.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Because the opening days of the AIDS Pandemic took place forty years ago, young people may have an academic, dare I posit a somewhat “romantic” knowledge and understanding of the situation for Gay people and the totally bigoted way the disease was viewed and conveniently used that resulted in thousands of deaths some of which may have been saved if attention was given to the virus when it first appeared and “proper” society had not chosen to let others die since it won’t touch “us”.

In those days there was neither a cure nor a preventative vaccine because any effort to find the necessary pharmaceuticals to cure or control was curtailed by religious bigotry and political convenience as was letting people die with dignity.

There was railing against lonely deaths during the heavy days of Covid when people had to die alone with no loved ones around and how such a way to die was just wrong and such a horrible way to die and lose a loved one, but this was how politics, medicine, and religion dictated people with AIDS should die and their loved ones lose them.

Yeah, it was like that back then.

Most didn’t notice.

More didn’t care.

While holding to the erroneous assumption that only Gay men got it while many Heterosexuals were dying of it in the form of usually treatable Pneumonia, the animus toward the “other” was glaringly obvious, and for the religious a convenient way to eliminate their chosen enemy and show the world that with God’s help they were victorious, no efforts were made to treat Gay people with respect and dignity as they died and lost.

In those days, we were denied a cure, and even information about prevention and treatment. Treatment protocols routinely and universally followed today had to be invented by an abandoned community who put together the hospices and assistance programs to have people fed and cared for, brought to doctor’s appointments, and have their inevitable funeral arrangements made as more funeral homes refused to touch the body of someone, especially us, who died of AIDS than would.

Along with the shame heaped on us by society it was terrible knowing nothing was being done except counting the deaths and praising Jesus.

It was horrible enough both for those who died and those who suffered the loss in those days and even after as people slowly accepted reality, but in this day and age with pharmaceuticals to prevent and control the virus so people with AIDS can live lives just as people with other chronic illnesses and conditions do with proper care, to deny both information and that care based on the same excuses rehashed from the eighties to go after another group of “others” is criminal.

Going to Tennessee these days would be like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court who went back in time and, far beyond his academic knowledge of the period, got to live in it because the state turned away $8 million in federal funds to combat HIV when it is a state that is already one of the states most poorly controlling the epidemic.

Last fall conservative politicians and media people threw fits that Vanderbilt University Medical Center provides care for Transgender minors, which they, in their twisted minds have decided is child abuse and/or mutilation.

As one conservative media personality put it,

“They now castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults.”

The unit at the Tennessee Health Department that combats HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and viral hepatitis, seeing the broo-haha that began last fall over the university’s Tennessee Transgender Task force, a team of volunteers that focuses on Trans health and HIV prevention, removed the team from its website. Later in the fall it announced that federal HIV funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be terminated at the end of the year.

At the beginning of 2023 the Tennessee governor not only announced the state would end the $235,000 fund that would have gone to Planned Parenthood and the task force, but would reject the $8.3 million from the CDC for HIV prevention, treatment, and monitoring and that these funds will be replaced with state dollars while shifting focus away from groups most at risk of contracting the virus, Gay men and people who inject drugs.

Basically as in the 80s, the attitude in Tennessee is that if people do not know about something or someone, rather than learn about either, the people and/or thing must die.

Governor Lee has called for a thorough investigation as,

“We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial gain. We have to protect Tennessee children.”

The dynamic duo that gets thrown around open endedly for maximum, multiple interpretations, religious liberty which trumps all our rights as we, who were once subservient to the Church of England both in politics and religion are now so to the Nationalist Church of Christian America and protecting children from non-threats of useful purpose are once again invoked.

And here, once again, we see the religious right and the GOP’s strategy. If they do not have facts to back a claim and win people over to their way of thinking and thus gain allies,  they turn people against each other for protection from the invented threat and can avoid reason and hard work.

Threatened by AIDS in Tennessee? Blame those selfish Trans people.

However, if you really think about it, thank Planned Parenthood because they objected that cutting their funding as it had been originally planned as well that of the Task Force would violate a 2013 Tennessee funding law and this had the governor go for the only way to cut Planned Parenthood, reject all CDC funding.

The funds that were cut consisted of $6.2 million for HIV prevention and surveillance and $2.1 million for Shelby County, home to Memphis which is one of the 50 local hot spots that account for half of new HIV diagnoses nationally.

Without CDC funds Friends for Life, a nonprofit Memphis group that provides services to those living with and at risk for HIV, will become ineligible for pharmaceutical rebates through other programs, and OUTMemphis, Tennessee’s largest LGBTQ nonprofit group, will lose 10% of its operating budget that provides HIV testing, help clients access the HIV prevention pill, PrEP, and helps with financial assistance for people with the virus. 

The governor said the state

 “is committed to maintaining the same level of funding, while more efficiently and effectively serving vulnerable populations, such as victims of human trafficking, mothers and children, and first responders.”

Note who are missing from the list.

None of those listed are in recognized vulnerable populations. They are listed for the GOP strategy of convincing people we must stop helping one group of people by presenting them as fictitious competition to a more “acceptable” group.

