Box Turtle Bulletin

Arthur C. Clarke

On March 19, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke died at the age of 90.

Even if you never read science fiction, there are a handful of household names that are synonymous with the genre, and Arthur C. Clarke is prominent among them. His classics include Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars, and of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I plowed through a good chunk of Clarke’s fiction in my teen years.

But not only was Clarke a contributor of classics, a television host, and a promoter of space exploration, he was also among that class of early sci-fi writers who imagined technology that we take for granted today, including geostationary orbit for satellites in what is now called the Clarke orbit, cell phones, and the internet.

But what I did not know about Clarke, and what was not in most of his obituaries, was his sexual orientation. According to one of Clarke’s correspondents, author Toby Johnson,

He demurred about coming out publicly as gay, he wrote, because he felt this fact would be used to discredit his ideas. He was 61 at the time of Stonewall, already past the sexual prime in which it’s meaningful to identify oneself as gay.

He had a cute quip about not being gay: “At my age now,” he said, “I’m just a little bit cheerful.”

He wrote that he was quite fascinated with the role homosexuals have played down through time as revolutionary thinkers. (In our correspondence, he expressed great interest in C.A. Tripp’s book about Abraham Lincoln as gay.) He kept a private collection of writing which is not to be published until 50 years after his death. I’d wager the world is going to receive the open acknowledgement of his homosexuality and of his theory about gay consciousness as revolutionary come 2058.

Johnson’s story is confirmed by Clarke’s friend, Kerry O’Quinn, publisher of Starlog:

Yes, Arthur was gay – although in his era that wasn’t the term. As Isaac Asimov once told me, “I think he simply found he preferred men.” Arthur didn’t publicize his sexuality – that wasn’t the focus of his life – but if asked, he was open and honest.

It is sad that this luminary was not more open about his orientation, though not surprising considering his generation. And it is discouraging that newspapers couldn’t get beyond his “cheerful” quip to report accurately on his life.

But to those who think that gay people should be exported because “homosexuality is destructive to society” I present a man whose life enriched the world. Now give back your cell phone.

Early 20th Century Trangender

Colleen Cason in the Ventura County Star tells the story of Lucy Hicks, a local who lived as a woman though born male.

Did he suspect she was a man, I asked him. It didn’t matter, he told me. “Lucy was just Lucy,” he said. She always greeted him with a cheery “Hello, there, young man” when he delivered her weekly order from the butcher shop to her kitchen.

Lucy stood up for her gender identity long before the notion of transgendered persons became commonly known.

Lucy challenged the authority of physicians who insisted that she was male. “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman,” Anderson told reporters in the midst of her perjury trial. “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.”

The Sheldon Institute also has a collection of articles from the Star

The Problem with Moralizing

I think what — what I’m saying is — and I had not gotten into the equal protection argument, Texas has the right to set moral standards and can set bright line moral standards for its people. And in the setting of those moral standards, I believe that they can say that certain kinds of activity can exist and certain kinds of activity cannot exist.

On March 26, 2003, Charles A. Rosenthal was riding high. As district attorney for Harris County, Texas, he was enjoying the rare distinction of arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States in Lawrence v. Texas, what would become a landmark case declaring sodomy laws to be unconstitutional.

But little did Rosenthal realize that the seeds of his destruction were already growing. Not only would he lose his argument, but he would lose his job and his reputation.

In January 2002, the sheriff’s deputies performed a drug raid in southeast Houston. Sean Ibarra, a neighbor, took photographs.

The deputies came to the home of the Ibarras demanding the film. Eric Ibarra videotaped the confrontation between his brother and the sheriffs. Then the Ibarra brothers were both arrested on charges of resisting arrest.

The brothers were tried and exonerated later that year. But the Ibarras believed that their civil rights were violated and brought the matter to the district attorney, Rosenthal. When Rosenthal did not respond to their satisfaction, in 2004 they sued the Sheriff and District Attorney Rosenthal.

As part of their discovery proceedings, the Ibarras subpoenaed the district attorney’s email. What they found was not particularly relevant to their case… but it was very relevant to Rosenthal’s career. It seems Rosenthal used his office email to send love notes to his secretary and to disseminate racist jokes and pornography.

But the thing that took Rosenthal down was not his adulterous affair. Nor was it his racism.

