How AIDS Has Affected Gay Culture in The United States and Globally

Nick Laramee

4/18/18

Gender Studies

Bernie
 AIDS can be classified as one of the most terrifying and wide-spread epidemic globally.

Today, between 65.2 million and 88 million people have been infected with HIV. Out of that

statistic, between 28.9 million and 41.5 million people have died from AIDS since the start of the

epidemic (UNAIDS). AIDS can affect every person and does not discriminate based on race,

sexuality, gender, etc. When it first became known to scientists that people were being infected

with this new, dangerous disease, it was exclusively in the gay community. Due to this fact,

AIDS was originally known as the “gay disease” causing more harm in the gay community. This

helped empower the gay movement, but at the same time it was destroying it. Larry Kramer,

American playwright, actor, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist, described the

effect the epidemic had on the gay community perfectly, “There's no question that the gay

movement would not be as far along as it is without AIDS. But how can there be any other issue

in the face of death, possible extinction?”. Through the history of the epidemic, the failure of all

institutions, the gay movement that ensued, and the global effect that occurred, I will show how

AIDS/HIV shaped the gay community and set in motion a serious of event leading to more rights

and equality.

The history of AIDS/HIV is a short story that highlights how one dangerous disease can

become a global epidemic in a matter of years. It is speculated that AIDS originated from a small

village by the name of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. It is

hypothesized that it crossed over from chimpanzees to humans in this region and spread from

there (Avert). The first cases were recognized in the United States in the early 1980s, without

any idea how far it had already spread. It is estimated that between 10,000 and 300,000 people

could have been infected across five out of the seven continents: North America, South America,

Europe, Africa, and Australia (Avert). These first cases identified by health officials in the
United States were exclusively in the gay community, foreshadowing the horrific event in the

community that was about to unfold. More specifically, in 1981 Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia

(PCP) was found in relatively healthy gay men in California and Kaposi’s Sarcoma (unusual

aggressive cancer) cases were reported in a group of gay men in New York and California. From

there, it spread like wildfire across New York and California, eventually popping up in states

across the US. A Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and KSOI was set up through the CDC

shortly after the report of these strange infections. At the end of that year, there was a total of

270 reported cases of this immune deficiency among gay men, and 121 of those individuals died

in that same year (HIV.GOV). After a group of gay men in California and health officials started

to suggest that the causes of this new disease was sexual, it was referred to as the gay-related

immune deficiency (GRID). Kaposi’s Sarcoma was also given the name of “the gay cancer” in

the media among gay men at the same time, due to how rare it is. Giving this name to the

recently discovered immune deficiency in 1982, a year after it started making news headlines,

gave people across the US and globally a platform to ridicule and hate gay men more than they

had before. In that same year, reported cases in hemophiliacs and Haitians sprouted in New

York, California, and other states (AVERT). Despite these reports, institutions, the public, and

the media ignored them and focused on the immune deficiency as GRID. Even though everyone

not affiliated with the gay community strongly believed that it could only affect those that were

homosexual men, the gay men that were not directly affected by the disease believed that it was a

hoax caused by the government in order to ignore the gay community more. It took until

September in 1982 for the CDC to rename the immune deficiency from GRIDS to AIDS

(acquired immune deficiency syndrome). The CDC described it as, “a disease at least moderately

predictive of a defect in cell mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known case for
diminished resistance to that disease”. Eventually, AIDS was reported among female partners of

men who had AIDS/HIV by the next year in 1983. This created an entirely new concept that it

could be passed on through heterosexual intercourse. That same year, doctors in France at the

Pasteur Institute reported the discovery of a new retrovirus referred to by the name of LAV

(AVERT). This new retrovirus was hypothesized to be the cause of AIDS, but there was not

enough proof at the time of the initial discovery. Reports of AIDS in children started to come

out, which made people more afraid of being around gay men. People outside the gay

community that didn’t understand the disease (most of the general population) thought that it was

from general contact. Eventually, this was ruled out as a cause and it was concluded that these

children acquired AIDS from their mothers before, during, or directly after birth through bodily

fluids. The CDC identified all major routes of transmission of AIDS and did not only rule out

casual contact, but food, water, air or surfaces as well. By the end of 1983, “the number of AIDS

cases in the USA had risen to 3.063- of this number, 1,292 had died” (AVERT). Despite all the

small breakthroughs on AIDS, the world was losing in this race against the new, deadly disease.