In the past Governor Lee has signed several bills targeting transgender youths like the one banning Transgender students from joining school teams while the Tennessee legislature has filed at least 11 bills targeting LGBTQ people one of which bans gender-affirming medical care for minors.

Sadly, in Tennessee there is something that almost unites Gen Z with their despised Boomers. When it comes to AIDS and HIV, both generations will have experienced the lack of care, but sadly for Boomers the blow is somewhat lessened as there were no preventions or controls to be denied while this go around there are.

We were denied the designed nonexistent.

This time people will be denied what exists and what the Boomers fought for.

We died because there was no cure or pharmaceuticals to control things because neglect and ill-will prevented them. This time people will die because, even though these now exist, they will be denied because of, again, religion and politics.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

When forming the Moral Majority, as he named it, Jerry Falwell needed a unifying target to use as an enemy bringing together historically divided and uncooperative religions. After all, he was around when that television show had Robert Culp becoming an alien looking creature through surgery and chemicals so all the Cold War countries would have to come together to fight a common enemy new to all of them so none would act no preconceived notions that could produce accepting bias.

It worked, and the world united.

The show was fiction, but the concept has been applied over the centuries by those seeking to gain or maintain power, and did so to a degree by finding a group little known by the locals and claim they were the enemy without actually explaining why, other than their strangeness and otherness

Falwell chose Homosexuals because, having been forced to live in the shadows, the greater society knew very little about them and accepted whatever information they might receive from those in positions of trust, like pastors.

Based solely on his credential as a man of the cloth, and the implicit trust of his flock, he used his position to create a new Robert Culp, carefully inventing “facts” while ignoring the real ones, and, like so many experts on Homosexuals, while defensively assuring the flock they do not hang with the Homos and would never go near their dens of depravity, was somehow able to speak with authority about who they were, how and why they behaved as they did, even if the behaviors were invented or exaggerated, and why, and this was the key, a key so strong it is still used, they are a threat to families especially the children in them.

In the fight for their Creator endowed rights, rather than present it as what it was, people getting the same rights that others already freely exercised without any cost to anyone, the idea was promoted that if the Homosexuals got the same rights you have, you somehow lose them.

As a threat to families, children, and everyone else’s untouched rights, the Gays became a good political wedge issue and from Reagan and the Moral Majority on, campaigns, local, state, and federal revolved around God, Guns, and Gays.

Part of the motivation to ban any positive information about Homosexuals is to keep those who know the facts, the Homosexuals themselves among them, from speaking the truth on the convenient misinformation so useful for those who need an enemy to justify their actions or face eternal punishment for not being basically nice.

Ron DeSantis wants adolescent females to tell total strangers their menstrual history, having children with two parents of the same sex be quiet about that in grade K-3 as if these parents don’t exist while sending the children the message those parents are less than those of the other students, decided the curriculum for African/American Studies, because it had mentioned the non-heterosexual people and their contributions to the country, had no educational value because there are no Gay Black people in his understanding of things, and wants to control all conversations about any sexual orientation beyond Heterosexual with books that deal with anything other than that being removed from schools, libraries, and classroom.

He has been ramping up his demonizing of the other, more often than not fixating on Trans students.

If he is to retain his MAGA position, Trump, seeing the threat DeSantis is, has entered into a competition of one-upmanship.

Trump may already support bans on gender-affirming care for minors, Transgender student athletes, and discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, but so does De Santis.

Now, Trump, needing to surpass DeSantis has promised that, if elected president, he would issue a gag order on federal promotion of gender transition “at any age” and promote a law establishing that “the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

He wants to ban anything necessary for Transgender ADULTS, when up to this point he and DeSantis just dealt with Trans Youth, thus racing ahead of Ron endangering the lives and health of all Trans people.

We have lost the alliteration now that it is God, Guns, and Trans.

They found in the 1980s, as Gays were making progress in getting their rights, that AIDS could be very useful in pushing the God’s Punishment” line so that those who were affected by ASIDS should just be let go as part of God’s plan because, if God was punishing the Hays why would any God-fearing person interfere with that.

Mass death was a simple solution to a created problem and each death was a proof of God’s judgment.

Now, forty years later since Transgender is somehow not the will of God, according to the religious right’s needed definition, and denying healthcare and other rights is the Lord’s work and they should just go away.

The ruse that all the anti-Trans talk and legislation is to protect children is shown to be what it truly is as Trump is now, and soon others will join in, going after all Trans adults without any connection in any way to children.

I was a kid when Christine Jorgenson came home and while watching the coverage on the television asked my father why she was on the news to which he matter of factly said she had gone to Europe a man and came back a woman because she thought she would like it better.

I experienced no trauma and my Boston Irish Catholic father had no problem being as matter of fact about things aas his limited knowledge allowed.

 Trump’s overarching ban would prevent as many people as possible, specifically youth, from learning about or accessing medical care and could possibly force existing Transgender people to de-transition or cease their transition at whatever stage they are by denying them treatment. And there is the added bonus that only those imagining the threat are capable of protecting the gullible from it and turning citizens against their Transgender neighbors, friends, and family members because the far right and the MAGA world will equate with Mental illness, an affront to religion, and a threat to children.

