The Politics of AIDS

On March 20, New York City finally got its gay-rights law. After nearly two decades of rejecting it or bottling it up in committee, the City Council passed the bill by the surprisingly wide margin of 21 to 14. That night, New Yorkers’ TV screens were filled with news footage of jubilant homosexuals hugging, kissing, and dancing in celebration. It was quite a triumph. The gay activists had beaten the opposition of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Orthodox Jewish community, not to mention the mores of Western civilization and the revulsion of the general public.

Their victory was all the more remarkable in that it came in the teeth of widespread predictions of an “AIDS backlash,” which was expected to reverse the gains of gay activists as the public blamed homosexuals for the spread of the deadly syndrome. Since the death of Rock Hudson last October, anxiety about AIDS has risen sharply, sometimes breaking out into panic: In several widely publicized cases, parents have fought to prevent children with AIDS (contracted through blood transfusions) from attending public-school classes with their children.

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Joseph Sobran

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On March 20, New York City finally got its gay-rights law. After nearly two decades of rejecting it or bottling it up in committee, the City Council passed the bill by the surprisingly wide margin of 21 to 14. That night, New Yorkers’ TV screens were filled with news footage of jubilant homosexuals hugging, kissing, and dancing in celebration. It was quite a triumph. The gay activists had beaten the opposition of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Orthodox Jewish community, not to mention the mores of Western civilization and the revulsion of the general public.

Their victory was all the more remarkable in that it came in the teeth of widespread predictions of an “AIDS backlash,” which was expected to reverse the gains of gay activists as the public blamed homosexuals for the spread of the deadly syndrome. Since the death of Rock Hudson last October, anxiety about AIDS has risen sharply, sometimes breaking out into panic: In several widely publicized cases, parents have fought to prevent children with AIDS (contracted through blood transfusions) from attending public-school classes with their children.