Rosenthal scorned the judge’s orders and did not turn over all of his email. Instead, he deleted over 2,500 email just days after being ordered to remit it. This got him in a heap of trouble.

Several things could happen now. After the hearing, Judge Hoyt could accept the DA’s answers and simply move on. Or he could find Rosenthal in contempt.

“The question of contempt, civil, or criminal could lead to other things,” said Treece. “(It) could lead to obstruction of justice, which is a significant federal problem. Or even perjury.”

And so Rosenthal has resigned and may find himself sitting in jail.

You see, Rosenthal forgot that those who like to moralize about others too often think that they are better than those whom they distain. They are so fond of pointing out the mote in others’ eyes that they ignore the beam in their own. And that beam can blind them to the danger that is coming.

No Mr. O’Neil, Boy-Rape isn’t “Gay Subtext”

The past year’s gay representation in mainstream Hollywood movies has been less than encouraging. So when the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) announced its nominees for Film-Wide Release there wasn’t much to pick from.

But Tom O’Neil, writing on the LA Times’ The Envelope website thought they missed one

One great film with a gay subtext got overlooked by other awards this derby season and deserved to be noted here, but wasn’t: “The Kite Runner,” which contains a controversial boy-rape scene. Why did GLAAD wimp out?

I’ve not seen the movie but I have read the book. Unless they greatly differ, there are no gay characters in this movie. (Spoiler Warning) There is one character that as a youth rapes another boy out of aggression and then grows up to continue molesting children, both girls and boys. There is nothing whatsoever that suggests that this character is attracted to adult males, nor would such linkage be admirable and deserving of recognition.

Suggesting that a rape scene is gay subtext that somehow would be awarded by GLAAD is beyond stupid and offensive. If you agree, feel free to let the Times know.

The Newport Sting

An interesting article provides the history of the first national gay sex scandal.

Before it ended, the scandal had blazed in headlines across America, embarrassed future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and led to FDR suing The Providence Journal.

It’s worth reading. The tactics employed in the sting were, shall we say, a bit unconventional.

Good-Bye and Thank You, Governor Dreyfus

The AP is reporting that Lee Sherman Dreyfus, Governor of Wisconsin from 1979 to 1983 passed away peacefully today.

Dreyfus, a Republican, ran as an outsider on a platform of fiscal conservatism and tax cuts. However he maintained moderate social values.

Our community owes a debt to Gov. Dreyfus.

Dreyfus signed the nation’s first statewide gay rights law in 1982. The measure made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment and public accommodations. Gay rights activists gathered in Madison last year to mark the 25th anniversary of the law.

Glenn Carlson, interim executive director of Fair Wisconsin, a gay rights group, said the law made Wisconsin a trailblazer.

“It really established Wisconsin in the forefront of nondiscrimination,” he said. “He’s been a great leader and will be sorely missed.”

After his retirement from politics, he remained an ally of our community. In 2006 he was a vocal opponent of the state’s constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and civil unions.

State Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, was president of the Senate during Dreyfus’ term and with Dreyfus when he signed the bill.

“He had a real concern for the people of the state of Wisconsin,” Risser said. “He had a compassionate feeling. I consider him a good governor. … He was an inspiration to people.”

Our hearts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

Today in History: The Temerity Of A Kiss

This essay first appeared last year. Since then, the readership of Box Turtle Bulletin has increased ten-fold, so I thought it might be appropriate to re-post this to premiere our series for 2008, “Today In History.”

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

It all began exactly forty years ago this New Year’s Eve, on Sunset Blvd., in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, in a small bar called the Black Cat. There were some sixty or seventy patrons gathered during those final moments of 1966, counting down the last few seconds to midnight. Couples gathered and stood next to each other, and as the countdown approached zero, they leaned into one other, and, amid the shouts of “Happy New Year!” and the opening strands of Auld Lang Syne, they did something all couples do all around the world.

They kissed.

And immediately at least six plainclothes officers who had infiltrated the gay bar began viciously beating and arresting the kissing offenders. As the melee widened, several people tried to escape to the nearby New Faces bar. Undercover officers followed and raided that bar as well. One of the New Faces workers was beaten so badly by police that they cracked a rib, fractured his skull and ruptured his spleen.

Six Black Cat kissers were tried and convicted of “lewd or dissolute conduct” in a public place, conduct that consisted of male couples hugging and kissing. According to one police report, one couple had “kissed on the mouth for three to five seconds.” Apparently, three to five seconds are what constituted “lewd or dissolute conduct” among the LAPD.

