Hello, there.

I am researching gay culture at the onset of the AIDS crisis. The material that I am finding out there is heavily biased in either direction (“gays deserved the natural consequences of their behaviour” or “the community was the victim of an inherently homophobic system”). I distrust any such pre-conceived points of view.

Is there anyone here who could give me some pointers? I’m lost in a sea of partisanship.

My specific (albeit not the only) questions are: A) were people in the LGB community aware of what was going on - and, if so, to what extent? B) did people in the gay and bisexual community behave recklessly - and, if they did, did they do so whilst aware of the risks? C) Did gay people with otherwise ordinary lives (say: doctors who happened to be gay, nurses who had sapphic tendencies, accountants who liked to take people of the same sex to bed etc) know of the risks they had upon then - despite their monogamy and their not being in the so-calleg “party circuit”?

Thanks in advance,

Steyn

I was young then, but being in South Florida with a strong gay culture, know a little bit about it. We have a city within 10 miles of where I grew up that is predominantly all gay (Wilton Manors).

A. Yes, but I think nobody wanted to believe it would happen to them, same with heterosexuals that were un-married and hooking up left and right. It was the party days......coke days.....etc.....

B. Yes.....lots of screwing around going on.....especially with gays because they didn't need to wear protection to prevent pregnancy......but non-married heterosexuals hooking up left and right too.

C. I don't know.

David Horowitz, then hard left, was in SF as AIDS showed up. He found the local media were spreading a lot of disinformation as people started dying. Apparently there was fear of AIDS being labeled a "gay cancer" so facts were buried and people died.

Since you're researching, maybe try Horowitz's frontpagemag.com and see if the archives have anything of interest.

As I remember, he discussed this time in his wonderful Radical Son. The dishonesty about AIDS at that time was one big reason he and his cohort Peter Collier had "second thoughts" about their doctrinaire leftism and came to the other side.

I was working news in Houston when AIDS showed up, with the huge gay community there, we were at the front of awareness. Finding myself in St.Louis a couple years later, I was shocked how far behind the info curve they were, a lot of disinformation and myths prevailed. I can also attest to the CDC actively working to minimize the gay/AIDS relationship at that time.

I cannot address the question of personal risk assessment by the sexually promiscuous regarding congress with possibley HIV-AIDS positive partners. But there were clubs and bars in New York City that had sex couches in the basement. Try a search of 'Limelight Club'. Seems to have been a mentality of inverse lottery, and lies about fidelity. If you have the time and money visit Greenwhich Village and respectfully ask questions.

If the gay community was unaware of what was going on, they had to be deaf, dumb and blind.

There were billboards everywhere warning them, signs inside buses and subway systems, it was everywhere.

They didn't seem to care about the risks as a whole. Some individuals did, but the majority seemingly didn't.

Mrs. Flash was working at a County Hospital at that time and saw a lot of them and talked to them as she was managing their accounts.

I was in college 85-89, 1 of our 4 roommates came out as gay and worked with a few openly gay students on campus. They all were well aware of what was going on, and when my girlfriend (now wife) and I would go to clubs for bands - they knew and were aware. That said, it “wouldn’t happen to them” as they were all young.

My roommate was a great friend, but he became more and more focused on sowing his oats. He moved to Orlando after graduation and he contracted AIDS and died. He attributed to his “going wild” and wished he had been as careful as he had been in college. His dad ran the Florida Panther Program at UF and was devastated.

AIDS sucks, but the interesting thing I’d say about the Gay community at the time (LGBT did not exist) was how much of a non-event it was for them and for the straight crowd. Very open, but also everyone respected everyone else. Was eye opening for a 19 year old straight kid and my 17 year old girlfriend - and very different from the almost militant movement of today.

A movie on AIDS came out years ago, 'And the band played on' It dealt with the origin, research, politics, human side of the crisis. A VERY good movie that I thought made the crisis educational and understandable to the every day person. The cast were all top notch movie stars all playing their part in telling the story.

Don't know if this helps but again, it is educational.

Living in CA starting in 1986, I can share some comments about what was known outside that community, but in an region where the gay culture was active and not as far in the shadows as elsewhere.

quote:

A) were people in the LGB community aware of what was going on - and, if so, to what extent?

