1980s. HIV/AIDS: Why was AIDS called ‘the gay plague’?
The early years of AIDS were a time of great fear and anxiety for gay men around the world.* The bulk of this was generated by the mysterious and lethal nature of this new condition. But there was another element that exacerbated the situation – the homophobia whipped up by irresponsible media. Central to this was the sustained use of the terms ‘gay plague’ and ‘gay bug’ when referring to AIDS.
Yet AIDS was never a ‘plague’ and the notion that it was somehow a consequence of a person’s sexual orientation was discounted just over a year after the disease was first identified. Nonetheless, media usage of the term increased rather than decreased in the face of this evidence.
A Plague?
The Oxford English dictionary defines a plague as either:
“A contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium, typically with the formation of buboes…”
Or
“A contagious disease that spreads rapidly and kills many people.”
Even in the earliest days of its manifestation, it was clear that the disease was not spread by the type of casual contact with which plagues are spread. On September 9th, 1983, the US Centers for Disease Control explicitly identified all major routes of transmission as well as ruling out the possibility of transmission through casual contact:
“…AIDS is caused by an agent that is transmitted sexually or, less commonly, through contaminated needles or blood…there has been no evidence that the disease was acquired through casual contact with AIDS patients or with persons in population groups with an increased incidence of AIDS. AIDS is not known to be transmitted through food, water, air or environmental surfaces.”
Nonetheless, this did not stop headlines such as The Star’s “Kiss of Death” (27th September 1985) or The Sun’s “It’s spreading like wildfire.” (1st February 1985). *
A ‘Gay’ Disease?
As for the ‘gay’ connection, there is no doubt that AIDS was first detected in gay men and, for a brief period, desperate researchers examined the so-called ‘gay lifestyle’ for clues as to causation. Sadly, this resulted in the creation of the acronym GRID – “Gay Related Immune Deficiency”. But GRID was only adopted from early 1982 until July 27th 1982, when the Centers for Disease Control realised, amongst other things, that there’s no such thing as a universal “gay lifestyle”.
Even references to Kaposi’s Sarcoma as “the gay cancer” in the gay media had tailed off by December 1982. (For example, ‘”Gay cancer” and poppers are not linked’, HIM Monthly, December 1982).
By 1983 it was clear that AIDS was a global issue that was affecting different groups in different countries. In France and Belgium, for example, the majority of cases were heterosexuals – many with links to Central Africa. At the same time, studies coming out of Africa were showing not only that AIDS had been around long before its emergence in the West but also that it was transmitted predominantly through heterosexual sex. *
And yet media usage of the terms ‘gay plague’ and ‘gay bug’ was only just beginning. For example, The Australian was one of the first newspapers to use the term (‘”Gay plague” epidemic sweeping US’, 17th July 1982). The following month the Philadelphia Daily News ran ‘”Gay plague” Baffling Medical Detectives’ (9th August 1982). In the UK it didn’t appear until nine months after the CDC had abandoned the term ‘GRID’ (“What killed gay plague man?” The Times, 27th March 1983). But then it continued relentlessly, with headlines such as the Mail on Sunday‘s “Britain threatened by gay virus plague” (6th January 1985) continuing into the late 80s.
So why did the media continue to call AIDS ‘the gay plague’ in spite of the evidence? I think part of the clue lies in what a journalist told one of my colleagues when I worked at the Terrence Higgins Trust in 1984 – “AIDS sells more newspapers than bingo.”
AIDS had everything – sex, celebrity exposes, moral enterprise, conspiracy theories and the opportunity to kick a group that was already marginalised from mainstream society. It allowed people to conclude that our ‘lifestyles’ actually generated AIDS as God’s punishment, and it was used to suggest that we were both a physical and moral threat to ‘innocent’ people. Not only were we immensely contagious we were also deliberately contaminating the blood supplies. The repeated use of the term ‘innocent victim’ simply reinforced this idea.
History should judge the media harshly when it comes to their coverage of AIDS. Whilst there were some intelligent exceptions to the rule, the likes of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers stuck to their usual motto of “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
- There is a detailed study of the early days of HIV/AIDS, including the true epidemiology and a study of how the Press reported it, in my eBook Gay in the 80s. Full details are available here.
