AIDS, Crisis and Activism After Stonewall there was less fear that police were going to entrap people. Although it was still happening, it was happening less and the LGBTQ community was starting to hold police forces accountable for their actions.  Men could be more open and a gay lifestyle started to emerge.  Originally, monogamy was shunned by the gay male community as an imitation of, and what was wrong with, heterosexual relationships. There was some monogamy, especially after the development of a gay middle class, but many men had open relationships. Homosexual men, primarily in the big cities, were concerned with restaurants, discos, boutique shopping, and bowling leagues. The political work of gay liberation was forgotten by many. At this time most gay couples did not have children, the idea that they could adopt or have children with surrogates was still developing, and their two-income households gave them money to spare. They spent it on renovating homes, vacations, and elaborate parties.  Men, especially in the cities, had more opportunity for many sexual encounters. They visited such establishments as bath houses, porn shops and "backroom" bars (bars with backrooms that were for illicit encounters). Bette Midler got her start singing at a highly fashionable bath house, in New York City, called The Continental. In San Francisco a type developed called the "Castro Clone." These men were buff, wore a mustache and all wore muscle shirts and tight jeans. Many of them were so identical as to be indistinguishable from one another.  Disco started in small New York gay clubs where heterosexual people would also go to hear the latest trend setting music and most of the '70s was all about sex and dancing. This would be the world for many gay men until a terrible disease brought it all crashing down.  AIDS CRISIS That disease was HIV/AIDS. AIDS stands for: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome and it is a result of someone contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1). The definition of AIDS is: a disease of the immune system due to infection with HIV. HIV destroys the CD4 T lymphocytes (CD4 cells) of the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to life-threatening infections and cancers Scientists were able to identify that chimpanzees in West Africa could have been be a source of HIV infection in humans. There are many theories on how the virus may have crossed over to humans but the most likely is that the chimpanzee version of the immunodeficiency virus (called simian immunodeficiency virus or SIV) was transmitted to humans and mutated into HIV either from humans hunting chimpanzees for meat or coming into contact with their infected blood. The earliest known case of infection with HIV-1 in a human was detected in a blood sample collected in 1959 from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo but there is evidence that it could have existed in the human population in Africa as far back as 1924.  Suddenly, in the early 198.

1. AIDS, Crisis and Activism
After Stonewall there was less fear that police were going to
entrap people. Although it was still happening, it was happening
less and the LGBTQ community was starting to hold police
forces accountable for their actions. Men could be more open
and a gay lifestyle started to emerge.
Originally, monogamy was shunned by the gay male community
as an imitation of, and what was wrong with, heterosexual
relationships. There was some monogamy, especially after the
development of a gay middle class, but many men had open
relationships. Homosexual men, primarily in the big cities, were
concerned with restaurants, discos, boutique shopping, and
bowling leagues. The political work of gay liberation was
forgotten by many. At this time most gay couples did not have
children, the idea that they could adopt or have children with
surrogates was still developing, and their two-income
households gave them money to spare. They spent it on
renovating homes, vacations, and elaborate parties.
Men, especially in the cities, had more opportunity for many
sexual encounters. They visited such establishments as bath
houses, porn shops and "backroom" bars (bars with backrooms
that were for illicit encounters). Bette Midler got her start
singing at a highly fashionable bath house, in New York City,
called The Continental. In San Francisco a type developed
called the "Castro Clone." These men were buff, wore a
mustache and all wore muscle shirts and tight jeans. Many of
them were so identical as to be indistinguishable from one
another.
Disco started in small New York gay clubs where heterosexual
people would also go to hear the latest trend setting music and
most of the '70s was all about sex and dancing. This would be
the world for many gay men until a terrible disease brought it
all crashing down.