As we see with COVID, when there is a new disease, hard and solid information comes slowly as medical knowledge progresses, with plenty of false starts and a long process of getting consensus on 'what's going on' and 'how do we treat/prevent it.' So if the question is, 'when did gay people figure out exactly why their friends were coming down with odd and heretofore exotic symptoms', my answer would be 'it didn't take long once the actual cause was known, but that knowledge came over time and with imperfect progress.'

Recall there were, at the start, three groups that came down with AIDS...Haitians, hemophiliacs, and gay people. What was the connection? Who knew?

quote:

B) did people in the gay and bisexual community behave recklessly - and, if they did, did they do so whilst aware of the risks?

The word 'recklessly' is the key concept, that kind of divides the question into two parts. Before being aware of a risk, one's just uninformed, rather than reckless - until you know there's a shark offshore, it's not reckless to swim, but it sure is afterwards.

There was a great deal of promiscuity in that community, though certainly not universal there. Promiscuous behavior has always run non-AIDS risks - the traditional STDs, etc. - so it was reckless in the sense of those risks, but until people knew what caused AIDS, the behavior, with respect specifically to AIDS, was uninformed, rather than reckless.

After being aware of the risks, and well before any sort of treatment regimen, continued promiscuity could indeed be rationally termed 'reckless'. I would be willing to bet some reduced that sort of activity, but I don't doubt that it continued to some extent.

quote:

C) Did gay people with otherwise ordinary lives (say: doctors who happened to be gay, nurses who had sapphic tendencies, accountants who liked to take people of the same sex to bed etc) know of the risks they had upon then - despite their monogamy and their not being in the so-calleg “party circuit”?

With the proviso in the answer to A above, in that the information came out over time, those non-party folks, particularly the educated ones you refer to above, would have known, and would have tried to manage their risks. Most likely, the risk-averse in monogamous relationships would have tried to get each other to avoid further exposures outside that relationship.

Are you doing academic research?

i agree the 'story' these days is hyper militant on both sides

GAYS are all going STRAIGHT TO HELL !!

or

GAYS RULE the WORLD!! LOVE US !!

it's like there is no in between for consideration. times have changed dramatically that's for sure. i agree with the posters above : AIDS in the 80s was a big deal. if you wanted to live like it didn't exist that was on you...

-------------------------------------

So, not that aware, but we did go over AIDS in one of my biochem courses, many years ago.

A) The gay population had a staggering number of partners - admittedly, it was among people who contracted AIDS, but I think the average was over 40, with a large chunk over 100.

B) No one had really spent much time worrying about disease transmission via anal sex. It was not a commonly admitted sexual practice, and most STDs back then were thought to be fixed with an penicillin shot.

C) They didn't have much of a clue about transmission. For some reason, which makes no sense, the researchers mentioned not being too worried about handling someone's blood. They didn't wear gloves, etc.

The whole origin of AIDS story is very complex, and although I haven’t bothered to keep up with the “narrative” in recent times, I suspect that much of what’s reported now (and back then) is/was driven by individual agendas. And keep in mind that that’s true today about the current pandemic.* There are many similarities between attitudes and actions now and those when AIDS was first recognized as a distinct disease and how it was transmitted.

Some things I do remember:

Just as there are still arguments about where COVID-19 originated and how it spread early, AIDS was first thought to have originated among Haitian men, without any (public) claims that it was just homosexuals. It was also slow to be identified as a specific disease, and the S in the abbreviation stood for “syndrome” because of how the effects of HIV (the virus) manifested themselves in (sometimes) unusual ways.

I don’t know for certain that even after the medical consensus was that the disease was transmitted through body fluids that there was a significant degree of skepticism among gays, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Again, today there are many people who refuse to accept what is the general consensus about the characteristics of COVID-19; they don’t want to be inconvenienced, and therefore the easiest way to justify their refusal to comply is to believe that they’re being lied to. Even though at the time AIDS was a death sentence, many people believed that they wouldn’t get it, or if they did, “Well, we all have to die sometime.” There was also some of the “I could get killed by a careless driver” rationalizations that we see expressed today.

