ACT UP

Early AIDS Activism

From the beginning of what soon became known as the AIDS epidemic, lesbian and gay communities responded to the crisis, establishing means for care-taking and providing much-needed services to people with HIV/AIDS. In contrast, the federal government's [Page 10]response to the crisis was close to nonexistent in those early years, in large part because the onset of the AIDS epidemic in 1981 coincided with the start of the Reagan administration. President Ronald Reagan, ideologically committed to shrinking government and indebted to the religious right who had helped to elect him, did not mention the word AIDS in public until 1985, 4 years and 10,000 deaths into the epidemic, and then only in response to a reporter's question. Reagan did not give a policy speech on AIDS until 1987, at which point he advocated a punitive, mandatory HIV testing policy. Paralleling Reagan's near silence, his administration did almost nothing to deal with the exploding epidemic. Indeed, the chairman and vice-chairman of the Reagan-appointed commission on AIDS (formed in June 1987) resigned in October 1987, citing lack of support from the White House. Meanwhile, right-wing politicians and pundits used AIDS to build a grassroots base and to solicit donations, citing the epidemic as proof that homosexuality was abnormal and sinful. In this hostile context, the political work of caretaking and service provision was vital.

The Shift to Confrontational Street AIDS Activism

By the mid-1980s, the government's continuing failure to address the AIDS crisis and widespread homophobic hysteria about AIDS in the media were generating anger and frustration among growing numbers of lesbians and gay men. A few AIDS activists began to try more confrontational tactics. In late 1985, two gay men with AIDS chained themselves to San Francisco's old Federal Office Building to protest the government's failure to respond to the crisis and to demand an increase in federal AIDS funding; their action marked the beginning of the San Francisco AIDS/ARC Vigil. Around the same time in New York, activists formed an organization that eventually became the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). In December 1985, 800 people joined GLAAD in a demonstration that targeted the New York Post for its sensationalized AIDS coverage. This more oppositional activism was not yet widespread, but its occurrence indicated the beginnings of a shifting emotional and political climate within lesbian and gay communities with regard to AIDS. The U.S. Supreme Court's Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) decision upholding Georgia's antisodomy statute marked a turning point in the history of AIDS activism. Occurring in the context of government negligence regarding the AIDS crisis, growing calls for quarantine of people with AIDS, and ever-increasing deaths, the ruling spurred a more dramatic and far-reaching turn toward angry, defiant activism, fueling the emergence of ACT UP.

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