It’s hard to describe what it was like to be gay in Los Angeles in the 1950’s and ’60’s. It was virtually illegal to be gay in LA, where undercover officers displayed unusual zeal to “clean up the streets.” No place was safe, not even private homes, bars or clubs. “Gay bars” barely existed. If one establishment gained a reputation as a gay hangout, it would be raided and shut down. Undercover officers would infiltrate private parties and bars suspected of being frequented by gay men. If they saw anyone who engaged in any sort of social touching, hand-holding, dancing, or even simple small-talk that might, in the imagination of the undercover officer, conceivably lead to “something more”, they were arrested. Entrapment was the norm and it didn’t take much to get arrested. Simply arranging to meet for dinner or exchanging phone numbers with an undercover officer was often enough to trigger an arrest — and being labeled a sex offender under California Law.

But all of that began to change with the profoundly radical act of a kiss.

It’s still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.

Two and one half years before the Stonewall rebellion in New York, there was another rebellion underway in Los Angeles as the gay community stood its ground in defense of a kiss. In this case of do or die, more than 200 activists gathered at the corner of Sanborn and Sunset to protest the arrests and the ongoing police brutality and intimidation. At a time when few would dare to publicly identify themselves as homosexual for fear of intimidation and arrest, this first open gay-rights protest in Los Angeles was a very bold step. It led to the formation of PRIDE, a gay rights group in Los Angeles, and it swelled the ranks of the Mattachine Society. Where previous raids drove gay men further underground, this time the reaction was different. Gay activism in Los Angeles came of age that night forty years ago.

In the ensuing publicity, two of the convicted kissers, Charles W. Talley and Benny Norman Baker, were able to find some very brave heterosexual lawyers who agreed to handle their appeals. No gay lawyers were willing to publicly come out to take the case. Charles (the one described in the police report kissing someone “on the mouth for three to five seconds”) and Benny appealed their convictions all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. But their kiss was much too radical for that august institution. In 1968, the court refused to hear Talley vs. California, and so their convictions stood.

There’s no question that we have come a very long way since 1966. But in some ways, we haven’t yet come far enough. Male couples can still be beaten for simply holding hands in public. The ordinary act of placing one’s hand in another’s – the same thing so many heterosexual couples do with such ease and innocence – is still too provocative even today in many places. A kiss would be downright heroic.

In a society where heterosexual couples can kiss wherever they please and lesbians kissing is considered “hot”, a kiss is still a very radical act when that kiss is shared between two men. Critics point to the popularity of Will & Grace as evidence that gay men are accepted, but long-suffering Will Truman (Eric McCormack) rarely had a boyfriend. And when he finally got one, he wasn’t allowed to kiss him on the lips for the longest time. It wasn’t until the the show had been on the air for eight seasons that Will was finally allowed to kiss James Hanson (Taye Diggs).

A few years ago, Oliver Stone put Alexander the Great in bed naked with Hephaistion after they expressed their undying love for each other. But even though Stone’s reputation is supposedly built on his bold interpretations of history, he chickened out and only let Alexander share his kiss with Olympia in a love scene that was more a struggle for dominance than an expression of love. And while Ennis Del Mar and Jack Tripp Twist were finally allowed to kiss each other in the remotest reaches of Brokeback Mountain where nobody could see them, all of that kissing still came to an end some twenty-five years ago with Jack’s brutal murder.

Forty years after the Black Cat raid, men still cannot be seen kissing each other, unless ratings are tanking during the final season or one of them dies.

And yet, what are two lovers supposed to do?

And when two lovers woo
They still say, “I love you.”
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.

A lot has changed since 1966, but the passage of forty years has not tamed the temerity of a simple kiss. For gay men, a kiss is still seen a boldly radical act. But it is also our declaration of independence, on which forty years ago many have pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

So all you men out there, do something radical this New Year’s Eve. Kiss him. On the Mouth. For three to five seconds.

I don’t care who you kiss or why. You can kiss him for love, you can kiss him for lust, or you can kiss him just because he’s cute. You can kiss him because he’s the love of your life, or you can kiss him because he’s a total stranger who you’ll never see again. But just kiss him, and kiss him boldly.

