1983. HIV/AIDS: 1,112 and Counting
If all of this had been happening to any other community for two long years, there would have been, long ago, such an outcry from that community and all its members that the government of this city and this country would not know what had hit them.
Why isn’t every gay man in this city so scared shitless that he is screaming for action? Does every gay man in New York want to die?
Let’s talk about a few things specifically.
• Let’s talk about which gay men get AIDS.
No matter what you’ve heard, there is no single profile for all AIDS victims. There are drug users and non-drug users. There are the truly promiscuous and the almost monogamous. There are reported cases of single-contact infection.
All it seems to take is the one wrong fuck. That’s not promiscuity – that’s bad luck.
• Let’s talk about AIDS happening in straight people.
We have been hearing from the beginning of this epidemic that it was only a question of time before the straight community came down with AIDS, and that when that happened AIDS would suddenly be high on all agendas for funding and research and then we would finally be looked after and all would then be well.
I myself thought, when AIDS occurred in the first baby, that would be the breakthrough point. It was. For one day the media paid an enormous amount of attention. And that was it, kids.
There have been no confirmed cases of AIDS in straight, white, non-intravenous-drug-using, middle-class Americans. The only confirmed straights struck down by AIDS are members of groups just as disenfranchised as gay men: intravenous drug users, Haitians, eleven hemophiliacs (up from eight), black and Hispanic babies, and wives or partners of IV drug users and bisexual men.
If there have been – and there may have been – any cases in straight, white, non-intravenous-drug-using, middle-class Americans, the Centers for Disease Control isn’t telling anyone about them. When pressed, the CDC says there are “a number of cases that don’t fall into any of the other categories.” The CDC says it’s impossible to fully investigate most of these “other category” cases; most of them are dead. The CDC also tends not to believe living, white, middle-class male victims when they say they’re straight, or female victims when they say their husbands are straight and don’t take drugs.
Why isn’t AIDS happening to more straights? Maybe it’s because gay men don’t have sex with them.
Of all serious AIDS cases, 72.4 percent are in gay and bisexual men.
• Let’s talk about “surveillance.”
The Centers for Disease Control is charged by our government to fully monitor all epidemics and unusual diseases.
To learn something from an epidemic, you have to keep records and statistics. Statistics come from interviewing victims and getting as much information from them as you can. Before they die. To get the best information, you have to ask the right questions.
Kramer was enormously influential in the community, while not particularly loved. The article roused many, I’m sure. I remember sitting in a coffee house in L.A. absolutely floored by the raw emotion and honesty. I had been covering the outbreak with growing alarm for the gay radio collective at left-wing station KPFK. By the summer of 1982, just a year into our weekly coverage, our news team could already see that the epidemic was the most significant crisis the movement had ever faced, with no end in sight. Kramer helped frame the issue for the community in a way that cut through the BS. I know many, including prominent movement activists, felt he was sex-negative and shrill. Big personalities are hardly unknown in our community. Say what you will. Kramer happened to be right.