More than half of the people that had contracted AIDS were dying. In 1984, a breakthrough

finally came forward when the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Pasteur Institute announced

that their identical viruses were the cause of AIDS. The same year, bath houses and private sex

clubs in San Francisco were closed because there was an increased risk of contracting AIDS

from high-risk sexual activity. Luckily, other bath houses in cities such as New York and Los

Angeles followed this example in the next year. These bath houses greatly helped spread AIDS

in the gay community. Even after it was discovered that AIDS was sexually transmitted in the

year prior, the bath houses were reluctant on being shut down due to greed and some men in the

gay community reluctance to believe the warnings from the CDC. 5 years after the first reports
of AIDS came out, every region in the world had reported at least one case of AIDS, with 20,203

cases in total. This exceptionally high number for this epidemic is partially due to the high

incubation period of HIV (which eventually become AIDS), “ranging from 1 year or less in some

persons to a still unknown upper limit in others that has reached nearly 20 years in a few

individuals” (Osmund). This short history could fill multiple books, and is ongoing to this day in

2018. There has been an immense amount of progress to improve the quality of life of those with

AIDS and to prevent it from becoming a death sentence through medicine, but there is yet to be a

vaccine to cure people.

The AIDS epidemic was able to spread quickly across the United States and the world

was not only caused by the unpredictable and silent incubation period, but from the homophobia

that lead to the failure of all institutions in handling this epidemic correctly. These institutions

that failed are the media, government, and the blood bank industry. The only media to start

reporting on the epidemic when it first appeared in the early 1980s were gay newspapers

(AVERT). This meant that the only people receiving news on this issue were strictly in the gay

community, which did little to help get people scared. Gay men in the times of the 1980s felt

very liberated after the shortly lived Milk Harvey era, leading to these men having more sexual

risky intercourse as an act of celebration. Due to this, gay men were constantly coming down

with new infections. A gay newspaper reporting on a new case did not cause anyone to panic.

When the AIDS crisis was beginning to get covered on the news in the early 1980s when it

became more known to the public, you could only hear about it on your television at night.

Although it eventually became known to the public, fear quickly took hold of the media causing

there to be a lack of public sympathy. “Most importantly, the epidemic was only news when it

was not killing homosexuals. In this sense, AIDS remained a fundamentally gay disease,
newsworthy only by the virtue of the fact that it sometimes hit people who weren’t gay” (Randy

Shilts). Without the media doing their job to report the issue efficiently and urgently in a

nonbiased light, the new disease at the time got little to no attention. It wasn’t until the late 1980s

that a few references of the AIDS crisis appeared in popular music, TV programs and movies.

Most Hollywood films strayed from touching on the topic of AIDS. The first box-office film

about the topic was not even officially widespread in movie theaters until 1990. In American

television, there were a few one-off episodes in the early 1980s on a few shows. David Caplan,

former editor at People magazine and a celebrity journalist, pointed out that “it was a disease a

lot of people were not informed about. There were lots of misconceptions and obviously, TV and

movies reflect the culture at large” (Jeanne Bonner). The Reagan administration also failed in

recognizing AIDS as an epidemic that needed to be taken seriously. The Reagan administration

treated the epidemic as a joke, which the documentary film, When AIDS was Funny, shed some

light on. It showed unpublished audio from press conferences where Lester Kinsolving

“implored Reagan administration press secretary Larry Speaks to address the mounting case of

AIDS nationwide” (Caitlin Gibson). It showed that the Reagan administration did not care about

the epidemic that was killing people because it was perceived as a “gay disease”. The Reagan

administration did not only think that the epidemic was a joke during the 1980s, but also gave

little funding to health institutions, like the CDC, when they requested funding to solve this

epidemic (Randy Shilts). The Reagan administration didn’t start taking the epidemic seriously

until Hollywood did as well when Rock Hudson announced he was dying from AIDS. His death

in 1985 lead to the TV industry, Hollywood, the News and the Reagan Administration to start

taking it seriously. The blood bank industry was just as reluctant on accepting the AIDS

epidemic as a major issue that needed to be taken seriously. In 1983, the CDC held public
meetings with the blood service industries to advise them to act fast due to the amount of cases

on hemophiliacs or transfusion recipients contracting AIDS. The meeting was inconclusive,

leading to a lot of debate but no consensus on a specific game plan. The Blood Bank

Community, National Hemophilia Foundation, and Plasma Fractionation Industry all stated after

the meeting that there was not enough research to cause them to take extreme measure (or any

measures) (Institute of Medicine US Committee). After the transmission of AIDS was

discovered to year later, the blood industries regretted that decision, because they helped spread

the disease exponentially from their homophobia and greed. Randy Shilts, author of The Band

Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, describes how these institutes felt

perfectly, “what society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of

the individuals affected with it”.