Some gays also didn’t care if they transmitted the disease to others. I remember reading of an interview with one infected man who knew he was infected, but who said (paraphrasing), “I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.” For someone who really didn’t care about anyone other than himself, the attitude could have clearly been, “I’ve got it, I’m going to die from it, I need to enjoy myself while I can.” Although I cannot comment from personal knowledge, I read more than once during the era that gay men tended to be very promiscuous. That was probably more true in New York or San Francisco than in Topeka or Provo, but it was claimed by people who seemed to know what they were talking about.

There were also people, including the doctors† we tend to be so trusting of, who flatly denied that the HIV caused AIDS, and other bizarre ideas about the disease arose elsewhere, for example (IIRC) in South Africa. All that muddied the waters further.


* A note for the particularly obtuse: I am not suggesting that COVID-19 is like AIDS in many ways. It’s spread differently and is obviously far less deadly. I am pointing out that many attitudes and responses to the diseases were/are similar, not that the diseases are the same or even very similar.

† E.g., Peter Duesberg.

Research Fauci and the AIDS crisis. He also had a hand in that giant mess.

I worked at the Metropolitan Opera House, in the late 80's. There was a lot of fear among the gay performers and staff. There was also a lot of uncertainty about how it was transmitted (saliva, tears, semen, blood?). Most people thought that any bodily fluids could transmit it which led to a lot of fatalism (everyone is going to get it eventually) so the dominant attitude seemed to be "Hold on until a cure comes". And live your life and hope you don't die in the meantime.
Even in the straight community, it was a fear but less so. If you weren't gay, Haitian, heroin addict, or hemophiliac, you felt low risk. Getting an AIDS test together so you could ditch the condoms and be "fluid bonded" was the 90's version of an engagement ring! That was only done after several months of being exclusive (using condoms, always) to account for the lag between any possible exposures and something showing up on a test. And you had to be really sure your girl (or guy) wasn't the "sneaking around" type. It was literally life and death.
For Millennials, they look at Magic Johnson and say "Meh, AIDS is no big deal. That guy is still alive". Worst thing to ever happen to AIDS prevention, in many people's eyes. Judging by the STD numbers, Millennials wouldn't know a condom from a land line. They don't use them.

Luck with your project.

Bruce

I believe THE DEUCE is still available on HBO. Times Square, AIDS and the developing sex industry. IMHO pretty accurate as to NYC during that time and the politcal overtones.

My younger step-son was in college then. My wife asked him to please be very careful.

His reply: "Don't worry Mom, I'm safe because I only date bisexual Haitian intravenous drug users."

quote:

Originally posted by urbanwarrior238:
A movie on AIDS came out years ago, 'And the band played on' It dealt with the origin, research, politics, human side of the crisis. A VERY good movie that I thought made the crisis educational and understandable to the every day person. The cast were all top notch movie stars all playing their part in telling the story.

Don't know if this helps but again, it is educational.

That docudrama is based on the book, "And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic," by Randy Shilts. Shilts was a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle and he eventually died of AIDS. It's been a long time since I read the book. Shilts' believed that since AIDS was a "gay disease" that there was apathy or inaction on the part of the government and medical establishment in reacting to the disease.

All of the above (the original post) plus it was an unknown disease with no tests originally.
Add to that it took years, sometimes a decade, before the symptoms developed.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 220-9er,

I can only contribute two things:

I was still in the Navy and there were warnings of a new fatal STD.

I have not come across this but I do believe there were a lot of life insurance policies taken out in that time before they identified the cause and created tests.

I am not gay. I was in my early 20s in the '80s. I did live in Houston, which, as a big city, had a largish gay population.

By 1982, midway through college, I knew AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease (and transmitted by needle sharing), although I also knew that it was much more common in the gay community. I also knew it was eventually fatal. I certainly did not feel in any particular danger, because I wasn't gay and wasn't a heroin addict. By the late '80s and early '90s, straight people were more fearful, but I was married and not at risk by then.

I was involved with Houston Grand Opera in the late '80s and early '90s, and there were more gay people in the theater than in the general population. There was a lot of fear by the late '80s, and people had begun to change their behavior. That fear may have started earlier, but I didn't know many gay people before that.

