credibility. Some just did not believe what the former haters were offering.
The majority of Gay men accepted the science and acted according to it. There was a certain degree of discomfort and awkward changes. Masks are not the only barrier that can be somewhat restrictive. But the reward for stubborn was not enticing.
In those days, people got AIDS because they deserved it either because of their choices or their ignoring science and, so deserved scorn.
Today, people can ignore advice on avoiding and limiting the spread of covid and get sympathy from others when they die because of their choice.
One would think that as the history of the 1980s is not far behind with most people around then still around now, those opening years of the AIDS Pandemic could not be easily rewritten.
But, the attempt was made.
Dennis Prager is, according to his website, “one of the most respected and influential thinkers, writers, and speakers in America” and “is deeply passionate about preserving America, the West, and the Judeo-Christian value system.” He is two years older than me, so he was well in to his thirties when AIDS was identified, and as a conservative religious radio host knew what the “church’s” stand, statements, and actions were at that time.
Recently, in defending those who choose not to get vaccinated against Covid, he stated,
“If we survive this as a free country, historians will just ask how did this happen? How did people get governed by irrational fears?”
He went on to claim that unvaccinated Americans are “the pariahs of America as I have not seen in my lifetime.”
To show this to be true he went on to say,
“During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users, who were the vast majority of the people with AIDS, had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are? But it would have been inconceivable. And it should have been inconceivable! They should not have been made pariahs. But this is kosher, this is okay.”
You do not have to imagine it, nor would such a thing be inconceivable as it actually occurred.
In the 1980s Gay men were pleading, demanding, and demonstrating in ways from peaceful to not so much for medical care. We did not avoid it when it finally came as little as it was.
But that’s conservative history for you.
So tomorrow remember those we lost in the early days when the country abandoned them and just waited for them to die. Remember the unknown guy who had been thrown out by his family but was a part of the Community in his way who one day was just gone. Remember the surviving partner who was not allowed to attend the funeral by the deceased’s biological family. Remember those who died not only alone but with the internalized hatred forced on them by those they trusted who told the lies. They died even separated from themselves.
Remember these people as you remember those who followed them when the nations attitude improved greatly, but, obviously, not far enough, and the support systems the Gay Community had to design for self-preservation were adopted by the greater community for the benefit of all.
They were all innocent victims.
But don’t settle in the remembrance.
Take the actions necessary to get things back on track and find the vaccination and the cure.
It’s been forty years with negligence to be made up for.
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