Meeting the AIDS Challenge
We are a community besieged, from both within and without. Hatred, isolation, and
discrimination have keynoted the history of lesbians and gays, but now gay males, espe
cially, are being forced to contend with what is being called "the gay plague," an odious
epidemic called AIDS, in a disease-stricken subculture where the community appears to be
its own nurturant.
A.I.D.S. T find myself so weary of this abbreviation which has come to haunt and
further taint the gay community over the past two years. Yet I want to say it and write
it over and over and over in hopes that the reality, the excruciatingly sad and liorrendous
reality of AIDS might permeate and jolt what continues to prove to be a guilt-ridden,
lethargic, and often resistant gay consciousness.
In these increasingly hedonistic times, gay men are now being forced to ask and answer
increasingly serious questions about their life choices. The number of AIDS-related
deaths among gay men in the last few months has been staggering, and it is apparent that
the backroom/bookstore/bathhouse/meatrack/sexual multiplicity will prove suicidal if con
tinued. I am not commenting on morality, merely the reality of our lives and deaths. But
gay men of this generation, even those who came out after the appearance of AIDS, have
been conditioned to defend their right to "express their sexuality," and those not yet
touched by the harshness or severity of the disease act as though they possess a natural
immunity. Not only is this attitude stupid, it is dangerous in the existence of untold
numbers who are carriers and who have not yet been diagnosed. This disease is by its very
nature self perpetuating, and unless gay men learn to surrender the use of sex as affirma
tion and to relinquish this lingering, laissez-faire, sex-by-the-numbers attitude, there
might not be anyone left to play with in a few years.
I am certainly not condemning anyone to celibacy or the ascetic life. I am selfish
and, at age 22, am not prepared to lock my libido away in some paranoid hope chest. But
neither can I enter the disco anymore, much less a liaison, without concern for the con
sequences. No amount of abstinence at this point can make me completely safe, only
safer.
More than just endangering our lives, though, AIDS also endangers our existence as a
community by increasing our susceptibility to attack by our adversaries on—you guessed
it—the right. I'm sure to Jerry Falwell et al., AIDS proves to be some sort of cruel
poetic justice, a peculiarly appropriate fate for a bunch of supposed sinners and sodo
mites. Let us not forget that prior to 1973, homosexuality was officially considered by
psychiatrists to be a sickness in and of itself. To this day, in the minds (or absence
thereof) of homophobes, being a "fag" is worse than having cancer, and many fundamentalist
Christians have suggested AIDS is God's punishment of homosexuals. Well, don't go crawl
ing back into your closets. After all, who blamed the American Legion for Legionnaires
Disease?
Easy for me to say, but the catch here is that the American Legion was not a despised
minority group, uncertain of its right to exist, much less public sympathy. The slow
response to the AIDS crisis by the mainstream media is admission of our expandability.
But the really frightening thing is not that the public might be apathetic or that our
enemies should find satisfaction in our suffering but that this imposed guilt should
strike a responsive chord in many gays as well. Though AIDS threatens our very lives, it
need not damage our identity as gay people. Like nothing else in our history, AIDS should
facilitate a mobilization and the creation of single identity within the pluralism of
American society. Where conflict over issues such as pornography, pederasty, and S&M have
divided the gay and lesbian community for years, AIDS can and is uniting us in a struggle
to keep our health and our natural rights.
We will not stand by idly while political homophobes utilize health infractions as an
excuse to continue their assault on gays and lesbians. We will not allow wholesale firing
in restaurants or hospitals. We are now, more than ever, confronting both our adversaries
and our own mortality, and there is strength and wisdom in the fight and the
introspection.
We must introspect, though, both personally and communally. There are hundreds of
people, our brothers and sisters, who are sick, fighting for their lives, and they need
our help. It's not just a matter of doing what's politically correct or waiting around
for the doctors to discover some miracle cure, it's a matter of concern, genuine concern
for human suffering, and a concern which begins, but does not end, with your personal
choices of conduct. These need not be choices borne of some inapplicable, antiquated, or
vague Old Testament morality; they need to be liberated choices borne of love and concern
for the preservation of yourself and of others.
Make the choices. Meet the challenge
Arthur Goodman, III