Kiss him for all of those who were not allowed to kiss. Kiss him for those who were beaten and arrested for kissing, and for those who fought back to defend that kiss. Kiss him for those heroes who declared an end to the shame of kissing. Kiss him because now you can; because today your greatest freedom is in that kiss. Kiss him on the mouth. And for good measure, kiss him for much, much longer than three to five seconds. Kiss him hard and long, with a kiss of forty years and still counting.

And wish him a very happy New Year.

Update: When I first wrote this, I had very few readers to admonish me for leaving something very important out: Ladies grab your gal and plant one on her “for three to five seconds,” at least. And don’t let up until you’re good and ready! I sincerely apologize for leaving you out. It was very boorish of me.

The same good wishes goes for everyone else, whoever you are, and wherever you find yourself. And have a very happy New Year.

That’s the advantage of having a larger readership this time: it keeps us accountable and on our toes, and it holds us to ever higher standards for ourselves and for each other. Thanks for your comments.

Timothy’s Wishes For The Christmas Present

All Or Nothing ENDA – Consider For A Moment

The debate among gay activists on ENDA has on occasion come somewhat unhinged with things said like “no ENDA is better than an ENDA that excludes trans protections” while one blog went so far as to accuse dissenters of “abandoning” our trans allies.

One could argue, were transgenders “abandoned” in California, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Washington DC which all passed sexual orientation protections before gender identity?

Information and adapted graphic from the Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

See also:

Trans HRC Board Member Resigns

Entrepreneur.com Predicts Gay Bars Face Extinction In 10 Years

Entrepreneur.com recently listed “gay bars” as one of ten business types facing extinction in ten years citing (but failing to link to) a recent Orlando Sentinel article.

Although gay bars no longer serve the same purpose as in decades past I highly doubt they’re going away anytime soon. Frankly it’s human nature to want to socialize with people we share things in common with. Although I enjoy going to gay-friendly and mixed venues I don’t believe anything can take the place of a bar where I don’t have to look at someone and wonder if they’re gay or not. In the next ten years I believe many more places will become gay-friendly or mixed and more straight people will continue to visit traditionally gay bars but I find it absurd to suggest gay bars are going extinct.

Hat tip Faggoty Ass Faggot (gotta love that name)

Charles Nelson Reilly, 76

Charles Nelson Reilly, who acted and directed on Broadway but became better known for his appearances on games shows and shows, died of pneumonia at 76 in Beverly Hills. He is survived by his partner, Patrick Hughes.

There are many ways to remember Charles Nelson Reilly. He can be remembered for his Tony award winning performances and directorial efforts on Broadway, or for his high-camp appearances on television. I don’t know how he would rather be remembered but I’d prefer to remember him this way, bringing laughter into the world:

Speaking of Paragraph 175

Last night as I was putting the finishing touches on my exposé of Paul Cameron’s “Gays in Nazi Germany,” Michael Petrelis emailed me to remind me that today is a profoundly important date in LGBT history.

On this day in history, exactly 110 years ago on May 14, 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld, the modern world’s first “homosexual activist” organized the Scientific Humanitarian Committee for the expressed purpose of advocating for the repeal of Paragraph 175, the German statute which criminalized sodomy. Paragraph 175 was the law that the Nazi’s would later use to send upwards of 15,000 gay men to concentration camps. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee is the first documented formal group to advocate for the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

Actually, Michael Petrelis emailed me to say that today is Magnus Hirschfeld’s 139th birthday. Born in Kolber, Germany (now Kolbrzeg, Poland), he became a prominent physician, sexologist and the pioneering gay-rights advocate. He recognized early on the importance of gays and lesbians to come out of the closet, believing that the nascent movement wouldn’t make much headway otherwise:

…(I)n the last analysis, you must carry on the fight yourselves….(T)he liberation of homosexuals can only be the work of homosexuals themselves.

The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee managed to gather over 5000 signatures from prominent Germans from all walks of society for a petition to overturn Paragraph 175. But none of the signatories were openly gay.

The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’s work continued when he founded the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin in 1919. But the Institute’s work came to an abrupt end with the rise of the Nazi party in 1933. On May 6 of that year, the Nazi’s attacked and destroyed the institute and burned its valuable library. Dr. Hirschfeld was away on a speaking tour at the time, and so that act was the start of his permanent exile.

Dr. Hirschfeld died two years later — again on this date — of a heart attack in Nice, France on May 14, 1935. He was 67 years old.

