once upon a time, cancer meant aids when a homosexual died young.
Probable connection to AIDS.
Sounds like a Monty Python skit: "...I'm a pioneer and I'm okay..."
Ironic how he died before his mother - I don't know anything about his illness, I just know that the gay lifestyle is unhealthy, more unhealthy than smoking...
Nichols helped found chapters of the Mattachine Society, an early support group for gays, in Florida and Washington in the early and mid-1960s. He also helped plan some of the nation's first organized, annual gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations, including a protest outside Philadelphia's Independence Hall on July 4, 1965.
In addition, Nichols was among the first gay activists to challenge the American Psychiatric Association's position that homosexuality was a mental illness.
Related information posted here.