The 80s: Entertainment and Sports

Entertainment
During the 1980s gays and lesbians were often unfairly represented in entertainment. In 1980 the film Cruising was released. This film navigated the extremes of gay culture in New York. Many gay activists protested the filming and upon its release it ended up being a box-office failure. Fortunately the controversy surrounding the film sent a message to Hollywood-- the LGBTQ community would not stand being misrepresented. In 1981 Vito Russo published The Celluloid Closet, a book that criticized Hollywood's representation of homosexuals.

In 1982 the groundbreaking film Making Love was released. The film was the first of its kind in that it portrayed a homosexual relationship that did not end in tragedy. In 1985 William Hurt won an Oscar for his performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman, which has been described as the "first truly positive portrayal of a gay man to come out of Hollywood." On November 11th, 1985 NBC aired a made for TV movie in which a young man comes home to to announce his homosexuality and AIDS diagnosis. The film was received well by audiences but NBC lost money on the project, advertisers were still hesitant about running commercials during a film that touched on homosexuality. On Broadway Torch Song Trilogy (1983) was one of the first plays to to portray a happy gay relationship and in 1985 Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart opened, the first AIDS-related play. 

Sports

Homosexuality was and still is a huge taboo in the world of competitive sports. No athlete was willing to announce their homosexuality, and with good reason. In 1975 David Kopay had announced in retirement that he was gay, this caused him to be denied coaching opportunities. In 1981 tennis legend Billie Jean King was publicly outed by her former lover. Her outing lost King contracts with corporate sponsors and therefore she lost a lot of money.

However, in 1982 former-Olympian Dr. Tom Waddell organized the first Gay Olympics. More than 1,300 athletes participated first year in San Francisco. The U.S. Olympic Committee took Waddell to court, trying to bar him from using the word "Olympics" in the name of his event. In 1987 Waddell lost the case in Supreme Court and had to rename the event "Gay Games." The games are held every four years, and by 2006 has grown to host over 11,000 participants. 

Additional/Relevant Reading:
The Brief History of Gay Athletes -- http://espn.go.com/otl/world/timeline.html

Gay America: Struggle for Equality -- Linas Alsenas, pg. 108-121

The 80s: Sex Wars

Sex Wars

In 1975 author and activist Rita Mae Brown (pictured below) wrote an essay about the lack of casual sex within the lesbian community. Brown wrote in her essay, “I want the option of random sex with no emotional commitment when I need sheer physical relief. . . . Like men we should have choices: deep, long-term relationships, the baths, short-term affairs.” Studies supported what Brown had written; lesbians were in fact having less sex then gay or heterosexual couples. Thus, in the early 1980s lesbian women went through a sexual revolution of their own.  Lesbian sex businesses involving pornography, S&M, paraphernalia, female only strip shows, and sex magazines began to spring up in lesbian communities.

This exploration of lesbian sexuality renewed overt butch/femme roles in lesbian sexuality. However, these roles were defined loosely and open to interpretation. These new interpretations were nicknamed neo-butch or neo-femme. Phyllis Lyon, founder of Daughters of Bilitis noted, “women play at it rather than being it.” Many lesbians however were distraught by what was seen as an attempt to imitate masculinity and put women in submissive roles. Lesbian-feminist group acted against this by protesting at lesbian-feminist music festivals. This revival of lesbian sexuality was short lived-- the fear of being overtly sexual due to the AIDS epidemic and complying with the relatively conservative 80s scared many radical feminists away.

Political Gains

Despite many setbacks for the LGBTQ community, there were many instances of positive change that occurred in the 1980s. One of these developments was the formation of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in 1980 as a gay/lesbian political lobbying organization. The HRC proved incredibly successful, and by 1988 HRC had become the ninth largest political action committee in the country with a budget of $2.1 million. Similarly in 1985 the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) was founded in 1985 to counter inaccurate and sensationalized media coverage of the AIDS epidemic. 

Other milestone achievements include Wisconsin becoming the first state to pass a law prohibiting discrimination against gays (1982). The following year Deborah Johnson and Dr. Zandra Rolon sued Papa Choux restaurant for refusing to seat the pair in the "romantic dining" section. In 1987 gays and lesbians held the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The march drew 650,000 people thus making it at the time the largest civil rights march in history. The march also unveiled the world's largest artwork: the Names Project's AIDS Memorial Quilt. Unfortunately two days after the march approximately eight hundred people were arrested at the U.S. Supreme Court for protesting the Bowers v. Hardwick ruling.


