Just imagine if AIDS had been treated as a human disease rather than a gay men's disease right from the start.

Just imagine a world in which homosexuals can have legal, stable relationships acknowledged by the world, as a way to encourage monogamous behavior.

Just imagine a world in which drug addicts can seek medical help for their addictions openly without risk of arrest.

Just imagine a world in which sexual expression of homosexuality doesn't earn you a kicked-in door, arrest by state troopers, and jail time. Would you come out of the closet under those conditions?

Then, just imagine trying to enforce a quarantine during the early stages of AIDS in the world we had in 1980. Having AIDS would imply participation in one or more criminalized acts (still does, depending on the act and where you live), and having been marked by God for extermination. Having AIDS would mean isolation, incarceration and experimentation, by a group of clean heteros who looked at you as dangerous, weird criminals marked by God, and by a smaller group of closetted gays and hidden addicts whose terror of detection fed their zeal to lead the charge.

Just imagine HIV-positive people concealing their infection to avoid quarantine, thus also avoiding treatment and counselling, maintaining their lifestyle in denial, giving medical people fewer opportunities for clinical trials of drugs, and spreading the disease more thoroughly than we have witnessed it so far.

It's no accident that AIDS truly developed a human face for the whole US when a pretty young straight blonde mommy stood up at the 1992 Republican National Convention and told the world she was HIV-positive.

Regards--
Mary Anne