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I've been watching, it's a great drama. Pacino is excellent and the Mormon guy's wife is very good. I feel terribly sorry for those sick men and the people who cared for them. The movie is set 20 years ago when the treatments only marginally postponed the inevitable horrible death.

I've gotten a little insight into the homosexual lifestyle. I don't think it glorifies it, as a matter of fact the married Mormon struggling with his urges is quite moving. But you see plainly see how his actions have destroyed his wife, an innocent in all this. Roy Cohn is protrayed as a strong, effective person, but as creep, which I think is accurate.

I think it is an accurate portrayal of the lifestyle. It hasn't swayed me to think it's natural or okay. And I guess people make their own choices everyday that cost them their health (smoking, drinking, x-treme sports, drugs). I suppose I should have no less sympathy for aids victims as I would for a professional or amatuer athlete crippled on the playing field.

It is a horrible way to die.

The problem I have is with the overwrought stereotyping typical of gay-themed productions. You see the strait-laced Mormon married guy, who really is a gay man living a lie. Gays want to claim their population is much higher than 1 or 2% and really many, many more gays are living straight due to societal injustice. They always fall back on the Kinsey report from years ago that claims their number is 10% of the population. The whole victimization issue with no accountability for the actions that caused it is not portrayed at all. The spread was all Reagan's fault.
Also, Pacino as Roy Cohn is very compelling but the Ethel Rosenberg visit is a bit much. They still hang onto the untruth that the Rosenbergs were innocent activists and that Cohn unjustly prosecuted them to their deaths. This is historically false.

The message is that Cohn is a creep because he has repressed his true identity. Don't forget that he is closely associated in the liberal mind with McCarthy. The rage against Reagan arose from the slowness of the administration to act even as panic increased among gays as they realized the seriousness of the disease. Neven mind that the government/industry later poured tons of money into keeping these people alive. What seems to have happened is that AIDS has become the basis of a kind of metaphysics that vests the pure hedonism of the gay lifestyle with a "higher" meaning.

I have more sympathy for the athelete who isn't lobbying for millions to be spent to cure them when their behavior disables them. Plus, an athelete will readily admit that this is a risk associated with their atheletic lifestyle, good luck finding most gays to admit that AIDS is an inherent risk in their lifestyle.