Posted on 06/25/2006 12:55:57 PM PDT by Coleus
At first, AIDS appeared to be a disease of gay men. But by the time the virus responsible, HIV, had been identified a few years later, fear that sex, whether gay or straight, would kill millions of Americans shadowed every discussion of the topic.
America’s sex life seemed poised for a dramatic change.
But 25 years later, AIDS' true impact on the American sexual landscape has been muted, and, experts say, the changes that did occur were not always the ones we expected. Perception of what the sexual atmosphere was like before AIDS often relies on a convenient metaphor, like, say, Studio 54. Fueled by sex, drugs and disco, the New York nightclub had a debauched three-year run as a hangout for movie stars, sports heroes and the fashion crowd before its two founders, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, were thrown in jail in 1980 for tax evasion.
The next year, AIDS arrived (Rubell eventually died of it). But the story — first we partied, then we paid — is too tidy. While Studio 54 achieved a kind of infamy, the vast majority of Americans could never pass beyond the velvet ropes. The vast majority were not having anonymous sex in nightspots, nor going to gay bathhouses, nor swinging in suburbia.
But AIDS, or, more accurately, talk about AIDS, was everywhere from national magazine covers to school board meetings in rural towns. Just 17 years before the first American AIDS patients checked into hospitals, comedian Lenny Bruce was prosecuted for referring in his stand-up routine to things that now appeared on nightly newscasts.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The first disease with civil rights.
We knew at the beginning that the primary vector was practitioners of anal intercourse.
They should have been isolated then -- before it got out of the pervert population and into the rest of America.
Virus opened door to sex education ... and the deification of homsexuals by the popular culture.
WHAT a LOAD of CRAP......Sex Education began in the late 60's/early 70's.....BEFORE ANYONE was talking about AIDS (or probably before it was even known.)
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
How AIDS changed sex in America. Or did it? Virus opened door to sex education
The left still refuses to exist that the best prevention is abstinence, followed by marriage and monogamy. Condoms and red ribbons only contribute to the problem.
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Liberals lie and people die.
Is, was, and always will be a disease limited to homosexuals, and/or needle sharing druggies and/or those who share their beds! The meida spent a forturne trying to portray it otherwise so that lots of government bucks could be spent on a disease which affects only 2% of the population who CHOOSE to behave in such a way as to contract it! 'RATS phoniness one more time!
It's the most politicised disease in history!!
I seem to remember the open discussion of sex in school and in "polite" society in general coinciding with "Get a Piece of the" Rock Hudson's death. Would you believe Prudential didn't use that slogan for five years because of that?
You're trying to confuse the author with facts.
I don't wish to start tinfoil hat conspiracy theories here, but I do often wonder about the origin of AIDS.
By the Way my brother mentioned once there was a book about GRIDS which was banned. He couldn't remember the name or anything. It was written in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Any guesses out there?
Here is some info. from wikipedia. GRIDS
Gay-related immune deficiency (GRIDS) was the original name for AIDS, a name proposed after public health scientists noticed clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia among gay males in California and New York City. CDC. During the early history of AIDS, an ad hoc organization called Gay Men's Health Crisis was founded to combat what was then thought to be a homosexual-only disease perhaps produced by high levels of promiscuity, injection drug use, and usage of poppers. Soon after, clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia were also reported in among Haitians recently entering the United States CDC and men with Haemophilia, among female sexual partners of AIDS patients, among children born to possibly infected mothers, and among blood transfusion recipients with no obvious risk factors. The term AIDS (for acquired immune deficiency syndrome) was proposed in 1982 by Bruce Voeller, among other researchers, concerned with the accuracy of the disease's name. In this new name, scientists were supported by political figures motivated by compassion and worried about homophobia.
In April 23, 1984, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced at a press conference that an American scientist, Dr. Robert Gallo, had discovered the probable cause of AIDS: the retrovirus subsequently named human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in 1986. The virus had previously been discovered by researchers at the Institute Pasteur in France. It was given the acronym LAV and was subsequently renamed HIV.
After twenty years of research, both Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia are better understood as opportunistic infections occurring towards the end of the AIDS disease process.
Before the name GRID was fully rejected, ignorance about the basic scientific facts about the nature of the disease--in particular, about the transmissibility of the illness and the fact that it wasn't only a "gay disease" led to many unnecessary deaths. French, Canadian and Japanese political unwillingness to recognize the blood-borne nature of the disease, contrary to overwhelming scientific evidence, led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of recipients of blood products, hemophiliacs and others, in these countries.[citation needed]
I hold gays responsible for the deaths of Hemophiliac children and other innocents killed as collateral damage to unprotected sex. Their blood is on the gays hands.
Interesting points made in the article they state "motivated by compassion" the name was changed. "It's ignorance about AIDS that kills". We are told this crap instead of the more obvious "sex with a carrier". Liberal Junk Science at its best
Would you believe Prudential didn't use that slogan for five years because of that? >>>
I never heard of that. Are they still using that slogan today?
"At first, AIDS appeared to be a disease of gay men..."
And, after years of further research, by golly, it still is!
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