[Brett66]

discriminatory responses ranged from descriptions of AIDS as "retribution" to violence and proposals for quarantine, universal mandatory testing, and even tattooing of infected persons. This response led to HIV exceptionalism

Homosexual activists led to the mindset of HIV exceptionalism.

[AmericaUnite]

Exactly. This was never treated like syphilis or gonorrhea. I have had women patients who were duped by the hidden sex lives or drug use of their spouses. It's so tragic for the kids left behind.

David Horowitz spoke in his book, Radical Son, about how the gays didn't want to close the bathhouses and start safe sex at the beginning of the recognition of the disease.

page 338

In 1983 "The head of the Public Health Service had declared AIDS a "number one priority." Ignoring these efforts, the demonstrators addressed the president as if he were a Great White Father with solutions to their problems, which he withheld on a whim. Yet, if anyone possessed a solution to the problem, it was the community at risk."

Horowitz goes into the details of the politics in San Fran and others that would make the public scream if they got the whole story. There was even an effort by gay doctors to speak reason to these activists.