10 Heroes Who Stood with Gay Americans in the AIDS Plague
Dame Elizabeth Taylor: When her friend, actor Rock Hudson, revealed publicly in 1985 that he had AIDS, Taylor stood by him and said she would commit her life to the fight to stop AIDS. She was true to her word. Only her death, in March 2011, could stop her activism.1) Lady Gaga is a member of the LGBT–the B stands for bisexual.
2) Lady Gaga’s activism is largely LGBT focussed, not HIV focussed. Plus she’s two generations too young to even have experience of the pandemic at its worst in America.
3) Want a bisexual HIV activist who actually did make an impact in the war against HIV? May I suggest the little known but crucial work of Dr. David Lourea. A major activist at the San Francisco Bisexual Center (1976-1985) and appointed to Dianne Fienstein’s AIDS Education Advisory Committee in 1983, Lourea convinced the SF Department of Public Health to include bisexual men in its weekly “New AIDS cases and mortality statistics” report. That model was then adopted by other public health departments around the country. Ultimately, Lourea’s work was responsible for the national government adoption of the term MSM (men who have sex with men) as a designation that includes all men engaging in same-sex activity, whether they identify as gay, straight, bi or no labels.
Or you can read about the HIV activism of Elias Farajaje-Jones, Lani Ka-ahumanu, Cianna Stewart and many others at
http://www.binetusa.org/bihealth.html
· Flag
Christ of the Andes! Was enjoying this appropriate salute until I came to an inexcusable regurgitating of the MYTH that Harvey Milk was “the first openly gay elected official in the country”! He wasn’t even the SECOND. Please print his out and post it over your PC:
1st – Kathy Kozachenko (Ann Arbor, Mich., City Council, April 1974)
2nd – Elaine Noble (Massachusetts House of Representatives, November 1974)
3rd – Allan Spear (Minnesota State Senate, reelected November 1976 after coming out, in office, in 1974) He was also the first out gay leader of a state legislature [not CA’s John Perez as the Courage Campaign claimed] serving as the Senate’s President from 1992-2000. In all, he was there 28 years.
4th – Jim Yeadon (Madison, Wis., City Council, April 1977)
5th – Harvey Milk (San Francisco Board of Supervisors, November 1977)
Thank you.