Additional/Relevant Reading:
Gay America: Struggle for Equality -- Linas Alsenas, pg. 122-127
Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies -- Meem, Gibson, Alexander, pg. 318
Lesbian Sex Wars --  http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/lesbian_sex_wars.html

The 80s: Politics and Protest

Two Roadblocks
In 1986 the gay rights movement experienced two blows to its progress. The first involved the Vatican which issued a statement to Roman Catholic bishops describing homosexuality as "a tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil." The letter also stated that officials should withdraw support from gay organizations. This huge reduction in support was a surprise to the LGBTQ community who were already busy with the task of defending themselves against the AIDS panic. 


The second blow came from the United States Supreme Court in the case of Bowers v. Hardwick. In 1982 Michael Hardwick was arrested for sodomy. Georgia, unlike many other states, had never repealed its old laws against sodomy. The case was appealed to Supreme Court; if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hardwick it would nullify all sodomy laws in the U.S. and thus pave the way for other anti-discrimination laws. Unfortunately the court came back with a 5-4 verdict against Hardwick, claiming "millenia of moral teaching" as justification. The impact of this would be that for the next ten years it would be illegal in some states to have private, consensual, gay sex.


Boiling Point
In Spring of 1986 the National Cancer Institute announced that a drug called zidovudine, more commonly known as AZT, showed promise in treating AIDS, but it wasn't available until the following year. When it was released, the drug was priced at $10,000 for a year's supply, thus making it one of the most expensive medications ever sold. In December 1986 Avram Finkelstein led a poster campaign in New York called 'Silence = Death'. The image soon became the symbol for gay activism. The following year a small radical group called the Lavender Hill Mob started media 'zapping' in order to protest the sluggish medical bureaucracy and the lack of funding for AIDS research. 

In March 1987, Kramer was featured as the weekly speaker at New York's Lesbian and Gay Community Center. There he gave a speech which inspired three hundred people to gather two days later and form the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). ACT UP described themselves as "united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis." The groups first goal was to make an early release of all experimental drugs used to treat AIDS. ACT UP thus descended onto wall street to fight the pharmaceutical giant Burroughs Wellcome. The protesters laid down in the middle of the street and brown rush-hour traffic to a standstill. 

Other protests ACT UP did involved throwing fake money onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and having "Die-Ins" along Wall Street. Similarly, when Northwest Airlines decided to deny tickets to people with AIDS, ACT UP flooded the airline with false reservations. Some members threw buckets of fake blood into public places, shouting "AIDS blood." At the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, Maryland, one thousand people held a protest over a nine-hour period. 

ACT UP's most controversial protest was held in December 1989, during Sunday Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Protesters entered the church, laid down, and handcuffed themselves to the pews. Many of the protesters suffered from AIDS and were visibly sick. Several of the protesters were so sick that they had to be taken out on stretchers. Forty-three people were arrested inside, and sixty-nine others were arrested outside. 

Additional/Relevant Reading:
Gay America: Struggle for Equality -- Linas Alsenas, pg. 118-122
History of ACT UP -- http://www.actupny.org/documents/capsule-home.html
Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian Contemporary History -- Reference, pg. 178-179

The 80s: AIDS (Part II)

Panic
In the 1980s the AIDS scare was becoming more powerful. Media, police, and heterosexuals began openly ostracizing members of the gay community in order to separate themselves from the 'gay plague'. Police began using gloves and safety equipment when interacting with people suspected of aids, gay men would be evicted from their home or fired from their job due to suspicion of AIDS. Government regulations began barring gays from working with or handling food, and some were even excluded from continuing education. These acts made it clear to the gay community just has vulnerable (legally) they really were.

Fight Against Aids
Early on the gay community realized they would have to be the ones to create change in the fight against AIDS. In New York, Gay Men's Health Crisis was doing everything in its power to aid in helping gay men affected by AIDS. Though it quickly became largest gay organization in the country, it could not keep up with the constant rise in HIV infections. Despite challenges the group did several great things: created an innovative Buddy Program to help AIDS patients with everyday needs, lobbied the government for AIDS funding, battled discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, created the first AIDS hotline, and worked to increase sex education for gay men. Other organizations similar to GMHC soon were formed: AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF). The arrival of AIDS also helped bring gays and lesbians together as many lesbians essentially dropped their political plans and focused on the new threat of AIDS.

Rock Hudson
AIDS did not receive the attention of American media until July of 1985 when actor Rock Hudson (pictured below) died of the disease. Rock Hudson was a beloved and closeted American actor, and his death brought Hudson's famous friends to the defense of the gay community, specifically actress Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor lent her fame to organizations to increase their donations, volunteers, and funding. She also cofounded amFAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) and founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF). Similarly such stars as Elton John, Debbie Reynolds, Sammy Davis Jr., Morgan Fairchild, and Shirley MacLaine all used their star power to raise funding for AIDS research. This public support allowed the nation to begin to view AIDS victim with concern rather than hate.

