OutCasting; Pandemics - Covid 19 and AIDS - part 1 of 4

people we don't have to worry about this because it's only the gays and the haitians who are getting through demographics as utterly dispensable in white upper class american couple opportunity for help graves because it's really it's nice this is our testing public radio's lgbt q youth program where you don't have to be queer to be here i'm casting is produced in new york by the media for the public good online and outcasts immediate dot org hi i'm tess it's too early to tell about the impact covered while the world could be under control in a few months or could become something unimaginable but the effective aids is huge some people are suggesting that what we're feeling now and the early days of the covert outbreak must be similar to how i felt at the beginning of the aids crisis but there are some crucial

differences in a commentary in the april twenty twenty edition about passing over time pastor chris said imagine how much lower the number of people lost decades might have been if people haven't hated gay men and had instead recognized aids is a worldwide health crisis right from the beginning and imagine how you'd today dealing with his new corona virus would be panicking of covert were raging in your community but there was no effect of public response i imagine the sickness and death becoming pervasive among your own friends and family and asking pleading screaming for help but no one listens no one really cares about the infected and the government sits on money that should be released for developing a vaccine or cure all for caring for those who were sick imagine the rage and grief you feel as your friends were getting sick and dying and the rest of the world was ignoring the whole thing joining us now couples understand and not just imagine is jay boucher jay is a veteran journalist and activist he arrived in your

city in nineteen eighty two he began writing for the near creative the leading gay newspaper at the time and that became associate producer of our time our weekly tv show about lgbt life in new york city hosted by the activist and historian peter russo jay joined act up york in eighty seven the year the group has found it he took part in key demonstrations of the fta protest in nineteen eighty eight stop the church in nineteen eighty nine and the demonstration at the national institutes of health in nineteen ninety he served as the head of act ups media committee taking the helm from michelangelo senior ellie most recently jay was the editor of rainbow warrior my life in color of them or of gilbert baker creator of the rainbow flag jay is also a member of the gilbert baker foundation and co founder public impact media consultants a pr firm for progressive groups and individuals walk about passing today so tell us a bit about gay identities evolved and the dozen years between stone wall and the

beginning of the aids crisis i didn't come out formally until nineteen seventy eight and that was shot nine years after stonewall but i can tell you that i grew up in the country where the people that called people were beginning to recognize a lot of it people mostly thru fashion and proof the omen for tv there with a greater awareness of pushing beyond the low in the dr and lgbt people were taking their rightful place and finally to be lgbt after generation of oppression and a legal problems and at one point just being gay or lesbian or acting upon it could get you thrown in jail or are you to send to her like i just as vital therapist would recommend electro

shock therapy for you so we went from a very oppressive time to a time where the window with opening on to greater awareness greater sensitivity the lgbt community live in the mix of mainstreaming of our real iraq of acceptance when aid stepped into now i have to acknowledge also that there were adversaries because the nineteen seventy seven anita bryant was a finger and at religious person active at a legislative protest against lgbt people in dade county for i am with pushing for a bill that would undermine the legal right of lgbt people are assertion was that gays and lesbians were out to recruit children and this is early nineteen

thirty seven and it sounds like something from puritanical dave and she did get this law to pass in dade county florida and it emboldened other homophones across the country for a while you were making advancements in various places there was also this backlash because for the first time for lgbt people were being upfront an open and refusing a macaw that held court from a major moral codes especially within the religious community were pushing back now you mentioned anita bryant and the political developments that revolved around her and her anti gay protests but around the same time we also saw the election of harvey milk and seven sisko how did this election and the way that lgbt people were able to find their way into the government feel to the gay community lgbt people were no longer hiding in the

shadows they were taking back their civil rights of americans they were refusing to be second class citizens in a lot of people for them it was very easy to rail against lgbt people could they didn't really know anybody so they could demonize them because there are no examples of lgbt people in their community but the people were standing up and find another the fly ball and not on the recriminations are enough of evil live that were being news to leverage having our legal rights taken away from us and in california there was a new legislative attempt it was called the breakthrough initiatives and that would have allowed anybody who was openly gay in schools to lose their jobs it would've just devastated the gay community and the time to gay and lesbian people did not fit down did not just let all the folks been all over them

and they thought they went all over the state including harvey milk he spoke eloquently in all these third gymnasiums and schools around california saying the people behind the big initiative you think that in a stopgap dismantling the rights of gay lesbian believe you me they're going to continue and they're going to determine whether it who doesn't and you know think to harvey's we went live appearances and it is common friends and the way that he spoke to people from the heart californians were able to defeat the brain initiative but soon after that harvey milk was assassinated the fact is that we had such high hopes and this man was a leading light in the lgbt community but the homophobic knew that he was dangerous and white are fda unlike mlk unlike anybody trying to bring

