The HIV/AIDS Crisis in the gay community in the 1980’s: trauma and resilience.

The HIV/AIDS Crisis in the gay community in the 1980’s: trauma and resilience.   

Overview:

      

     This approach to societal crisis and the process of resilience is holistic and, as such, in line with the sociological imagination as described by C. Wright Mills. The previous normative approach to social problems focused almost exclusively on the individual, what Mills called “troubles” as opposed to a focus on society, what Mills called “problems.” The holistic analysis of social problems, the ability of society to recover from trauma, involves a view of the problem both in terms of it’s historical origins, its institutional and, I might add, its philosophical and spiritual components, and how these various factors intersect and come together in a society recovering from trauma.

     Such an analysis requires an examination of the overall capital of the select society in crisis including human, social, natural, physical and financial capital. This is a focus on physical and social capital while noting that these two factors are no more or less important than the other factors. Michael Ungar, author of Community resilience for youth and families: Facilitative physical and social capital in context of adversity

 notes that: most individuals, and he emphasizes the word most, are only as successful as their communities as a whole and that this success depends on the resources a community has. Once this thesis is accepted, it is the job of the social scientist to examine the nature of those institutions in the unique setting of the society to be examined and a means of developing uniquely tailored solutions.

    In his book The Power Elite, published 1956, C. Wright Mills examined the history and the nature of an intertwining political, economic, and cultural elite in America and its influence on the thinking and, as such, on the activities of the rest of us. He noted that power, and the exclusivity and insularity of those who hold power, can often contribute to a corrupt and deviant outcome, one that might not be in the best interest of a select society and, as such, in the best interest of the individuals in that society. The influence, pro as well as con, that is held by the power elite often becomes more visible during a situation of trauma and may become manifest in the approach toward recovery.

Problem:

     To illustrate this thesis, and to examine the insidious influence, in this case, of the power elite, I will examine the HIV/AIDS crisis and its effect on the male homosexual community in the United States in the 1980’s. When the disease of HIV/AIDS first entered public awareness in the early 1980’s, it was revealed to be a terrible contagion that led to extreme suffering and certain rapid and painful death for those who were unfortunate enough to contracted it. Its victims were mostly gay men but also included drug addicts and hemophiliacs. The causes of HIV/AIDS were well known and well publicized by federal health authorities at the time and they included certain sexual practices and the exchange of needles. Yet the disease continued to spread, and it continued to impose a terrible death toll on the gay community in particular. The health crisis continued into the early 1990’s when it was abated by a combination of medicines and health remedies that allowed those who were infected with HIV/AIDS the chance to live a relatively healthy life.

     Yet, in those critical years, the power elite in the gay community did little or nothing to alleviate the problem. Instead, they focused on hurling accusations of homophobia at the Reagan Administration while raising huge sums of money for themselves and their special interest groups. If they had treated HIV/AIDS like any other infectious disease, instead of turning the problem into a political football, they might have saved thousands of lives. If they had actually cared about reducing HIV/AIDS they would have advocated restraint from certain sexual practices common to gay men at the time, practices known to spread the disease, and other similar measures such as shutting down gay bath houses that were known incubators, better screening and reporting, advovating monogamy, and other modalities, at least until a cure was found.

     Instead, the gay establishment circled the wagons around the sexual revolution which they pushed, full steam ahead, without consideration to the human cost. This issue came up for me when I was campaigning for Congress in 2004 against Rep. Barney Frank, a prominent gay leader during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980’s. A reporter contacted me to respond to his false accusation against me, that I had something against gay men and women. In this regard, Frank was depending on the fallacy of stereotyping which operated under the assumption that any conservative, de-facto, must therefore, simply by being a conservative and, as such, not on the left, must have something against gay people. I responded to this lie by noting that Frank was in no position to hurl such an ugly accusation since, as a self-described gay leader himself, he could have cholsen to excercize leadership in terms of saving the lives of his fellow gay men in the 1980’s. He could have utilized that leadership position to advocate proper policies for the community and practices for gay men in the face of a health epidemic. Yet he said nothing. Instead he placed the interests of the sexual revolution over the lives of his fellow group members.

     Frank responded to my criticism by telling the reporter not to pay attention since I was “crazy.”

Conclusion:

     The gay community was in a position to “bounce back” from this terrible crisis, they had the social capital, the infrastructure, the resources, the institutions to do so but their leadership chose another path and this cost a lot of suffering and lives. HIV/AIDS is a disease and, as such, it deserved to be treated like any other disease. This meant education, efforts at containment and isolation, identification and proper communication, and other measures that might have been disruptive to the usual lifestyle of the community but which were essential toward rescue, recovery, and a view toward possible and eventual return to the status quo ante.