As can be imagined, Marjorie Taylor Greene is “so happy that President Trump has taken this issue up,” and has proposed her own legislation, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would restrict gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies, for individuals under 18 years old when Hormone blockers would obviously too late.

“It’s not about anyone’s chosen sexuality or what adults choose to do with their bodies. It’s just about protecting kids and letting them grow up before they make permanent changes”, the changes it will be too late to guide as oppose undo.

Along with anyone performing certain procedures being charged with a Class C felony, MTG’s  bill would also prohibit federal funds bei8ng used for gender-affirming care and revoke accreditation for higher education institutions that teach gender-affirming care, like medical schools.

She has 46 Republican co-sponsors.

To show his commitment to save America from the Trans Community, Trump has also pledged he would investigate if Big Pharma or others have illegally marketed hormones and puberty blockers and if hospitals had “covered up horrific long term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich.”

Fear of an invented or non-treat works best if you add a secret conspiracy.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Harvard Square is not some out of the way piece of property set apart from the rest of Cambridge by some wall like a hidden garden, but is a vibrant and very public place with converging avenues, an MBTA Red Line stop, eateries of all kinds as well as stores especially those connected with reading and learning, and is freely occupied or traversed by the public of any age. It is a place for street performance, protest, and buying an out of town newspaper as you run to catch the subway.

I have been in the area, and with time to kill, wandered into the Square when it was just people going about their business and when I stumbled upon some activity that had drawn a crowd and filled the area.

Harvard’s Hasting Pudding Club has an annual parade there when presenting its award to the deserving person.

Founded in 1795 by some students dissatisfied with campus food whose members took turns providing hasty pudding for each get-together, it developed over time to become the performance counterpart to the printed Harvard Lampoon through its Theatricals that were based on college humor skits. Drag was introduced in 1837 with a performance by James Russell Lowell, the poet to be, and its first full Drag show titled Bombastes Furioso was performed in 1844.

Since then, members of the Hasty Pudding club have been, as described by an Oklahoma legislator who recently proposed a ban on public Drag performances, adopting “a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.”

From the beginning of the widening acceptance of Homosexuals in Boston in the `19^th Century, the Hasty Pudding Club was the equivalent to the modern influencer when it came to the finer points  of being a Gay male, and this was known to those who were members regardless of sexual orientation.

Here are some examples of those who thus engaged.

Phillips Brooks, class of 1855, who was Bishop of Massachusetts, rector of Trinity Church, and author of the Christmas carol, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, had played Princess Glumdalka, Queen of the Giants, in Tom Thumb.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. played the “widow” in A Gentleman and Lady in a Peculiarly Perplexing Predicament in 1865.  

Philosopher George Santayana played Lady Elfrida in Robin Hood who was recued by her love, Allan-a-Dale, from the cruel Sir Reginald.

Bay Staters might be interested to know that Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. played Imogene the Fair in Alonzo the Brave, who was madly in love with the male lead.

In Catnippers, 1903, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a chorus girl.

Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld played leading lady Vera Similitude in the 1966 Hasty Pudding production, Right Up Your Alley and enjoyed being part of the kick line in a number of productions.

And with all the men in Drag who are part of the Theatrical and award activities, the honorees such as Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Coolidge, Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robert DeNiro, are in the parade that goes through public Harvard Square as has been the tradition.

This Drag obsession the GOP is experiencing these days is not part of the American Heritage.

And just to throw it in, remember Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag and Trump thought it was great.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 Last month the most free state in the Union, Florida, after having already passed laws such as  the Parental Rights in Education law, the “Don’t say Gay” bill, prohibiting instruction related to gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade, “instruction” being undefined so is as open as useful, with the threat this bill could be later amended to include older students, and the Miami-Dade School Board voting against recognizing October as Gay, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, a complete 180 from the previous year’s vote to do just that, the Florida High School Athlete Association released a draft of the form to be filled out by all female students wishing to play on a school athletic team, which in some states includes Drama classes and performances, with the newly added requirement for the person filling out the form to acknowledge if they have had a menstrual cycle, and if so, when was the first and most recent, and how many they had within the past 12 months.

Although the space for the same info was included on the form for the past twenty years, unlike now when it will be required, filling it out was optional.

Any question who the targets are?

The obsession space is getting rather full there in Florida. It already had the Gays, gas stove preservation, African American AP classes, Drag Queens, Disney, and math textbooks, and now it moves on to being obsessed with Trans people to the point, they want all female students to write very personal information on a form that could be seen by more than the intended viewer.

They have moved from girls having to show it said ‘female’ on their birth certificates in order to play to having to pay to play by revealing some very private and personal information that is of no one’s business other than the girl’s and those THEY choose to tell not strangers who want to know for political reasons.

It also has the added bonus of blaming the victim as the state will attempt to convince female students that, if it had not been for the pushy Trans students, this would not be necessary and set these kids up for further bullying and shame for something for which there should be none.

DeSantis is quietly recruiting followers to exercise hate toward some of the state’s citizenry for his political and, hence, monetary gain.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.