Here I am.
A little perspective: When I came out in 1963, there was no such thing as coming out. NOBODY considered homosexuality to be in any way acceptable, not even gay people. The most liberal people believed that we were deviant, but it wasn’t our fault. I was only out because I admitted I was attracted to other guys, not because I was happy with it. Nobody was happy with it. I was a college freshman, and I had every intention of going into some kind of therapy, once I finished school and had some kind of income. But at least I was honest about it, though I didn’t know anyone else who was out.
Once AIDS hit in the early 80s, I was totally out in every respect. I was living in NYC, and everyone I knew began getting sick and dropping like flies. And except for gay men, nobody gave a damn. They were too busy passing around all the jokes, and removing PWAs from their homes and jobs. So for at least the first few years, we had to rely on each other for strength, with no knowledge of what the disease was or how it was spread, no treatment, no cure, nothing. And of course the religious right was having a field day, gleefully tallying the body count.
I remember a small article in the *Advocate, *saying that something like 23 gay men in NYC, S.F. and L.A. had succumbed to a mystery illness. And how indignant we were, that 23 guys died, and there still wasn’t a cure.
The first “others” to become in any way sympathetic were the more liberal Jewish communities, followed by gay and straight women. The absolute last to take the epidemic seriously was the African-American clergy, who are still in inexcusable denial, in spite of all the deaths in their own community. This is something I will never forget or forgive.
The first real change happened when ACT-UP was born (I was not quite a charter member; I showed up at the second meeting). After having held so many deathbed hands of friends, lovers and strangers, and after sometimes having to be at three funerals at the same time, it was refreshing and invigorating to finally take matters into our own hands. The meetings were packed and rowdy, and the first march on Washington got our point across eloquently, as PWAs lay on the Capital’s steps, in deathlike poses. We finally made the papers.
By the mid-80s, some people were finally becoming more sympathetic, but what I remember most were the leaders and leaders-to-be in the gay community being extinguished, one by one. So many of the guys who should have been at the forefront of our movement were dead or dying. I have a hard time believing that we made any kind of political progress, just based on other people’s sympathy. Not in the light of all my friends and lovers and neighbors who were now gone. It has been a colossal net loss, and I can’t think of it as anything positive. HIV robbed us of two generations of men who should have made the world a better place.
But little by little, people did come around . . . not out of sympathy, but because of courageous individuals and organizations. And now, finally, in the last few years, homophobia is for the first time socially unacceptable in our mainstream society. We even have politicians and sports people who have to apologize for anti-gay comments. And now we have a President who’s in favor of same-sex marriage. This is remarkable, something I never thought I’d see.
But I can’t help thinking of all the guys who should have lived to see this happen, but didn’t.