Paul Cameron’s Nazi revisionism reminds us that Dr. Hirschfeld’s work is just as relevant today as it was a century ago.

Hat tip: Michael Petrelis

Woke Up This Morning…

Here’s a good video about Gay History. Not sure what the last minute or so has to do with gay history specifically, but overall the video is a remarkable overview of the trials and contributions of gays and lesbians gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders in the twentieth century. (Marti Abernathey helpfully corrects me on this point.)

Hat Tip: Good-As-You.

The Temerity of a Kiss

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

It all began exactly forty years ago this New Year’s Eve, on Sunset Blvd., in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, in a small bar called the Black Cat. There were some sixty or seventy patrons gathered during those final moments of 1966, counting down the last few seconds to midnight. Couples gathered and stood next to each other, and as the countdown approached zero, they leaned into one other, and, amid the shouts of “Happy New Year!” and the opening strands of Auld Lang Syne, they did something all couples do all around the world.

They kissed.

And immediately at least six plainclothes officers who had infiltrated the gay bar began viciously beating and arresting the kissing offenders. As the melee widened, several people tried to escape to the nearby New Faces bar. Undercover officers followed and raided that bar as well. One of the New Faces workers was beaten so badly by police that they cracked a rib, fractured his skull and ruptured his spleen.

Six Black Cat kissers were tried and convicted of “lewd or dissolute conduct” in a public place, conduct that consisted of male couples hugging and kissing. According to one police report, one couple had “kissed on the mouth for three to five seconds.” Apparently, three to five seconds are what constituted “lewd or dissolute conduct” among the LAPD.

It’s hard to describe what it was like to be gay in Los Angeles in the 1950’s and ’60’s. It was virtually illegal to be gay in LA, where undercover officers displayed unusual zeal to “clean up the streets.” No place was safe, not even private homes, bars or clubs. “Gay bars” barely existed. If one establishment gained a reputation as a gay hangout, it would be raided and shut down. Undercover officers would infiltrate private parties and bars suspected of being frequented by gay men. If they saw anyone who engaged in any sort of social touching, hand-holding, dancing, or even simple small-talk that might, in the imagination of the undercover officer, conceivably lead to “something more”, they were arrested. Entrapment was the norm and it didn’t take much to get arrested. Simply arranging to meet for dinner or exchanging phone numbers with an undercover officer was often enough to trigger an arrest — and being labeled a sex offender under California Law.

But all of that began to change with the profoundly radical act of a kiss.

It’s still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.

Two and one half years before the Stonewall rebellion in New York, there was another rebellion underway in Los Angeles as the gay community stood its ground in defense of a kiss. In this case of do or die, more than 200 activists gathered at the corner of Sanborn and Sunset to protest the arrests and the ongoing police brutality and intimidation. At a time when few would dare to publicly identify themselves as homosexual for fear of intimidation and arrest, this first open gay-rights protest in Los Angeles was a very bold step. It led to the formation of PRIDE, a gay rights group in Los Angeles, and it swelled the ranks of the Mattachine Society. Where previous raids drove gay men further underground, this time the reaction was different. Gay activism in Los Angeles came of age that night forty years ago.

In the ensuing publicity, two of the convicted kissers, Charles W. Talley and Benny Norman Baker, were able to find some very brave heterosexual lawyers who agreed to handle their appeals. No gay lawyers were willing to publicly come out to take the case. Charles (the one described in the police report kissing someone “on the mouth for three to five seconds”) and Benny appealed their convictions all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. But their kiss was much too radical for that august institution. In 1968, the court refused to hear Talley vs. California, and so their convictions stood.

There’s no question that we have come a very long way since 1966. But in some ways, we haven’t yet come far enough. Male couples can still be beaten for simply holding hands in public. The ordinary act of placing one’s hand in another’s – the same thing so many heterosexual couples do with such ease and innocence – is still too provocative even today in many places. A kiss would be downright heroic.

In a society where heterosexual couples can kiss wherever they please and lesbians kissing is considered “hot”, a kiss is still a very radical act when that kiss is shared between two men. Critics point to the popularity of Will & Grace as evidence that gay men were accepted, but long-suffering Will Truman (Eric McCormack) rarely had a boyfriend. And when he finally got one, he was never allowed to kiss him on the lips. It wasn’t until the the show had been on the air for eight seasons that Will was finally allowed to kiss James Hanson (Taye Diggs).

