I wonder how many people would have died of AIDS had they not engaged in homosexual activities or abused drugs? I wonder what they think President Reagan could have done about that? They would have called him every name in the book for sticking his nose in "their sex life" such as HOMOPHOBE, one of their favorites. I suppose he was suppose to throw our HARD EARNED tax money at a bunch of irresponsible perverted sex addicts to stop them from killing one another. Or maybe he should have handed out more needles to the drug addicts.
Just saw a revival of one of the earliest, smartest, and angriest AIDS plays, Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART, written in the mid 1980s. Kramer was a surprisingly non-PC gay NYC guy who'd already had a career as an executive with Columbia pictures and had written the screenplay for the film WOMEN IN LOVE, from the D. H. Lawrence novel. The Reagan Administration is barely even mentioned or evoked in Kramer's play---Kramer's wrath is saved for the then current NYC mayor Ed Koch, who everyone knew was gay,and trying to hide it, and who it took 17 months to get an audience with, while the crisis spread in NYC, and Kramer watched his friends die off every week because they would not sober up and stop seeing themselves as victims, and just exert a little self-control in the bathhouses, and in their personal relations.Kramer, as far as I know, was the ONLY high profile gay writer/journalist who made these points and talked himself hoarse trying to make his own gay community listen to a little common sense.