Washington Blade - November 28, 2003
Steve Weinstein

I USED TO object to World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. Why, after all, should there be one day devoted to calling attention to this epidemic? Shouldn't every day be World AIDS Day?

But indifference and complacency have changed my mind. If it takes a special occasion to commemorate those who have died - and are continuing to die - from this, the worst pandemic in history, then I'm all for it.

Because the truth is, despite the headlines about President Bush's $2 billion initiative, arguments over drug patents, former President Clinton's foundation and even CIA documents about the disease's long-term destabilizing global influence, AIDS has fallen off the radar for most Americans.

The Sept. 11 attacks and the ensuing wars in the Middle East have undoubtedly done their share in taking away the limelight. The wavering economy, political campaigns, even Michael Jackson's travails - they all have driven AIDS off the front pages.

A recent U.N. report about the increased spread of HIV across the globe has received almost no attention. Such reports seem to be greeted with a collective weary yawn, a sigh of "So what's new?"

What is even more shocking and disturbing is the spread of apathy and complacency in the gay world.

Harvey Fierstein, the actor currently starring in Broadway's "Hairspray," has publicly complained about donor burnout. He also has noted how many gay men apparently believe that anti-viral drugs are making HIV a manageable disease.

This is merely ignorance.

WHAT IS UNCONSCIONABLE, however, is the spreading belief that, with the changing demographics of the disease, AIDS is no longer our concern. Yes, it is true that the face of AIDS has made some marked contrasts in its 22 years, just as the virus itself has continued to morph into new strains.

Though no one can trace the beginning of the disease, we can pretty well pinpoint the beginning of the epidemic. The first people in this country succumbed to AIDS in the early 1980s. Allowing for an HIV incubation period of a few years, the disease probably arrived here sometime in the mid- to late-1970s.

In his definitive narrative of the epidemic's early years, "And the Band Played On," the late Randy Shilts posits an interesting theory that Congolese sailors may have brought the virus over during Operation Sail in New York Harbor in 1976. The sailors probably had sex with prostitutes (as sailors do), who in turn gave it someone who infected a gay man. The rest, as they say is history - one of the saddest histories you'll ever read.

However the disease got here, we know that it spread like wildfire among gay men. Thanks to extreme poverty, it also first became widespread among Haitians, and, thanks to short-sighted policies by the nation's blood banks, hemophiliacs.

It took a while before it really took hold among drug users who shared their needles. From them, HIV has taken hold as the primary killer among the young inner-city poor.

The brouhaha over the TV film "The Reagans," which CBS shamelessly punted to its pay-TV sister channel Showtime, focused some much-needed attention on the activity - or, rather, inactivity - of President Reagan while all of this was going on.

When the final chapter of this sorry story is written, I am convinced that Reagan will earn a place as the greatest mass murderer in history. If he had only heeded the advice of his surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, AIDS could have been a footnote, like Legionnaire's Disease or SARS.

But he didn't, and once the disease returned to its African roots, it did so with a vengeance, infecting whole nations. Today, for example, more than one-third of the entire adult population of Botswana carries HIV.

Now the disease has inevitably branched out into every area of the globe. It is running rampant in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. It has taken firm root in South America, although freewheeling Brazil apparently may contain the epidemic through some very enlightened policies.

In Thailand, government thugs are murdering prostitutes, drug abusers and street urchins in a misguided attempt to stay the spread of HIV. In Myanmar (formerly Burma), a brutal military dictatorship is only now beginning to acknowledge its presence - too little, too late.

AIDS has already devastated the Indian subcontinent, where condoms are hard, if not impossible, to come by. And in China, a vile, self-supporting ruling class has made only the first tiny steps to contain an epidemic largely of their own making, thanks to their selfish, stupid policies.

MEANWHILE, GAY MEN, lost in our little crystal-infused clouds, are taking more and more chances with our health. Cases of syphilis - a sure indicator of unprotected sex - are markedly on the rise, especially among urban gay males. San Francisco leads the pack.

In the midst of all of this unending spiral of bad news, many gay men have abandoned AIDS as a cause. "It's not our disease," they say. "No one cared when we were sick. Why should we care when they get it?"

Aside from the obscene moral obtuseness of these remarks - and trust me, I've heard them in one form or another, many times - they ignore the fundamental fact that, until there is a cure, AIDS will always be a dire threat to gay men.

Even if it weren't, however, we have a moral imperative not to abandon those suffering from AIDS, be they in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C., or Soweto, South Africa, or Guangdong, China.

For the rest of our lives - and very likely, the next generation, and the generation after that - AIDS will continue to be what it started out as: a "gay plague."

If you like to dance, great: volunteer for a benefit party. If you like to have sex with a lot of guys, volunteer to run a safe-sex workshop at a bathhouse.

Like to be around food? Spend an hour a week helping out at Food & Friends. Are you a people person, volunteer at Whitman-Walker or Us Helping Us.

On Dec. 1, the world will turn its gaze briefly to AIDS. Don't turn away. Do something. Do anything. Just don't say there's nothing you can do.

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