PRIDE 🏳️🌈: My Personal Memories of How HIV/AIDS Changed Us, 1970s–2024
HIV/AIDS, safe sex, & views from an octogenarian
Post-Stonewall brought an era of more freedom for the LGBT Community.
During the 1970s and 1980s, post-Stonewall Riots, it felt good to be gay. We assumed that the newly gained rights, freedoms, and changes for the better would last forever. Things felt bright.
I have discussed this in two previous essays: PRIDE 🏳️🌈: The Changing Face of Gay in the 1970s from My Personal Memories and PRIDE 🏳️🌈: Gay Bathhouses from My Personal Memories of the 1970s.
Politically, this was ill-timed for gay men, in light of what had been a time of increasing acceptance and sexual freedom.
For me, considering the beginnings of our fight for gay rights, it seems that the brightness of the new freedoms has diminished. In addition to the “darkness” of HIV/AIDS, I will look at my perception, “the brightness vs darkness”, at the end of this essay.
Being gay during the time of HIV/AIDS
In the beginning, HIV/AIDS (first clinically reported in 1981) affected mostly homosexual men and was called the “Gay Disease”. It was also called the “Gay…