A few years ago, Oliver Stone put Alexander the Great in bed naked with Hephaistion after they expressed their undying love for each other. But even though Stone’s reputation is supposedly built on his bold interpretations of history, he chickened out and only let Alexander share his kiss with Olympia in a love scene that was more a struggle for dominance than an expression of love. And while Ennis Del Mar and Jack Tripp were finally allowed to kiss each other in the remotest reaches of Brokeback Mountain where nobody could see them, all of that kissing still came to an end some twenty-five years ago with Jack’s brutal murder.

Forty years after the Black Cat raid, men still cannot be seen kissing each other, unless ratings are tanking during the final season or one of them dies.

And yet, what are two lovers supposed to do?

And when two lovers woo
They still say, “I love you.”
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.

A lot has changed since 1966, but the passage of forty years has not tamed the temerity of a simple kiss. For gay men, a kiss is still seen a boldly radical act. But it is also our declaration of independence, on which forty years ago many have pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

So all you men out there, do something radical this New Year’s Eve. Kiss him. On the Mouth. For three to five seconds.

I don’t care who you kiss or why. You can kiss him for love, you can kiss him for lust, or you can kiss him just because he’s cute. You can kiss him because he’s the love of your life, or you can kiss him because he’s a total stranger who you’ll never see again. But just kiss him, and kiss him boldly.

Kiss him for all of those who were not allowed to kiss. Kiss him for those who were beaten and arrested for kissing, and for those who fought back to defend that kiss. Kiss him for those heroes who declared an end to the shame of kissing. Kiss him because now you can; because today your greatest freedom is in that kiss. Kiss him on the mouth. And for good measure, kiss him for much, much longer than three to five seconds. Kiss him hard and long, with a kiss of forty years and still counting.

And wish him a very happy New Year.

The Age of AIDS, The Age of Family

AIDS is twenty-five years old today.

It was on June 5, 1981 that the CDC first reported a puzzling new disease that we would come to know as AIDS. The intervening twenty-five years has been searing experience for the gay community. Discovering that one had AIDS was to receive an automatic death sentence, and over those twenty-five years an estimated half a million Americans died in the worst epidemic of modern times.

As deadly as AIDS was before the advent of Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART), the Age of AIDS was not the Age of Death. Instead, it is the age of struggle and determination, of coming together and caring for one another, and ultimately of triumph. Today, modern medicine means that for most people, AIDS is not the automatic death sentence it once was. With HAART, most of the estimated one million Americans who harbor the HIV virus live normal lives. But HAART is not a cure. For that, there is still more struggle and determination to go.

But more than anything else, the Age of AIDS is the Age of Family. “Family” has a very strong resonance in the gay community — in a way that few outside of the community know about. When someone wants to ask whether someone is gay or not, the question most often asked is “Is she family?”

That’s not a mere euphemism. “Family” is an honorific that the gay community has earned through twenty-five years of hard work and determination. As those with AIDS were cast out of their own homes and natural families, they turned to those who stepped in and filled the rightful role of family in their lives. The gay community has reinvented the family, not in imitation of what others think a family should look like, but in response to the life-and-death need for all of us to be “our brother’s keeper.”

Jonathan Rauch, writing in Sunday’s New York Times, offers this very experience to explain why marriage is so important to the gay community:

But there was also an epidemic of care giving. Lovers, friends and AIDS “buddies” were spooning food, emptying bedpans, holding wracked bodies through the night. They were assuming the burdens of marriage at its hardest. They were also showing that no relative, government program or charity is as dependable or consoling as a dedicated partner.

Yet gay partners were strangers to each other in the law’s eyes. They were ineligible for spousal health insurance that they desperately needed; they were often barred from hospital rooms, locked out of homes they had shared for years, even shut out of the country if they were foreign citizens. Their love went unmentioned at funerals; their bequests were challenged and ignored. Heterosexual couples solved all those problems with a $30 marriage license. Gay couples couldn’t solve them at any price.

The Age of AIDS has awakened a sense of family for all of us, and with that the determination to protect our family with all the power we can muster.

This twenty-fifth anniversary is a day for remembering those who have died. It is also a day for celebrating those who have survived. And it is a day to remember that the struggle isn’t over. AIDS entered our consciousness twenty-five years ago, and so did the stigma that went along with it. You can read about the role this stigma has played in this epidemic in our latest report, Opportunistic Infections.