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I volunteered for Dr. Sonnabend at the Community Research Initiative on AIDS in NYC, along with Michael Callen. This man gave us hope in the midst of hell. Through that work with him, I felt experienced enough to start, with my physician, The Philadelphia Center in Shreveport, LA. He was certainly a pioneer!
Mindy, You're correct and I used the LGBT nomenclature inaccurately. I meant to refer to the institutional gay and lesbian political leadership at the time (there was lesbian leadership involved in the community's response to the epidemic from the beginning). Sean
Why do we forget all the great people, like me who fought for gay rignts, worked on gay pride Boston,back when it was, a good chance you could be hurt, Worked with early HIV researches. Was in tons of studies for yrs. went public about having HIV. Was in the first Nova special about AIDS. Watched over 200 gay men die. Faced discrimination in hospitals, and other places. Fought for all the people who were HIV poz, so they could get support services. Still active online to reduce the 56,000 new infections of HIV in the USA. Sick in 1979 diagnosed by co-culture, by DR Goopman in 1983, Fought to survive. Fought for early treatment. When I DIE, if nobody cares all the history, I have seen goes away. PEOPLE like me should have their life story recorded, cause THE WORLD is forgetting. It is a KIND of GENOCIDE of HISTORY. Young gay men do not know what happened. IF we forget our HISTORY, we doom ourselves to have it happen again. Meningitis, has killed a few gay men, why are we waiting, for more to die? There is a vaccine, We need to vaccinate 10's of thousands of gay men maybe 100'd of thousands gay men. DO NOT LET HISTORY REPEATE.
The question assumes that "LBT" were integrated into the "G" leadership. What could the "G" leadership have done differently? It could have paid attention to the "L"s and "T"s of color who were already dying. The "G" leadership could have looked past the boundaries of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC to Anacostia where people had already died. They might have visited Lorton Reformatory -- or any other prison -- to see who was sick and dying. What do we know now was a mistake? It was a mistake to presume that "identity" was a determinant for seroconversion. What do these things mean for future epidemics or for addressing the HIV epidemic now? "Racial" science is still with us. Health care is a right not a privilege.
edfu
"What do we now know was a mistake?" That we failed to recognize that our heterosexual enemies at the time were correct about our sexual activities but for the wrong reason. This was not an ethical reason but a medical one. That one of the primary tenets of the gay-liberation movement of the 1970s--have as much sex as you want, where you want, when you want, how you want--turned out to kill us, because of a then-unknown virus. That the president of GMHC in 1982, Paul Popham, told me, when I was attempting to edit the first newsletter from GMHC: "We can't tell people how to have sex." That Dr. Sonnabend, Michael Callen, Richard Berkowitz, and others who were advocating for safer-sex practices were ostracized, ridiculed, and condemned by the gay community.
July 18, 2013