2. AIDS CRISIS
That disease was HIV/AIDS. AIDS stands for: Acquired
Immunodeficiency Syndrome and it is a result of someone
contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1). The
definition of AIDS is: a disease of the immune system due to
infection with HIV. HIV destroys the CD4 T lymphocytes (CD4
cells) of the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to
life-threatening infections and cancers
Scientists were able to identify that chimpanzees in West Africa
could have been be a source of HIV infection in humans. There
are many theories on how the virus may have crossed over to
humans but the most likely is that the chimpanzee version of the
immunodeficiency virus (called simian immunodeficiency virus
or SIV) was transmitted to humans and mutated into HIV either
from humans hunting chimpanzees for meat or coming into
contact with their infected blood. The earliest known case of
infection with HIV-1 in a human was detected in a blood sample
collected in 1959 from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic
of the Congo but there is evidence that it could have existed in
the human population in Africa as far back as 1924.
Suddenly, in the early 1980s, reports began to emerge of men
that had rare forms of cancer and/or pneumonia. This cancer,
known as Kaposi’s sarcoma, normally affected elderly men of
Mediterranean or Jewish heritage and also young adult African
men. The pneumonia, Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP),
is generally only found in individuals with seriously
compromised immune systems. AIDS starts when a person
contracts the HIV virus and this compromises the patient’s
immune system. They do not die from the disease, but from
other diseases that their immune system cannot fight. The men
were young and had previously been in relatively good health,
and they were all gay.
On June 5, 1981 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) publish a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report (MMWR), describing cases of PCP, in five young,

3. previously healthy, gay men in Los Angeles. All the men have
other infections and two had died by the time the report was
published. This is the very first official report of the AIDS
epidemic.
Many people believe that the disease was brought to America by
gay flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas, He is often named as
"Patient Zero." There is no proof of that now. He probably
spread AIDS but there may have been other people that brought
the disease into the USA. In fact there is evidence that a
teenager, in the USA had the virus in the mid-1960s. Mr Dugas
was a real person who did eventually die of AIDS and HIV in
the USA and was to a large degree initially spread by gay men;
but this occurred on a huge scale over many years probably a
long time before Dugas even began to travel. International
travel by young men in that era was popular and may have
helped to spread the disease.
Gaëtan Dugas 1953-1984
When it first appeared, the disease was believed to be
exclusively a gay disease, and people did not realize it could be
transmitted through heterosexual sex (or through intravenous
drug use as well) which provided new justifications for old hate
and discrimination. Some televangelists declared the disease
was a gay plague directly from the hand of God. Many believe
that this was a main reason that funding for research was such a
low priority. From the beginning, gay men suffered from a new
and heightened level of stigma as police wore latex gloves in
any dealings with "suspected gays." Employers fired gay men
with no cause and landlords refused to rent to men who "fit the
profile." People thought you could catch the disease with any
contact but it was, and still is, transmitted by sexual contact and
blood. You cannot get it by sharing a fork or a drinking glass,
but people were frightened of any contact. Though the majority
of deaths were of gay men there were other people at risk.
Haitians
The AIDS epidemic in Haiti was first discovered in the 1980's

4. following the discovery of a number of Haitians with Kaposi's
sarcoma and other AIDS-related conditions. The medical field
then began to claim that AIDS had come from Haiti.
These claims just furthered the pre-existing racism in the U.S.
that many Haitians suffered from already. A large number of
Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. lost their jobs and were
evicted from their homes as Haitians were added to
homosexuals, hemophiliacs and heroin users to make the 'Four-
H Club' of groups at high risk of AIDS.
The blood industry
In some countries, such as the USA, donors were paid to give
blood, a policy that often attracted people that were desperate
for cash and that included intravenous drug users. The problem
was that doctors were not aware that HIV could be spread easily
through blood and so blood donations remained unscreened. It
was then sent worldwide and most people who received infected
donations eventually contracted HIV.
In the late 1960's hemophiliacs were given a blood product
called Factor VIII. This is a coagulant that is made from the
blood of hundreds of individual donors. Many hemophiliacs
were at risk of contracting the disease, and did as one single
donation could contaminate an entire batch of the product.
Gay men have been barred from being blood donors since 1985.
They are still faced with restrictions around giving blood and
this was one of the sad moments in the Pulse shooting. Gay men
could not help the LGBTQ victims in Orlando. In December of
2015 the FDA lifted the lifetime ban, but men still have to wait
at least one year after having sex with another man before
giving blood. France ended its ban on gay men giving blood in
July of 2016. We have the bans in place here despite the fact
that the FDA inspects all donated blood for numerous things
including HIV. If it is found in donated blood the donor is
notified and the blood is rejected.
In Israel, as of January 2018, they are allowing gay and bisexual