equality country harvey milk was shot down they've talked about a lot of the actors in that was going on during this time period but a lot of the tended to be mainly in larger cities where was that the larger cities were more cosmopolitan the end they were places where lgbt people could go they could escape from their provincial small town and come to large cities where they would be accepted and there with a grater well all of our openness and tolerance and for this occasion but what did that mean that meant that if you went to the small town either they gave the lesbians were living in the conflict or they had all left in order to have their rights in the largest cities so therefore you had almost zero consciousness about gays and lesbians in the smaller places and therefore you had almost

zero political action there as well nobody wanted to be authentic target and make a stand for gay and lesbian rights from when it could mean that they're fifty and in some cases their lives and so therefore you find the groundswell of investments in the lgbt civil rights to be happening mostly in the larger cosmopolitan cities that have become game active driver just go and la and new york boston as well have a very vibrant lgbt political movement so while these cities were centers of political activism and change it was all too in these places that people began to come down with strange illnesses and started dying had as you first become aware of what was happening on live was in college and i lived in a friend's apartment on beacon hill helping him paint and there were newspapers scattered around and sure enough there was a copy from papers in the new york times and i

happened to read that it can be strange cancer has been seen in homosexuals using time the new york times a week and that was the first thing that i thought that with the shot heard around the world the choir fake article by dr warren tolman that first got out there now there have been from coverage in this the leading media up until then but this was the first mainstream media acknowledgement of it unfortunately the times did not energetically fall the epidemic after that in fact in many ways they fell down on the job for many years until they finally towards the late eighties when you know with a very severe situation that they finally commit more report oriole resources to it writing about the epidemic but they do have that distinction of having been the first

arguably the first mainstream media outlets to alert people to the epidemics but at some point a pattern emerged and it became clear that an aids diagnosis was essentially a death sentence for many people how did word of what was happening with this strange disease spread within the community you know if you talk to people lived in new york in the very like the late seventies and early eighties there were already cases raging people already knew people were affected fell upon the family so quickly people would tell each other what was going on and more and more you realize that something momentous and very very lethal what's happening they were small community organizations doing everything that they could but a lot of doctors in the mainstream either didn't want to deal with big a patient or the patient's were even out to their doctors and so if they had something that they felt

was sexually transmitted or they have the mystery illness they did not feel comfortable going to their doctors because that would be tantamount to coming out and they didn't want to come out so the bigotry the prejudice that poisoned there a car off a point in the medical field so that even in the early days people who have the beginnings of a third which they didn't even know it was were reluctant to even go to their doctor than be open about what was going on because then the doctor would fake id think this happen you know you the person would have to say well i'm a man who have sex with other men in the end he didn't want to do that job they had a career they have a livelihood that could be crushed in a moment if they came out and showed that was one of the major problems of the early days of the epidemic yeah doctors who weren't interested and you had people who were reluctant to be forthcoming about what was going on

this is outcasts public radio's lgbt q u program reducing your idea for the public at the online al kasim media dot org as the cove and it had demick unfolds around the world some people upset this is what it must have felt like the observations our guest is deep water or a long time activist who's involved in the struggle against aids in your city so as he said today in the early years of the outbreak in the united states it was associated closely with gay men one other groups and was initially one was that not just but you know the fact that aig with phil and phineas that it struck people who were disempowered a virus doesn't distinguish but because of various roots of transmission he was disproportionately affecting poor people people of color sex worker of iv drug users and men who have sex with men all these people all

these groups were arguably demeaned and diminished end revival groups in the united states so they already didn't have the political clout that they needed you could argue that they did not have that cohesion that sense of solidarity to work together and a lot of them were poor and all of the youth were horrible situation that only exacerbated the spread of h i v and the lack of services that these people hat and initially there were many cases happening in the haitian community nobody could explain that either and so often pushed to people said oh we don't have to worry about this because it's only they gave and the haitians who are getting with two groups to demographics are within and utterly dispensable in white upper class

america which had the lion's share of the power which have the lion's share of the medical and monetary resources they were not moved to help these people now i'm being extremely general without of course there were people who were helping and at the beginning at all people were not only fighting illness but they were fighting stigma and in many cases the stigma would overcome any help your people do the forthcoming about having or whatever the flu illness was initially it give you from perspective on it it would've called gay related immunodeficiency de vive granted so people were already presuming that only gay people were getting it they had no idea that the cases were beginning to mount in

africa in the united states people had billing curve on end they were looking at who was getting at the filing well they are people we like anyway so ok let's just ignore it and ignore them you know and that's where you talk about a genocide people think that that is not hyperbole but there were medical people and political people who knew what was happening with this epidemic end one that they didn't want to do anything that they didn't care or two if they showed any compassion towards the people who are getting it they felt that the balance of their constituents the voters would be a degree that they were helping these people who were less for americans and so you just feel all these opportunities help were pushed back