Anyone paying attention would have known this by the early '80s. Of course, many victims were young and reckless and probably did not fully appreciate the risks, believing that they personally, were indestructible, even while they knew the facts. Early on, there was less knowledge about what sex acts were more risky, but it was widely know to be sexually transmitted by the early '80s.

I don't know how much earlier than that this general knowledge would have been in common currency.

Edit - you made me curious. It wasn't until 1983/1984 that it was known that HIV caused AIDS. So people were aware of the sexual transmission of AIDS before the causative agent was identified.

This is just speculation on my part, but I wonder if earlier attitudes about the disease were shaped by the lack of information about what caused the disease? Perhaps not knowing made people less inclined to modify their behavior?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jhe888,

Having grown up in San Francisco in the 70's through the 80's, I can give you some of my observations:

quote:

Originally posted by Steyn: A) were people in the LGB community aware of what was going on - and, if so, to what extent?

Some were but, very few took such issues seriously, as the decade wore on and the medical community became more focused on AIDS/HIV, attitudes started to change, to include advocacy and government support. In hindsight, people want to blame Reagan for not caring or, providing any support from a health safety standpoint; the realty was that there was very little known about the virus, pandemics were something from the history books, all the people contracting it were mainly from the gay community so, there was a built-in bias for some.

quote:

B) did people in the gay and bisexual community behave recklessly - and, if they did, did they do so whilst aware of the risks?

The gay community largely saw themselves as outcasts, many escaped their families to, more established gay communities like SF, NYC, S.Florida, Chicago... Because many had this 'new found freedom', promiscuity was common, especially if you enjoyed socializing and partying; wasn't uncommon for someone to declare 'I don't give a F-, I ain't planning on living past 30 anyways'. Within gay culture then, there was a hierarchy: men sat at the top- white, black, latin then asian. Gay women were shunned to their own communities, there was very much an anti-women vibe in SF's Castro for a time; not unusual for a gay man to spit out misogynistic insults casually. Bi's were seen as traitors, and Trans were grouped in with the drug addicts, cross-dressers, pedophiles and other 'oddities' were shoved off to Polk St to live a dirty, street life.

quote:

C) Did gay people with otherwise ordinary lives (say: doctors who happened to be gay, nurses who had sapphic tendencies, accountants who liked to take people of the same sex to bed etc) know of the risks they had upon then - despite their monogamy and their not being in the so-calleg “party circuit”?

There was certainly those who took things seriously or, more reserved however, you if you were dating, there's a good chance you'd hook-up with somebody who was much more promiscuous thus, their exposure to the virus was no different than anybody else. Education and awareness campaigns became a cause for many later in the decade, which helped establish themselves with other professional groups as being serious.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

B) did people in the gay and bisexual community behave recklessly - and, if they did, did they do so whilst aware of the risks?

The gay community largely saw themselves as outcasts, many escaped their families to, more established gay communities like SF, NYC, S.Florida, Chicago... Because many had this 'new found freedom', promiscuity was common, especially if you enjoyed socializing and partying; wasn't uncommon for someone to declare 'I don't give a F-, I ain't planning on living past 30 anyways'. Within gay culture then, there was a hierarchy: men sat at the top- white, black, latin then asian. Gay women were shunned to their own communities, there was very much an anti-women vibe in SF's Castro for a time; not unusual for a gay man to spit out misogynistic insults casually. Bi's were seen as traitors, and Trans were grouped in with the drug addicts, cross-dressers, pedophiles and other 'oddities' were shoved off to Polk St to live a dirty, street life.

Interesting they saw as outcasts. I was University of Florida and into the music scene - alternative, rock, heavy metal, and Dead Kennedy/Black Flag. This was pretty closely aligned with the gay community and the clubs always had the best music. My girlfriend was always welcomed, everyone friendly and was a pretty chill community in the Deep South. They most definitely did see themselves as a separate community, but not one that discriminated against straight, Bi, Tran, etc. Pretty much everyone on the spectrum, common interested and “just people”. I’m sure my view was eased by my age, workmates and roommate, but it was not a negative based culture at least at that time. Interesting to see the different characterization from California to Florida.