The AIDS epidemic affected the gay community in two ways: it brought the gay

community together and at the same time tore it apart at first. It tore the gay community apart in

the beginning when gay men were first being diagnosed. Many gay men would continuously

engage in risky sexual behavior instead of heading the warning from friends and doctors that

there was a new immune deficiency disease going around in exclusively gay men (Randy Shilts).

Some gay men activists, such as Larry Kramer, we’re protesting for bath houses to be shut down

while others argued against it. This lead to more gay men using the bath houses to express their

sexuality extremely to revolt against men in the community attempting to get them shut down:

spreading the disease further. Lastly, many gay men were not out in their work or family life.

This caused these gay men to not participate in AIDS organizations, protests, etc to help raise

money and awareness. These gay men remaining closeted only put a bigger strain on the

community. Despite all the aspects acting against the gay community to tear it apart within itself,
the gay community eventually came together to fight for their lives and rights. The AIDS

epidemic showed a more humane side of the gay community to the public according to Ed

Jackson, director of program development at Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange.

It also motivated and forced men in the gay community to be more active in visible (Picard,

Andre). They didn’t have much of a choice, since they were facing what they thought was

possible eradication. The gay community were the first people to start funds and organization to

raise money and awareness for AIDS. Larry Kramer helped found the Men’s Health Crisis to act

as a hotline to help gay men diagnosed with AIDS. Battles for rights to visit partners in hospitals,

taking time off to be with loved ones who were sick/dying, claiming insurance benefits, etc.

mobilized this community even more. After these rights were fought for before administrations

and the courts, the community grew closer and fought for more rights such as gay marriage.

Although the AIDS epidemic threatened to separate the gay community, it eventually united

them when the community was faced with life or death.

The AIDS epidemic started to rapidly spread in the United States, but it quickly spread

across the globe. A year after the first cases of AIDS were reported in the United States, in 1982

several European countries reported cases as well. During the same year, organizations across

the globe were created specifically for AIDS such as the Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK

(AVERT). The Pasteur Institute in France reported the discovery of HIV, known as LAV when

they first discovered it. They are credited with the first institution to discover the disease, and the

cause of it. The World Health Organization played a huge role during the AIDS epidemic, and

held its first meeting to assess the global AIDS situation and began international surveillance in

1983 (AVERT). By the end of 1984, there were 762 cases reported in Europe, mostly in the gay

community. This was still a small number compared to the 7,699 AIDS cases in the United
States. In 1985, 85 countries reported 38,401 cases of AIDS to the WHO. Europe has the second

highest number of cases and Africa was the third. A few years later, the WHO launched The

Global Program on AIDS to combat this disease and prevent it from spreading further globally.

There are now millions of people across the world that are living with HIV/AIDS. It was the

fourth biggest cause of death worldwide and number one killer in Africa. This has been proven

to partially be caused by the stigma that it is still an exclusively “gay disease”. “Homophobia and

sexual stigma can limit the provision and uptake of HIV prevention, treatment and care

services…criminalization of homosexuality encourages human rights abuses, violence,

discrimination and stigma, which worsen health disparities for men who have sex with men and

their communities” (George Ayala). There are higher odds of prevention and treatment

continuum in countries that have a greater engagement in gay community.

There are now around 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS by the end

of 2016, and around 5,000 new infections per day (UNAIDS). AIDS may not be known as GRID

or the “gay disease” today, but it still haunts the gay community and remains an issue in the

countries that don’t accept these people yet. Through the failure of all institutions, split in the gay

community, global effect, and history of the disease, it is clear that AIDS shaped the gay

community to what it is today. Even though there were many causalities, it catapulted the gay

movement and united the community together. Not only did it help gain more rights and

equality, but humanized gay men to the public. If the United States didn’t act on prejudice and

discrimination during the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s, this worldwide epidemic

may have been preventable. Randy Shifts is able to show in a comedic light how people didn’t

think during the epidemic, but just acted through irrational prejudice. “How very American, he
thought, to look at a disease as homosexual or heterosexual, as if viruses had the intelligence to

choose between different inclinations of human behavior”.

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June 2016

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AIDS.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 1 Dec. 2015

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2017

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