5. men to make immediate donations. The Israel national
emergency service has devised a "double testing" system that
allows blood banks to screen donations twice. In 2017 medical
researchers from Greece and the U.K. deemed bans on gay and
bisexual blood donors "outdated," saying that blood banks now
have the advanced technology to test blood with 100 percent
sensitivity and specificity.
Change
It was not until we see other groups of people, aside from gay
men, becoming infected that we also see a rise in funding to
combat the disease. In 1985 the first famous gay person died of
AIDS: Rock Hudson. At the time of his death he was extremely
famous and everyone knew who he was. He had made a living
starring in movies as a very masculine man, a womanizer.
People did not want anyone to know they were dying from this
disease because of the stigma that was attached of being
unclean and maybe contagious as well. The first thought people
had was that someone was gay not a hemophiliac or other risk
group. Most of the American public did not know who these
people were that were dying and Rock Hudson’s death gave the
disease a face. His death was shocking to most people because
his screen persona was of a very masculine man not what they
expected of a gay man.
People magazine reported:
"Since Hudson made his announcement, more than $1.8 million
in private contributions (more than double the amount collected
in 1984) has been raised to support AIDS research and to care
for AIDS victims (5,523 reported in 1985 alone). A few days
after Hudson died, Congress set aside $221 million to develop a
cure for AIDS."
Mr Hudson was also a personal friend of President Ronald
Reagan and this may be whey the government finally recognized
the epidemic and increased funding.
Rock Hudson 1925-1985
The gay community had been divided along class, gender and

6. racial lines (among others) and the AIDS crisis forced the
community to make radical changes. Since no one in power
seemed interested in doing anything about the deaths the
community needed to come together and work together. The
first AIDS organization, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, was formed
in New York City in 1982. Politics was now a matter of life and
death and many organizations were formed to either assist those
infected by the disease or to advocate for more research
funding. In 1985 amFAR, the American Foundation for AIDS
Research was formed.
In 1987 there was the formation of the activist group ACT UP,
the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. The symbol they used
was the pink triangle whicht was the symbol used for
homosexuals during the holocaust. They believed everyone
should come out and that if people knew how many were
suffering then more people would become allies and join the
struggle. They were a very vibrant group who participated in
civil-disobedience, small-scale riots and other ways to get
attention for the LGBTQ community’s plight. Their slogan was
“Silence=Death.” This was meant as a battle cry for the LGBQ
community to come out but also to admonish the world for not
recognizing, nor seeming to care, for their plight.
The Lesbian Community
The risk of contracting HIV, for women who have sex with
women, is minimal. During the crisis lesbians became the care
givers for their friends dying from the disease. They were
activists, nurses, cooks maids and rides to the doctor. We know
that gay men were banned from donating blood. And so there
were lesbian groups formed, such the "Blood Sisters" who
helped by donating their own blood.
In your book, The Gay Revolution, Lillian Faderman says:
"Many lesbian feminists felt that men were chauvinistic and
unsympathetic to women in general, and gay men were no
different from straight men. Lesbian separatists particularly cut

7. themselves off from and wanted to have nothing whatsoever to
do with any kind of male, gay or straight. But things changed
seriously in the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic hit. Lesbians
felt it was no time for animosity, and gay men realized these are
our sisters and we need to work with them.”
Treatment
The first treatment for HIV was approved by the FDA in 1987.
These drugs suppressed the virus for long periods but patients
still usually died. In 1996 they developed a treatment using a
combination of previous treatments and protease inhibitors
which saw a 60% to 80% decline in rates of AIDS, death, and
hospitalization. There is still no cure or vaccine.
Today
Today HIV/AIDS is still a global pandemic that continues to
take millions of lives each year. The last statistics, from 2017,
are that there are 36.9 million people living with HIV, only 21.7
million of them are receiving treatment. These numbers of
untreated are mostly in developing countries where treatment is
unavailable or difficult to obtain. There is also a lack of
education about how to avoid becoming infected or what to do
if they do become infected.
In 2017 1.8 million people became newly infected with HIV. In
2017 940,000 people died from AIDS related illness. Since the
beginning of the crisis 35.4 million people have died of the
disease
African Americans make up forty one percent of the 1.2 million
HIV-positive Americans despite being only twelve percent of
the population. In 2014, roughly a quarter of the nation's 45,000
new HIV infections were black men having sex with men, but
who do not necessarily identify as bisexual or homosexual.
Thirty seven percent of the population, of the USA, lives in the
southern United States but people in southern states make up
forty four percent of Americans with HIV. The numbers show a
distinct lack of AIDS education among the African American
community and in the south.

