Jun 01, 2006  |  By: CHRIS CRAIN  | COMMENTS     

and lesbians from our very different lives into alliance.

HIV forced not only Rock Hudson out of the closet, but countless more like him, and in solidarity with him. The government’s sluggish response to “the gay cancer” in those early days proved the straw that finally broke the closet’s back. As activists poured into the streets in a fight for their lives, their visibility and energy was a critical fuel for the gay rights movement as well.

What had been a “gay liberation” movement primarily about sexual freedom drastically changed course, putting the focus instead on the most conservative social institutions: work, military service, marriage — even the Boy Scouts!

Only the most extreme and hardened conservative still draws moral conclusions about the method by which HIV is transmitted, but the rules of safe sex can be credited with curbing the hedonism of gay male life in the ‘70s. In a weird way, the virus played the role most straight men credit to women, influencing gay men in larger numbers to “settle down” and try more meaningful relationships.

With the advent of more effective HIV treatments, gay male sexuality is on the rise again, but at least now we have more experience with relationships, and settling down is a better defined, more accepted lifestyle option.

Finding the cure for AIDS today wouldn’t undo those incredibly important lessons, just as it wouldn’t bring back the hundreds of thousands we have lost to the pandemic. But as we reflect on the terrible toll of AIDS — past, present and future — we can find some small solace in what we’ve learned from its devastation.