"Gay Life, Gay Death: The Siege of a Subculture"

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1990. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

"Gay Life, Gay Death: The Siege of a Subculture"

New Republic (12/17/90) Vol. 203, No. 25, P. 19
Sullivan, Andrew

Abstract: Contrary to forging a community among gay men, AIDS has unmistakably widened the rifts, writes Andrew Sullivan of the New Republic. The already extant social, radical, and politicial divisions have been cruelly exposed as AIDS has made death "less an event than an environment," dividing the sick and healthy, the HIV-negative and HIV-positive, and those well-acquainted with death from those relatively unaffected. Safe sex has meant "emotionally safer," banishing forever the "terrified celibacy of the first stage of the epidemic" but raising up a barrier to the intimacy necessary to a united effort against the disease. Those most affected, blacks and Hispanics, are invisible and the least accessible, facing homophobia from their communities and denying their risks. For minority gay men, visibility is the deepest taboo, making AIDS education nearly impossible. Dying has also created a death wish among the living that helps them stay alive but alienates other gays. Finally, death itself divides as ultimately each dies alone, Sullivan concludes.

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