What happened to people making desions on making a desions about aids and how it spreads .i as a gay man have always wondered what make a certain segument of our genration want to go out and get this deseace and promote it like it was postive to be postive ,not saying i would agree with that its a horribable to think that one would go and do such a thing,but where do some think like that.sorry just confused why
I don’t think you can blame it all on homophobia. There was a good 2 years of absolute panic and hysteria surrounding AIDS/HIV when it first hit the scene. It seemed as if it was a plague to many during the first 2 years. They thought it was rapidly spreading from city to city/person to person, as opposed to the reality. Many who had the virus for some time were being diagnosed.
I was a little girl when it hit the news in 1981. 5, maybe 6 years old. I thought it was the zombie apocalypse when I saw pictures of people wasting away in hospital beds, covered in Kaposi’s sarcoma.
Parents… many parents lost their minds and kept pushing the narrative that it was spread by air, kiss or toliet seats in an irrational attempt to make their children take excess precautionary measures/keep them safe. We currently have 105 stranger abductions in the U.S. a year, out of a population of 320 million, 78 million under 18. It was only slightly higher in the 1970s & 80s when kids played outside all day. Crimes rates have been falling since the 90s. Youth mortality rates are at an all time low but perceived levels of danger are through the roof. It’s become so uncommon to see kids outside playing over the years that parents are being arrested and charged with neglect/child endangerment for letting their children play unsupervised in their own yard. Not because something happened but because someone could have taken their child. They broke the mantra of hysteria and left their perfectly capable child alone. Forget the fact that they have a greater risk of being hit by lightning in their own bathtub. Parents perceive the danger to be much, much greater and law makers (many who are terrified parents themselves) have been persecuting others due to their hysterical sense of perceived danger. Magnify that by 20 during the AIDS panic. The information kept changing as researchers discovered more and many took it as a sign that they had no idea what they were talking about. Fair enough. They didn’t at first, but many continued to latch on to this fear and speculation.
I’m not saying homophobia was not involved at all. Just that it was far more complex. Humans are far more complex, and dismissing it all as homophobia is all too simplistic and taking easy way out. It’s a very Millennial thing to do.
Thanks for this considered response Polly. I certainly agree that people tend to go into panic mode without checking the facts first, be that child welfare or HIV/AIDS. However, I still think we need to look behind that and see who’s responsible for feeding these irrational responses. As you say in your second comment, the media like a good panic. It sells newspapers, for one thing and, as we’re finding here in the UK (and the USA too, I suspect), there’s often a political and/or moral agenda behind this misreporting.
I can’t agree with your statement that information kept changing as researchers learned more and more. The Centers for Disease Control made a very clear statement ruling out casual transmission ( I.e. AIDS was not a plague) in 1983. The media chose to ignore this, as did President Reagan who chose instead to deny there was such evidence, purely for the sake of political expediency. It would be nice to think that episodes like this would make the public more wary of media and politicians ‘facts’, but sadly that still doesn’t seem to be the case.
P.S- Surprise! Surprise! The media loves a panic.
We’re talking about the same group of people who pushed the insane notion that Satanic Day Care Workers were horrifically abusing hundreds to thousands of child without any parents knowing.
One reason it was considered a plague is because it was a death sentence. 100% of patients died. Nowadays HIV is more of a chronic condition with appropriate treatment. It’ has a different prognosis than in the early years. I remember living through the 80s terrified as a tween/teenager in the 80s. People with HIV were pariahs and frequently abandoned all of this was similar to the days of the black plague (although some did recover from that disease).
Hi, do you have access to the Daily Mail newspaper you are referring to? I have searched the archives and can’t seem to find it.
Thanks!
I have a photocopy of the original article or, more precisely, the press clipping that was provided to the Hall Carpenter Archive by Durrant’s Press clipping service. The image in my post is part of that photocopy. The article is actually from the Mail on Sunday so apologies if this has caused any confusion, although they both come from the same stable and the date is still the same. Which archive are you using? The Hall Carpenter Archive press clippings were transferred to the Terrence Higgins Trust some 30 years ago when the Archive had to move out of its offices because it lost its funding when the Greater London Council was abolished.
This really was a disease contracted almost exclusively by homosexuals, here in the States, anyway. I remember vividly the term GRID , and how it was spreading in the gay community and terrorizing everyone. The media , actually, was a bit squeamish in reporting it, because of the subject matter. Not until Rock Hudson died of AIDS, did the media begin to oversaturate the magazines and paper with it. Again, it was a touchy topic and was not lurid or graphic, because the media was much more prudish in the pre-internet days