and pushed down because of bigotry because of ignorance because of homophobia because of race because of capitalism all the rhythms that we still laboring under now all the atoms that are also investigating i covered it so there was this panic and the gay community and in the haitian community as you said an intravenous drug community and all his other disenfranchised groups but at the same time a lack of public urgency among the american public what did his seal it only had you know ronald reagan and george bush in the white house and that day he came in on at an agenda to take care of the wealthy and the privileged and eighty nine members viewed from that and so the people who were getting aids were not part of their agenda and they knew that the male folks knew that if they even without doing anything about it they would have the

fury from their constituents you know a president is supposed to help all americans but during the reagan bush era that was not the case reagan was very adamant about who he wanted to help and who he wanted to ignore and hope that they went away and those of us in the lgbt community and in the age community i realized that we were being dumped janet hindu ignored just left to die and for that reason are community buckled down and began creating or innovations to help each other because we realize that help was not forthcoming from the united states that we were being abandoned it was like nineteen eighty three that we finally were able to identify the virus always did know up until then the route of transmission

what was happening to we finally found out there was a virus that was being sexually transmitted because before then people thought it was just in the air that if you would hear somebody with aids you would catch ages you would the common cold they were so much mr information and that myth information fewer the ignorance and the hatred of the homophobia in the race for them no fossil fuel people ignoring or people wave of that people work in hospital whole way of you know if they were lucky enough to get their own awful there the nurses or the new orleans would not even bringing the food into their room and they'd be afraid that they could catch it just by being in the room with them so the early years were really horrific really cruel and people died sean and lonely and being a pariah status and somebody through you know watch

be a key the many tv movie the normal heart to learn what that was like a re creation of what those early days were where gay men were reviled and forgotten end and left to die by the medical system i mean certainly people in new york and the medical people in new york were trying to save people but in other parts of the country where he didn't have that enlightenment and you didn't have that compassion dr and people were getting at it hadn't even come out yet and so when you got a chevy people presume that you're gay and so each it was this horrific outing negative people in the cotton living their lives under the radar family were coming down with a charlie because of their sexual orientation and of course you have these people were always on the download or have a wife and kids at home and we're going

out every now and then for sexual our education on the fly and now these people were getting each it end if it was this big rumble atari thing it would on mastering these people who were in the closet in the most horrendous invasive way great panic in ruining lives are continued and as i said before we were on the precipice of mainstream acceptance in the late seventies gay people without really cool it happen more accepted well the epidemic jeff destroyed all that the little bit of advancement that we had made in terms of the legal matters in terms of our standing in the social world and the art was all being torn apart shredded and pulled back he touched on the way that the aids

crisis affect the public perception of the gay community but how did it affect the way that gay people saw themselves well if you're a gay person who wasn't particularly happy with the way life was in the fact is you know if you have a certain amount of self loathing and had been internalized a mold for that community oh how you feel family you have an illness that left and billie came because of your sexuality it would give people who didn't have a very strong fence and fell fifteen a real wakeup call you know the fall clothing would be ended up tenfold and there were people who thought why don't i try to go straight you know look what happened now now i'm going to die because i'm gay just a small car chirp of gay people who had really strong fell fifteen in a

great faith and felt we're willing to fight back were willing to start an organization called gay men's health crisis which i believe was the first community organization in the united states based in new york to address the eighth it was named the gay men's health crisis because that's exactly what we were living through with any epidemic and bring about the best people and it brings out the worst in people and brings out the best in some governments it brings out the worst but everybody of touched him from way and i'm physically grateful for people like larry kramer and the men and women who founded gay men's health crisis in eighty two and i needed a model for aids organizations around the country that would help people and address the crisis with compassion not with bigotry not with divisive behavior and

policies you know the fact is that nobody ever seen it before and so people of age even though they were american they did not have the right fit everyone else has because that we've seen as wealth quite the people said well people made the dangerous and the dangers for everybody else therefore if you're a landlord and you heard that your anant had a chevy you could throw him out and you say well yeah ok it is dangerous or if you were or a manager of a company and you find out if somebody's had a journey in your office you would be justified legally in making them lose their jobs people with aids had no rights whatsoever that only came out with the americans with disability act ii which i think without wishing nineteen ninety so ev from the beginning of the epidemic and eighty one to nineteen ninety

anybody with a thick head of your own right as an american in philly with a very horrible time for even the strongest type of person and if you were a person who didn't have a steel backbone already have strong for bahrain or or the willingness or the energy if you work at it you're good you're fighting the disease but you're also fighting the widespread institutionalized homophobia of the united states like that while you're fighting for your life as well that's all the time we have for now look at this conversation on the next issue about as they try to investigate that's it for this edition about casting this program has been produced by the outcast and team including its participants on the way sour one star to chris low born justin lucas our executive producer is mark

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alright so that if his paper or say one more time eight six six four eighty seven three feet six or online at the trevor project of gaza finally got our side out as an immediate target for outlasting an lgbt key resources and lukas thanks for listening