A History of HIV/AIDS and Its Effect on LGBT Communities

First it was gay cancer, then the Gay Compromise Disorder, then Gay Related Immune Deficiency, then Community-Acquired Immune Dysfunction, and then finally, Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. But the history of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. goes well beyond simple name changes.

Though the timeline of the first known case of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. is debated, during the early 1980s, symptoms of HIV/AIDS including Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP) began to be diagnosed in a large number of gay men, particularly in large metropolitan areas, such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Knowledge about the disease remained a mystery at first, with the New York Times reporting in 1981 that the disease was exclusive to gay men.

By 1982, the disease started to appear among intravenous drug users, as well as hemophiliacs, including women. By late 1982-early 1983, doctors had established that the disease was spread through blood or sexual contact. Also in 1983, French doctors isolated a new virus – later termed by the Center for Disease Control as Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus – which they believed might be the cause of AIDS. One year later, the United States would announce that Dr. Robert Gallo, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, had isolated the virus that causes AIDS, naming it HTLV-III. By 1985, it became clear that these two viruses were the same, and in 1986, the virus now known to be the cause of AIDS, HIV, was coined.

The early affect of HIV/AIDS on the gay community caused widespread prejudice and discrimination toward LGBT citizens, particularly gay men. Landlords were known to evict tenants with HIV/AIDS, employers would fire employees who contracted the disease, and the media talking point that “gays brought the disease on themselves” began circulating among conservative religious figures. Tension also existed among LGBT communities on how to respond to HIV/AIDS, with gay men harboring a sentiment of distrust toward health professionals and government officials regarding concerns over public health versus civil liberties. This was heightened by what the gay community largely saw as ignorance from politicians; President Ronald Reagan, in fact, didn’t even mention the word AIDS in public until 1985, well after nearly 16,000 cases of AIDS had been reported.

LGBT activist and author Larry Kramer said at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic: “We’re all going to go crazy, living this epidemic every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it’s like, what we’re going through. We’re living through war, but where they’re living it’s peacetime, and we’re all in the same country.”

The case could easily be made that, nearly thirty years later, the rest of the country goes on out there ambivalent toward the continued threat of HIV/AIDS. Today, there are more than one million HIV/AIDS cases in the United States, and an estimated 36-40 million people living with HIV/AIDS around the world. More than two million people will die from HIV/AIDS before the end of this year. By the time you finish reading this entry, eleven people will have contracted HIV/AIDS. By the time you fall asleep tonight, 15,000 new HIV/AIDS infections will have occurred.

Yet, despite these statistics, HIV/AIDS infection from unprotected sex between heterosexuals and men who have sex with men (MSM) are increasing. In 2005, 71 percent of all new cases among U.S. men were among MSM. Meanwhile, funding for the disease (and for education about how to prevent HIV/AIDS) is on the decline.

For fact sheets on HIV/AIDS in the U.S., visit the Center for Disease Control. For information on treatment and advocacy, visit the National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project.