Gay Life in America:

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Gay Life in America

• The Impact of AIDS
• The Impact on AIDS
• David Jolly, DrPH
• Dept. of Health Education, NCCU

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The Caveats

• One hour? Youve got to be kidding!
• No historian am I
• My qualifications
• Gay MALE life
• I speak for myself
• No one gay community

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The Credits

• Martin Duberman - About Time Exploring the Gay
  Past
• John DEmilio - Making Trouble Essays on Gay
  History, Politics, and the University
• John-Manuel Andriote - Victory Deferred How AIDS
  Changed Gay Life in America

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The Making of a Homosexual Identity

• Homosexual behavior vs. homosexual identity
• Capitalism and the development of single life in
  the city
• Changes in sexual beliefs and sexual morality
• World War II
• Cold War politics and oppression of homosexuals
• Medical model of homosexuality
• Development of a gay urban subculture

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The Making of a Homosexual Identity

• How sexual identity takes shape has influenced
  the gay movement
• The gay movement the creation of a
  self-conscious identity, community and culture
• The choice issue
• Nature vs. nurture

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Stonewall Inn June 1969
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Gay Liberation and Then Some

• The significance of Stonewall
• The Gay Liberation Front
• Transforming the meaning of Coming Out

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The New Visibility The Castro
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A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence
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Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street and gay
martyr
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The inspiration of other movements
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Gay Liberation and Then Some

• Politics of identity both unified and pulled
  apart
• Too radical and risky for many white gays
• Offered too little to others
• Lesbians
• Gay people of color
• GLF a short-lived phenomenon

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Significant Achievements of the 70s

• 73 - APA no longer a mental disorder
• 75 - Civil Service drops ban
• 75 - Federal gay rights bill
• By 76, 17 states repealed sodomy laws
• By 76, 36 cities banned discrimination
• Council of Churches condemns discrimination

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AIDS DENIAL Its a plot. Its no big
deal. Theyll have a cure in no time.
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The Onset of AIDS

• AIDS work bridging the gap between the
  subculture and the movement
• A reinvigoration of grass-roots local activism
• Why was this necessary?
• Reagan Mums the word till 1989

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The Onset of AIDS

• Why should the taxpayers have to spend money
  to cure diseases that dont have to start in the
  first place? Lets help the drug users who want
  to be helped and the Haitian people. But lets
  let the homosexual community do its own research.
  Why should the American taxpayer have to bail
  out these perverted people?
• Rev. Jerry Falwell, Director
• Moral Majority

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Ashes on the White House lawn
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Doing It For Themselves Prevention

• Safer sex/risk reduction guidelines
• The Helms amendment
• The disparity in government funding

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Taking On The Big Boys Treatment
Research

• ACT-UP
• Revision of FDA drug approval process
• Lowering of drug prices
• Model of direct action for other illnesses
• Project Inform AIDS Treatment News
  dissemination of treatment information
• Community research initiatives in NY SF

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An Army of Lovers Care

• Cobbling together a parallel system
• More passion than managerial acumen
• Models for better health care delivery
• Wounded healers

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Persons Living With AIDS

• Coming out with AIDS vs. coming out as gay
• Nix on victim and even patient
• PWA or PLWA
• Birthing the true doctor/patient partnership

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Some Impacts of the Epidemic

• Gay men of color
• Lesbians in AIDS work
• The gay movement

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AIDS and the Health and Social Welfare System

• AIDS as a prism through which all the problems of
  the system are visible
• Still no fundamental reforms
• The canary analogy

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Some Experiences of the Epidemic

• A death-saturated culture
• Survivor guilt
• Aging before our time

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Pieta by Michael Lassell

• A man who is ill
• visits his mother
• in her nursing home.
• You dont look well, she says,
• Neither do you, he says.
• My friends are all dying, she says.
• My friends are dying too.
• Im afraid that when I die
• there will be no one left to
• say prayers at my grave, she says.

• Its my fear, too, he replies
• And they sit and weep,
• each dropping tears onto
• the hands of the other,
• waiting for the other,
• that follows hard
• the heels of time.

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Some Experiences of the Epidemic

• Associating homosexuality with death
• Downplaying the losses of gay men or
• Celebrating the dignity and courage Franny
  Peabody

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Conclusions

• Fostering a sense of community and
• An outlet for internalized homophobia
• Unsafe sex in the 21st century

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HIV Outbreak Among College Students in North
Carolina

• 157 college students diagnosed with new HIV
  infection Jan. 2000 - Apr. 2005.
• diagnosed has increased each year, from 6 in
  2000 to 49 in 2004.
• 85 were Black males.
• 93 of those were MSM or MSM/W.
• Case control study of and - young, Black MSM
• High risk behavior in both and - men.
• College students less likely to gay identify and
  disclose identity. Hightow, Dec. 2005

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• Homophobia the greatest challenge
• As with AIDS, (un)doing it for ourselves
• A promising model Gay/Straight High School
  Alliances

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