Additional/Relevant Reading:
The History of AIDS -- http://fohn.net/history-of-aids/
Gay America: Struggle for Equality -- Linas Alsenas, pg. 108-121
Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies -- Meem, Gibson, Alexander, pg. 96-99

The 80s: AIDS (Part I)

The Arrival of AIDS
In the early eighties rumors started circulating among gay New Yorkers of a new "gay cancer." Larry Kramer (pictured below) wrote editorial letters to the New York Native, a gay New York newspaper, begging gay men to be wary of what he thought might be a sexually transmitted illness. In August 1981, he invited about eighty gay men to his apartment, where Friedman-Kien presented statistics about the rising number of what was then the unknown sickness HIV/AIDS. Six months later, Kramer and his friends started Gay Men's Health Crisis, an organization that would one day become the leading AIDS services organization in the country.

Initially there was very little knowledge on what the disease actually was. Described as a rare form of cancer, the Centers for Disease Control dubbed the sickness GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) in 1981. GRID was shortly renamed to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in 1982 after heterosexual hemophiliacs, drug addicts, and Haitians.

There were numerous conflicting ideas on the origin of AIDS. Initially doctors thought AIDS might be the culmination of too many STDs or drug usage. Other ideas grew as well: a psychologist in San Francisco published articles suggesting AIDS was from psychological issues as a child. Some tabloids declared it was a curse,while others simply tried there best to stop themselves from getting infected. Finally in 1984 the National Institute of Health found the "probably cause" of AIDS to be a virus called HTLV-III.

What is AIDS? AIDS is a breakdown of the body's immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to any number of infections that would be harmless to a healthy person. AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, which can be found in bodily fluids such as blood and semen, and it is most often transmitted in three ways: unprotected sex, sharing used needles, and being born from an HIV-positive mother. Since its naming in 1982, AIDS has exploded and affected all parts of the world.

AIDS and Bathhouses
The speed at which AIDS was spread throughout the gay community was alarming. Bathhouses only helped to catalyze this speed. Gay bathhouses have been a fixture of American cities since the early 1900s, and the sexual revolution of the 1970s only further their existence. Baths often included dance music, alcohol, drugs, anonymous sex, and group orgies. At the time gay men didn't even consider using condoms-- they had no risk of pregnancy and most of the time getting an STD could be removed by a quick trip to the doctor.

In 1983 gay activist Larry Littlejohn, former president of the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), concluded that the promiscuity at gay bathhouses was expediting the speed at which AIDS was being spreed. Littlejohn began campaigning to have the city close bathhouses down, however he found much unexpected backlash from the gay community. Littlejohn and his supporters came to be largely hated by the gay community, some even suggesting the removal of bathhouses was the next step toward forced concentration camps for gay men.

After a drawn out political fight with the gay community, city public health director Mervyn Silverman closed the baths in October 1984. In New York baths were closed down in 1985 though many still protested. Gay activist Larry Kramer later remember, "Oh God, the battle over whether or not to close the baths became such  a red herring because of this issue of sexual freedom. It took all our energy, and it took all our fighting. It shouldn't have been an issue, period.

Stigma: AIDS = Gay 
Because of the correlation between homosexuality and AIDS, in 1983 the FDA began excluding men who had or have sex with other men. Views on this were conflicted; many felt that the act saved lives and was a precaution while other felt it was restricting LGBTQ rights. Admittedly, the decision had a positive effect. All blood began being tested for HIV and while then getting an HIV infection from blood was one in 2,500, it is now less than one in a million.

Meanwhile, the federal government did little to help the plight of gay men. Although the CDC had labeled it an epidemic in 1981, President Ronald Reagan ignored the disease. In fact, Reagan didn't even say the word "AIDS" publicly until 1986 and his first major speech on the subject was in 1987 (when more than 21,000 people had already died from it). Secretary Margaret Heckler (pictured below at a conference about AIDS) refused to ask for more funding suggesting that they had everything under control. In reality researchers for a cure for AIDS had to beg, borrow, and steal from other programs to advance research efforts. Congress was thus forced to pass laws to force the federal government to direct more funding towards AIDS research.

Many Christian evangelicals with influence didn't help things for the gay community. Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority political action group believed that gay men deserved to die from AIDS. Pat Buchanan, Regan's communications director, stated that AIDS was "nature's revenge on gay men." Soon North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms amended a bill to prohibit AIDS education efforts that encouraged or promoted homosexual activity. This effectively stopped organizations from explaining safe sex to gay men. There were people in government who fought for education on AIDS, however with little funding and support their efforts were largely in vain.


Additional/Relevant Reading:
The History of AIDS -- http://fohn.net/history-of-aids/
Gay America: Struggle for Equality -- Linas Alsenas, pg. 108-121
Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies -- Meem, Gibson, Alexander, pg. 96-99