These are rare gems you've memorialized on this platform; thank you so much for caring. It's vital these voices and stories don't fade and ebb into time but disseminated for the enlightenment of those voices and stories yet to speak and be shared.
When I see young gay people walk down the street arm in arm and holding hands, and I always stop and take a moment to thank all the men and women in our country who paved the way for all of us to be able to be who we are and love whom we love.
To add to what Artie Kantrowitz says: I was in the closet when I started junior college in 1988. I had an openly gay professor who helped me to feel better about myself. I finally "came out" to myself in 1991 which began the coming out process, to others, for me.
As a gay guy now 80 years old in 2023, I think one dynamic that is usually overlooked in gay history is that, in the 1970s, after Stonewall, all we were asking of the straight community was that it "GET OFF OUR BACKS!." By the early 1980s, however, all we were asking of the straight community was that it "HELP US!" We should forgive the straight world for the fact that we asked them to do a 180-degree-turn in the space of 10 years.
Agreed. But the gay community as a whole seems to ignore the blatant and rampant promiscuity that continued even after AIDS started. They wanted the bathhouses to stay open for example. This helped disgust and turn off the straight community, fairly or unfairly.
This is what Accountability looks like. Reminds me if the part in "And the band plays on where they wanted to close down the bath houses. Gays were against this, and the panel then revealed that there was a deadly disease was being spread in tbe bath houses.
@@jacquelinegrayden4706 One cannot exaggerate how important gay bath houses were to the newly-emergent gay community in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The bath houses were gay Paradise. Innumerable gay men got in touch with their own sexual orientation, and found one another, there. How do you close down Paradise? It was not until the mid-1980s that science identified that a virus was the cause of AIDS, and not until the mid-1990s that science developed medications effective against that virus.
@fredphilippi8388 I am aware of all of that, but when it was obvious that the virus was being spread in the bath houses, the gays rebelled. The lady on San Francisco shut them down, and saved lives.
My dad was born in 1957. So when I look at my dad, I try to imagine what the man whose death image was seen by 1 billion eyes would look like now. He deserves to still be with us, but I thank him for opening the eyes of many, for humanising AIDS death.
These are rare gems you've memorialized on this platform; thank you so much for caring.
It's vital these voices and stories don't fade and ebb into time but disseminated for the enlightenment of those voices and stories yet to speak and be shared.
What a wonderful collections of interviews. Time well spent watching.
Thank you! Our history must not be forgotten !
This should be released in a Blu-ray!
HIV and AIDS was and is a great tragedy to the movenent in my life, because many contemporaries lost there life.
When I see young gay people walk down the street arm in arm and holding hands, and I always stop and take a moment to thank all the men and women in our country who paved the way for all of us to be able to be who we are and love whom we love.
To add to what Artie Kantrowitz says: I was in the closet when I started junior college in 1988. I had an openly gay professor who helped me to feel better about myself. I finally "came out" to myself in 1991 which began the coming out process, to others, for me.
As a gay guy now 80 years old in 2023, I think one dynamic that is usually overlooked in gay history is that, in the 1970s, after Stonewall, all we were asking of the straight community was that it "GET OFF OUR BACKS!." By the early 1980s, however, all we were asking of the straight community was that it "HELP US!" We should forgive the straight world for the fact that we asked them to do a 180-degree-turn in the space of 10 years.
thats super interesting thanks for sharing
Agreed. But the gay community as a whole seems to ignore the blatant and rampant promiscuity that continued even after AIDS started. They wanted the bathhouses to stay open for example. This helped disgust and turn off the straight community, fairly or unfairly.
This is what Accountability looks like. Reminds me if the part in "And the band plays on where they wanted to close down the bath houses. Gays were against this, and the panel then revealed that there was a deadly disease was being spread in tbe bath houses.
@@jacquelinegrayden4706 One cannot exaggerate how important gay bath houses were to the newly-emergent gay community in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The bath houses were gay Paradise. Innumerable gay men got in touch with their own sexual orientation, and found one another, there. How do you close down Paradise?
It was not until the mid-1980s that science identified that a virus was the cause of AIDS, and not until the mid-1990s that science developed medications effective against that virus.
@fredphilippi8388 I am aware of all of that, but when it was obvious that the virus was being spread in the bath houses, the gays rebelled. The lady on San Francisco shut them down, and saved lives.
David Lawrence Kirby 1957 - 1990
My dad was born in 1957. So when I look at my dad, I try to imagine what the man whose death image was seen by 1 billion eyes would look like now. He deserves to still be with us, but I thank him for opening the eyes of many, for humanising AIDS death.