In 1987 and 1988, I worked as a Social Worker in Australia’s largest AIDS Unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.

St. Vincent’s was, on the face of it at least, the obvious location for an AIDS treatment unit. It was, after all, located in the centre of Sydney’s queer heartland. This was the epicentre of the AIDS crisis.

But the hospital administration was far from happy about taking on this role. In his article Life During Wartime, for example, Paul van Reyk argues that the hospital resisted an increase in AIDS beds despite the availablity of funding from the NSW Health Department. This was down to two reasons. The first was a concern that this would put pressure on the hospital’s other facilities.

But the other was discomfort of the administrators and some surgeons with homosexuality. St. Vincent’s was, after all, a Catholic institution. (See, for example, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons)

Even when the additional AIDS beds were accepted, staff were required to adhere to Catholic doctrine: in practice this meant the provision of condoms was banned, as was the discussion of safe sex (as this was deemed to be ‘promoting’ homosexuality).

The fact that these restrictions ran counter to best practice in terms of AIDS care and AIDS prevention was irrelevant. Giving people with HIV/AIDS the skills and resources to practice safe sex is absolutely fundamental to AIDS prevention. Safe sex also prevents people living with HIV/AIDS from becoming infected with other infections. And a key concern for people with HIV/AIDS was knowing how to raise their HIV status with prospective sex partners.

None of this mattered to Australia’s largest AIDS unit. Our approach was driven instead by a celibate old man in the Vatican.

Of course the staff – who were all compassionate and intelligent professionals – didn’t sit idly by in the face of this nonsense. We couldn’t give condoms to clients while they were staying in the hospital – too much risk of them being discovered in a surprise inspection. But we did provide them to guys attending the outpatients clinic (albeit in a manner that resembled an illicit drug deal – sealed envelopes, knowing nods and winks and so on).

I ran safer sex workshops for people with HIV/AIDS at locations away from the hospital: advertised only by word-of-mouth.

But I still fell foul of the powers-that-be. I was subject to a disciplinary hearing for having a Safe Sex poster on my office wall. It certainly wasn’t explicit, nor could it be seen by anyone other than the few clients I actually saw in my office. But that really wasn’t the point: that well-known AIDS expert the Pope had spoken!

Of course, my union backed me up and called it for the harrassment that it was. But ultimately I ended up quitting: I was dealing with an average of one death a week on the ward, but the hospital administration – my own manager included – felt that the relentless pursuit of Catholic doctrine was far more important.

There are more details of my fight to be allowed to do my job in my book, Gay in the 80s: From Fighting for Our Rights to Fighting for Our Lives. Available here.