8. In the USA approximately 50,000 people become infected with
the virus every year. 63% of those are men who have sex with
other men.
In the USA more than 1.1 million people have HIV and 15% are
not aware that they are infected. According to the CDC: “Young
people aged 13-24 accounted for 20% of new HIV infections in
2016, despite only making up 17% of the USA population. 80%
of these infections occurred in the 20 to 24 age group.” It is
thought that 51% of young people living with HIV are not aware
of their infection. This is due to inadequate sex education, risky
behavior, and a sense of complacency that 'it doesn't affect me.'
This keeps young people from testing for HIV and subsequently
accessing antiretroviral treatment.
To date, an estimated 658,507 people diagnosed with AIDS in
the United States have died. Worldwide the number of deaths is
35 million.
This is a chart of the deaths, from AIDS, from 1980 to 1996.
The numbers vary depending on the sources you use. I chose
these from amfAR as they are well researched and a credible
organization. The reason the chart ends in 1996 is that is when
the new drugs resulted in a sharp decline in deaths.
Year
Number of deaths in the USA
1980
31
1981
234
1982
853
1983
2,304
1984
4,251
1985
5, 636
1986

9. 2,960 (Cumulative: 16,301)
1987
4,135
1988
4, 855
1989
14,544
1990
18,447
1991
20,454
1992
23,411
1993
41,920
1994
32,330
1995
48,371
1996
34,947
A few of the famous people who died in the early days of the
AIDS crisis are:
1984
Gaetan Dugas, listed in The Band Played On as "patient zero."
1985
Rock Hudson, actor
1987
Liberace, Musician
Michael Bennet, Choreographer
1989
Amanda Blake, Actress (Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke)
Hemophiliac
1990

10. Halston, Designer
Keith Haring, Artist
1991
Freddie Mercury, Lead Singer for the band Queen
1992
Robert Reed, Actor (The father on The Brady Bunch) Gay
1993
Arthur Ashe, Athlete
Rudolf Nureyev, Ballet Dancer
There are some recent developments in the fight against AIDS:
PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a preventative medicine that
can be given to those at risk for the disease. It actual name is
Truvada and it is a combination of two HIV medications:
tenofovir and emtricitabine. These medicines work by blocking
important pathways that HIV uses to set up an infection. If a
person takes it daily, the presence of the medicine in their
bloodstream can often stop HIV from taking hold and spreading
in their body. It can provide up to a 99% reduction in risk. It
was first approved by the FDA in 2012. You will see their
commercials on television.
In February of 2017 the University of Oxford announced its
HIV/AIDS vaccine has kept five, out of 15, patients free from
HIV. One patient has been clear for over 7 months. The vaccine
is still in early trials but it is a step in the right direction.
On a personal note:
I was 17 in 1980, when this started. I went to my first gay pride
parade, in San Francisco, in 1984 at age 21. People were
whispering about this new disease; it really did take a long time
for it to get out to the LGBTQ community and then to the
general public. That first parade was uninhibited and joyful.
When I returned to the parade the next year the party was over.
Though we were still celebrating pride, many people were sick.
By 1987 pride parades were full of “Silence= Death” signs and
they were somber events where we remembered those who died

11. each year.
I lost many friends to the disease, some very suddenly. I have
only one friend who contracted HIV in the 1980s that is still
alive today. I also lost friends to suicide. When they were
diagnosed as HIV+ they would kill themselves rather than suffer
a long agonizing death. If you look at that chart above you can
see that I was in my 20's through the AIDS crisis. I was one of
the women who brought the chicken soup and helped organize
doctor visits. In 1995, I was a member of the local AIDS
prevention organization in Monterey and helped raise money by
doing the AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was
hard watching my friends die, watching lovers mourn who had
lost their partners, and seeing the loneliness of people everyone
was afraid to touch.
AIDS is still out there and I urge everyone to get tested
regularly!