It’s a Sin: it’s not my story, but at last my history is on screen
Middlesex University LGBT+ Network co-chair Ant Babajee has been living with HIV since 2007 — and never faced the virus when no treatment was available. He reflects on how Queer as Folk and now It’s a Sin tell unforgettable gay stories from a uniquely British perspective, but that so much of our LGBT+ history still begs to be unashamedly told.
I so wish I could have met Mark. I would have given him a big hug and thanked him for all he did for our community.
The story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) was joyously told in Pride (2014) — one of my favourite films. The final two scenes never fail to make me cry — solidarity in action is amazing to see.
As Mark and his friends in LGSM march in Pride across Westminster Bridge, we read that Mark Ashton died from AIDS-related pneumonia on 11 February 1987. He was 26.
I am writing this reflection on It’s a Sin on 11 February 2021 — my 43rd birthday — more than a decade after I started antiretroviral treatment for HIV. I was diagnosed HIV positive on 2 January 2007.
I don’t remember exactly what was said by the health advisor in her phone call to me at 9.30am that day other than her skirting around the result, but the impact of that life-changing moment is unlikely ever to fade.
And yet, 14 years later, how I feel about that moment is now very different. It was a turning point in my life, but ever since I came to terms with my status I refuse to feel shame about it.
I knew It’s a Sin would be a landmark moment in British television, but I am not sure I realised how important it would be for igniting discussions about the AIDS epidemic.
Marketing wisdom says sex sells. But a drama about gay men with their lives and loves stalked by AIDS would surely be a hard sell and a difficult watch. It’s a Sin has confounded expectations and sparked conversations that those of us living with HIV — and especially those of us with an activist bent (pun very much intended) — could only have dreamed about.
National HIV Testing Week 2021 was the most successful ever with more than 20,000 self-sampling test kits being requested. All of the media interest led to my being interviewed for the regional ITV News covering Somerset, where I grew up and was diagnosed. La!
There’s so much to love about It’s a Sin and so much to be positive about. It’s a Sin might not be telling my HIV story — but it certainly is telling my gay history.
When I look back upon my life
I turned on my TV at 9pm on Friday 22 January 2021 for what I expected to be a landmark moment in British television. I wasn’t disappointed.
I had the same butterflies of excitement in my stomach I remember feeling some 22 years earlier when I watched the first episode of Queer as Folk as an undergraduate in my student halls.
Finally representation on screen — unapologetically gay, deliciously camp and gorgeously sexy. I’m doing it! I’m really doing it!
Russell T Davies has written movingly about his decision to turn his back on HIV and AIDS in Queer as Folk, and looking back I know he was right. There’s not an empty condom packet in sight, and RTD faced the wrath of much of the pink press at the time, because of the lack of an explicit safer sex message.
Maybe a joyous depiction of gay sexuality unencumbered from HIV was what we needed to see on our telly screens — as a twinky 21-year-old it was certainly what I needed.
When Nathan, Stuart and Vince exploded on to my TV screen in Oxford in glorious colour in February 1999, antiretroviral medication for HIV had only been around for a few years.
Doctors treating their HIV-positive patients in 1996 with the first protease inhibitors talk about seeing a Lazarus effect: people who were incredibly sick and dying from AIDS-defining infections suddenly began to recover.
All of a sudden — and after more than a decade of heartache and almost certain death for people with the virus — there was the hope of life and recovery.
The emotional scars of those who survived and those who lived through those dark years were deep. The trauma would take far longer to heal, if that were ever possible.
The idea that being a gay man meant you were likely to contract HIV and the sex you would be having was shameful didn’t suddenly disappear when treatment came along. When I came out as gay to my Mum, AIDS was her biggest worry. The shame and stigma persist.
It’s always with a sense of shame
In March 2018 I excitedly reviewed the first preview performances of The Inheritance at the Young Vic.
Even though Eric and Toby and their friends were living in New York — thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic — I had never watched anything on stage that had spoken to me quite like this.
It’s a Sin took me on a different journey to The Inheritance. As It’s a Sin leaves us in 1991, the TV drama lacked the resolution of the theatre production with us seeing the characters who survived in the present day — and I so want to know what happened to Ash, Jill and Roscoe.
To be clear, It’s a Sin certainly tells an important chapter of my gay history in a beautiful, colourful and simultaneously heart-warming and heart-wrenching way.
The story of AIDS in Britain hasn’t been told in this way before and for that it should rightly be applauded.
I’m quite sure RTD and Olly Alexander — for his stellar performance as Ritchie Tozer — are going to have to find room on their mantelpieces for numerous gongs.
As a Doctor Who fan, I’d give them both an award just for that scene in episode four.
But where it misses is the lack of resolution and the opportunity — within the drama itself — to show the amazing progress made in HIV treatment and prevention.
Channel 4 added a context-setting continuity announcement about the advances in treatment after episode two, seemingly because of some pressure from HIV advocates.
It’s a Sin is about my gay history, but it isn’t my present or future living with HIV. It is my yesterday — and that is a shame.
I’ll leave the last word to Nathaniel Hall, who plays Ritchie’s lover Donald. As an audience member of First Time — Nathaniel’s show about his journey from shame to hope — I received a copy of the letter in which he came out to his parents:
“The only way to rid yourself of shame is to walk towards the fear that causes it.
When I was diagnosed with HIV it was a different world, a different diagnosis than it is today. Now, thanks to great work from activists and campaigners, healthcare provided for people with HIV is exemplary and, slowly, attitudes are beginning to change. When I found out back in 2003, all I knew was I’d caught an incurable illness.”
“And so it’s time to come out of the closet again.
More and more I’ve felt compelled to tackle this ridiculous shame and fear that plagues so many people’s lives, particularly those with HIV. Whilst we may have all caught it in different ways, the stories I’ve heard in support sessions with other people with the virus are all the same: the stigma attached is so great that we choose to stay quiet. Not any more.”
HIV facts:
- HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] attacks the immune system and weakens the body’s ability to fight diseases.
- Antiretroviral medication — also called ARVs, combination therapy, or HIV treatment — lowers the amount of the virus in the blood to undetectable levels, which stops it from damaging the immune system, and means it cannot be passed on to other people.
- HIV treatment is now extremely effective and easier to take than ever before. Many people take just one or a few pills once a day.
- A person with HIV should live just as long as an HIV-negative person — especially if they are diagnosed early and begin treatment.
- There is still a great deal of stigma about HIV. Stigma is damaging as it prevents people from getting tested, from accessing treatment and from living a happy and healthy life.
- Aids [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] can develop when HIV damages the immune system to such an extent that it can no longer fight off a range of often rare infections it would normally be able to cope with. In the UK, the term ‘late-stage HIV’ is now generally used as it is much less stigmatising. HIV treatment stops the virus from damaging a person’s immune system.
- HIV cannot be passed on through casual or day-to-day contact. It cannot be transmitted through kissing, spitting, or sharing a cup, plate or toilet seat.
Related stories:
- January 2021: My 14th annHIVersary: a day for hope, not sadness
- December 2020: Nothing about us without us: why it’s vital we amplify the voices of people with HIV on World AIDS Day
- April 2020: COVID-19: physically distant but still connected to my LGBT+ community
- January 2020: The Undetectables: U=U, PrEP and a decade with HIV
- January 2019: Baring all about HIV and U=U
- March 2018: The Inheritance is this generation’s Angels in America
- January 2018: I have just found out I am HIV positive: what do I do now?
- December 2017: World AIDS Day: community, fear and hope
- July 2017: Why I walk with Pride
