HIV/AIDS a mutated epidemic?
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Sunday night I watched the HBO movie The Normal Heart. The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical 1985 off-broadway written and produced by Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP founder Larry Kramer. Kramer accounts his experiences between 1981-1984 when an unknown Gay Cancer plagued the streets of New York City and San Francisco. 1985 was the same year I was born. What does a 28 year old gay man know about the AIDS epidemic? What other's felt? Who am I to speculate? Truly all I can do is speculate. I believe in order to form an opinion, three necessary elements are required. Knowledge, Experience, or Speculation, each being as dangerous as the next on there own. So all I could do was ask, ask older men who lived in New York City during the 80's, or other parts of the globe where there was talk of the Gay Cancer.
Last night I spoke with a friend who has lived in NYC since 1984. He told me that the biggest feeling was fear, a misunderstanding of what was going on. I asked him, "Do you think things are different with my generation?" His answer in a way shocked me. "Absolutely, people aren't as afraid anymore." The Gay Community largely rejected Larry Kramer and his ideologies about what contributed to many of the issues haunting the community. As I watched the film, I tried to understand why many were so critical of Kramer. Perhaps my own judgement is misguided and tainted by bias, a cynicism I share with Kramer that attracted me to him, a cynicism rooted in reality to a psychological epidemic of gay men that I feel, is often ignored, of perhaps also a misguided speculation of observation. Kramer felt not only New York City mayor Ed Koch, a suspected closeted homosexual, was turning a blind eye to the epidemic, but also gay men within the community. The New York Times would not even print the word "gay". Early in the film you see Kramer and a group of friends trying to distribute a copy of The New York Native, the first and only gay publication to hit the streets of the city during the AIDS epidemic, the paper looked to focus on AIDS denialism and scientific understanding of the virus. An attempt to better understand Larry Kramer and what penetrated such rejection and denial, I did a simple google search.
"Why did the gay community hate Larry Kramer?" Ironically I found an article published by Kramer entitled "The Tragedy of Today's Gays" I had to laugh, as that was not what I was expecting. As I began to read the article, I witnessed the danger of speculation I speak of. Kramer was witnesses court rulings that shot down Marriage Equality, Adoption Rights, Employment Rights, all this was written during the Bush Administration. He said "Gay Rights are dead" Clearly, we can see that Gay Rights are far from dead. Although, I couldn't deny point's he made throughout that appear to ring true, like the current HIV and Crystal Meth Epidemic. I want to move away from Kramer and shift the focus onto the current generation. So I'll end the Kramer talk with a quote from his 1978 book Faggots
“Of the 2,639,857 faggots in the New York city area, 2,639,857 think primarily with their cocks.
You didn't know that the cock was a thinking organ?
Well, by this time, you should know that it is.”
― Larry Kramer, Faggots
In December of 2009 shortly after turning 24 my partner and I relocated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Let me fill you on a little background. It was only 2 years prior that I had came out to my friends and family, and my experience of what it meant to be part of the "gay community" was limited. I also lived in large metropolitan areas, NYC metro, South Florida Metro, Sydney, so since I've been out I haven't been limited to an exposure of gay men, but I am no expert, I am no expert on anything, just an observer. As a writer…. let me restate that. As a human being with an intellectual capacity to think, to experience a consciousness, there are times in your life when you experience a moment that validates your thoughts. As a person who found this topic intriguing and wanted to write about it, I found that moment.
Where-else other then good ol' Facebook!
I was scrolling through the Facebook news feed and saw a documentary Elton John produced in 2003, Pandemic: Facing AIDS as well as a CNN article about Elton who spoke on the Normal Heart and it being a Call of Action on AIDS. Is this a startling revelation that there is still a large misconception and stigma attached to HIV/AIDS?
No. Of course not, but for someone like me, a young man entering the colossal gay world of Fort Lauderdale, well… yeah it was a revelation.Let me not get to off topic here but I want to briefly elaborate on a few words I started earlier on in this blog. The Psychological Epidemic of LBGT community. In any right, this isn't unique, but on some level perhaps why I feel I can identify with what Kramer speaks of.
I can only speak for myself, but when I was young I knew I was different. I knew that I was attracted to the same sex before hitting puberty, I may of not fully understood it, but I do know as an adult it has impacted my psychological development. A coping mechanism I learned early on was fear. Fear of letting people get to close, fear of being exposed, fear of not being able to have the life I wanted, fear of discrimination, fear of being a second class citizen, fear of myself. Despite the abundance of fear I suffered, I didn't have shame. I did not believe that I was morally wrong, being punished with a holy entity, or that I would burn in hell. Yet I knew, being gay would be it's own unique path and that the coping mechanism I developed as a child would be impacted.
This is NOT to say, this was solely because I was gay, will steer away from the nature vs nurture argument right now.Anyway, in many ways I felt disillusioned upon my arrival in Fort Lauderdale. It was a time in my life when many circumstances came in to play, yet I felt like there was an element of the community I couldn't identify with. I felt many of the stereotypes surrounding the gay community had more truth than I anticipated. The playground here was promiscious sex, GrindR, Scruff, Mister, Jackd, Club Fort Lauderdale, you name it, sex was common-place. I feel it is important to say, what other's choose to do is none of my own business ( really that is bullshit- I am writing a blog) what I really mean to say, it is none of my business , in a different way though. Who you fuck, when you fuck, how you fuck, how many people you fuck, is none of my business, nor is it the business of others. As long as it doesn't interfere with my life or personal relationships, I am not looking to nail myself to the cross. I have my vast array of demons and indulgence, I am not critic, I am no Moses. What does intrigue me, is the why?
The motivation and psychological aspect behind it, in this case sociological perspective of the choices we make and why we make them. The same reason I write on issues of addiction, etc.Let me tie addiction in here. What I felt I observed was the attitude. Not an attitude shared by all of course. The attitude on sex, the attitude on drugs, alcohol and partying. The attitude of transmission of HIV. The attitude where people are seeking to use the HIV medication truvada as a preventive measure against HIV vs. Safe Sex. It does impact me. It impacts me because I am privy to all of the above, I am privy into being a gay men introduced to the gay world with a series of expectations and leads to follow on what is deemed as the standard and other young men will be exposed to the same world. Do we not have a responsibility as a community? What is my plea here? What am I trying to say. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is also countless of positive aspects of our community, creative, insightful, adoring group of men and women who continue to fight for our equal place in society. I just think we need more role models, and a serious examination of what will build on the quality of OUR community.Signing off-Anthony Lanni
