The Aids Crisis: The Breakdown Of Identity Politics

As the 1980s progressed, the gay and lesbian community increasingly realized the devastating impact of AIDS on gay men. Fostered by the economic-cultural "ethnic model" of community development, gay and lesbian identity politics was unable to cope with this situation.

The complex of diseases called AIDS was first discovered among gay men in 1981. From the first moment the gay male community became aware of AIDS (which was first called GRID—gay-related immune deficiency), it responded politically. By the end of the summer in 1981,

a group of gay men had already met at author Larry Kramer's apartment in New York City and had established the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC)—the largest AIDS organization in the country today.^[14]

In the late 1970s, homosexuals had been under attack from the Religious Right and other conservatives. Lesbian and gay communities had just barely fought off conservative attacks not only in Dade County, Florida, but also in St. Paul, Minnesota; Eugene, Oregon; and statewide in California with Proposition 6. In the midst of these campaigns, a disgruntled conservative politician assassinated Harvey Milk. When Milk's murderer was convicted of manslaughter and received a light sentence, San Francisco's gay community erupted in a riot outside City Hall.^[15]

Gay activists realized that an epidemic of a fatal, sexually transmitted disease originating in the gay male community was politically explosive. People might take drastic political action against the gay community. Homophobic conservatives could demonize homosexuals and promulgate an antisexual morality. Doctors initially advised gay men to stop having sex. In addition, it soon became apparent that the public health authorities were less responsive to the epidemic than had been the case in previous fatal outbreaks, such as Legionnaires' disease in Philadelphia in 1976.

As the number of deaths in the gay community skyrocketed, the inadequate response of federal and local authorities provoked increasing despair and anger.^[16] Soon, gay men banded together to try to deal with the epidemic more effectively. Even before the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) itself was discovered, the epidemiological evidence suggested that the disease was probably transmitted through blood and sperm. Groups of activists in New York and San Francisco focused on education as a way to retard the epidemic. They developed safe-sex guidelines and established organizations to circulate information about the epidemic and counsel people who feared exposure.^[17]

The epidemic's dimensions seemed to expand enormously. It affected other communities, such as Haitians, African Americans, hemophiliacs, the recipients of blood transfusions, and intravenous drug users. The incubation period seemed to be growing longer. The gay

community's own organizing efforts, important and valuable though they were, fell far short of what was required with an epidemic of such huge proportions.

It became increasingly clear that a more forceful political response was needed. In the fall of 1987, activists formed ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in New York. Soon afterward, they organized groups in cities across the country. ACT UP revitalized a style of radical political activity that had flourished in the early days of the gay liberation movement. Grassroots and confrontational, it had a flair for imaginative tactics that captured media attention.^[18] ACT UP demanded that the Food and Drug Administration accelerate the approval of AIDS drugs, that pharmaceutical firms lower drug prices, and that the National Institutes of Health expand its research on AIDS. In addition, ACT UP attacked public indifference, which hindered AIDS education and enabled employers, landlords, and insurance companies to discriminate against people with AIDS.

The growing impact of AIDS on the American population forced activists to broaden their constituency. ACT UP groups around the country primarily consisted of gay white men, but the need to reflect AIDS's epidemiology and to build alliances with other communities affected by AIDS led to a politics that strived to be more inclusive and more open to building coalitions. It was never a smooth process. Various communities affected by AIDS sometimes had little else in common. Some of the groups were also socially stigmatized and had even fewer resources than the gay community. Occasionally, they had segments who voiced their discomfort with or disapproval of homosexuality. When it came to matters of strategy, AIDS activists even had increasing conflicts with gay and lesbian political elites within the community over political priorities.^[19]

The politics of AIDS activism forced gay and lesbian activists to have increased interaction with federal, state, and local governments, thereby transforming the lesbian and gay community's relation with the state. Community-based organizations received government funding and participated in policymaking to a much greater extent than ever before. The AIDS movement has had a significant impact on government research,

public health policies, and government funding of treatment, care, and education. This government funding has created large-scale institutions with jobs and career possibilities that did not exist in the lesbian and gay communities before the epidemic.

These economic and institutional developments have had two major effects on the gay and lesbian communities. First, they have encouraged lesbian and gay political institutions to engage more with other communities, governmental agencies, and mainstream institutions. Second, they have transformed the class structure of gay and lesbian leadership. The new jobs and career possibilities attracted a generation of leaders who were upwardly mobile and educated at elite universities and colleges. In the past, gay men such as this might have pursued conventional careers. Now, though, many of them were infected with the virus that causes AIDS and took up AIDS activism to fight for their lives. The older generation of leaders had chosen gay political life as an alternative to mainstream careers. Very early on in the epidemic, however, AIDS devastated the founding generation both physically and emotionally. A new generation soon displaced the older one.

AIDS had decimated the gay male community, had forced it to reach out to other communities, and had seriously undermined its economic and cultural self-sufficiency. The countervailing pressures of gay and lesbian identity politics and of AIDS activism produced a political situation that required a new perspective—one that conceived of identity as stable, but also recognized the incredible diversity within the community. The perspective needed to account for the kinship of all sexual minorities and the range of possible gender roles, ethnic, and racial identities. In this moment, Queer Nation was born.