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With talk of our current war on terrorism comes talk of racial
profiling. Nobody likes singling out a particular group for
negative attention ““ yet at certain times in history, this
approach has been necessary. And, as the particular history of AIDS
demonstrates, ignoring a minority group’s specific problem
for fear of “singling them out” does far more harm than
good.
The history of AIDS ““ so important in understanding its
future ““ has been whitewashed to remove all associations with
the homosexual community.
It’s generally known that when AIDS first appeared here,
it was localized entirely within the male homosexual population
(Center for Disease Control, Historical Fact Sheet 1998). But
it’s taboo to argue that the gay leadership of the early
1980s is utterly to blame for the wider prevalence of AIDS today.
Taboo or not, these are all verifiable facts and trends.
But the radical gay left has replaced fact with myth and
persists in blaming AIDS on anyone but itself. A typical canard,
revived in TenPercent’s Spring 2000 article “Unworthy
Prestige,” blames AIDS on President Ronald Reagan. Did Reagan
“have the power to control the epidemic but (do) nothing
instead” as TenPercent alleges?
 Illustration by ED OYAMA/Daily Bruin
Emphatically, no. A conservative, pre-perceived as hostile to
“the cause,” could not by words alone induce abstinence
on the part of homosexual men engaging in highly promiscuous and
dangerous sexual activity as a part of their “gay
liberation.”
The truth is this: the power to control the epidemic was in the
hands of those contracting the disease. But because the means of
controlling AIDS ““ modification of sexual activity ““
struck at the core of how the community defined itself, radical gay
leaders chose instead to ignore the disease, take deliberately
ineffective action, and attack irrelevancies.
AIDS arrived shortly after “gay liberation” during
which radicals first achieved rank and prestige. Typical were
liberationists like Edmund White ““ author of “The Joy
of Gay Sex” ““ who pushed promiscuity as a means of
freedom, crowing, “Gay men should wear their sexually
transmitted diseases like red badges of courage in a war against a
sex-negative society.” The first group that contracted AIDS
had taken such ideas to heart, averaging 1,000 sexual contacts per
year per person (David Horowitz, “Radical Son”). Odds
of contraction for gay men were higher due to the abrasive nature
of anal sex, which opens internal lesions ripe for infection.
An activist, radical leadership suppressed the only means of
containing the disease: mandatory testing and reporting, contact
tracing of infected partners and explicit warnings against
unprotected sex.
Having so recently “liberated” themselves, there was
fear that acknowledging AIDS as a disease causally linked with
promiscuous anal sex would re-stigmatize the community. In the
minds of gay radicals, the possibility of political isolation was
worse than letting the disease spread unchecked.
Bathhouses were a major locus of AIDS. But rather than admit the
problem, the radical left fought to keep them open as a center for
ongoing “liberation.”
Horowitz illustrates the consequences of dissent with the case
of Bill Kraus, a gay activist who tried to have AIDS warnings
posted in the bathhouses when thousands of outsiders arrived for
the Gay Pride Parade. The proposal was rejected, and Kraus was
ostracized, condemned as a “sexual fascist” and a
“traitor to the community.”
Larry Littlejohn, another gay activist, was similarly condemned
for threatening to collect signatures for a referendum on shutting
the bathhouses down.
The gay leadership compromised and enacted ineffective
“monitoring” of the establishments, while Littlejohn
was savaged by the Bay Area Reporter, the newspaper for San
Francisco’s predominantly homosexual Castro district, as a
“traitor extraordinaire.”
In the eyes of the leadership, any attempt to moderate gay
behavior was an attack on homosexuals themselves. As Horowitz
shows, there were some who foresaw the consequences.
Catherine Cusic ““ a lesbian nurse, official of the Harvey
Milk Club and care provider for AIDS patients ““ explained,
“There are leaders in this community who don’t want
people to know the truth. Their attitude is that it is bad for
business, bad for the gay image. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are
going to die because of this attitude. The whole thing borders on
the homicidal.”
This much is clear ““ for purely political motives, leftist
homosexual leaders allowed a beatable disease to spread unchecked.
Their label of AIDS as “everyone’s disease”
proved a self-fulfilling prophecy, for the disease did spread
unchecked into the wider population.
The history of AIDS is also an object lesson in establishing
boundaries for civil liberties.
Genuine, but mostly misplaced concern, brought about the
establishment of Japanese internment camps during World War II.
History has treated the decision harshly. But understand that such
violations stand alone as startling aberrations.
By contrast, disease containment has been universally
celebrated. Would history have opposed the forced vaccination of
polio and small pox?
While the current detainment of Middle Eastern Americans and the
possible violations of their civil liberties will be judged by
history, we cannot succumb to identity politics if the need to
protect human safety, liberty and national security is at
stake.