The CDC shouldn't have shut down bathhouses and encouraged gay men to have fewer partners. Instead, we should have siezed all the rich people's money and used it to fund treatments and cures. Because no one should ever have to bear consequences of their behavior. In fact, consequences should be entirely divorced from behavior. That's what "liberation" is all about!

I know the truth doesn't fit into your hysterical jab at the queers -- or your defense of Ronald Reagan (!!!) -- but the truth does have a well-known liberal bias.

Oh, and Ronald Regan's administration screwed up the response to AIDS plenty, too. Just not in the way the gay leadership of the time did.

Yes, because people should die as the consequences of their bad behavior, so long as assholes like you don't have to contribute a little more to find cures for deadly diseases.

One universal quality of selfish pricks: they're all fucking miserable. Is that the consequence of your personal responsibility, David?

Shilts' history is full of errors and his own bias is very evident.

Having lived through the whole awful time, I really don't remember non-gay folks being all that supportive of gays . Condemning is more like it -- kind of like what you are doing now.

We're not all retarded on Slog. Just ignore her. Some of us understand the concept of work, getting paid for your work, and keeping the money that belongs to you.

There were plenty of other voices in that supposed wilderness, by the way, not the least of whom was the extremely influential Larry Kramer or all the people behind ACT-UP and GMHC, for starters. In fact, it wasn't a wilderness at all. The gay establishment at the time all supported saving the gay male community.

As to anybody not wanting to close bathhouses: closing the bathhouses didn't stop AIDS, so it wasn't effective (or virtuous) to advocate for closing them nor was it evil (or wrong) to want them to stay open. Men who engaged in risky behavior just took that risky behavior to places where there was no opportunity for community, education or support.

And as for engaging in risky behavior in the first place: when a community is so de-humanized and made so desperate, it's no wonder that some within it lose track of common sense and even the instinct for self-preservation. Right or wrong, sexual liberation was an antidote to oppression for some. When that antidote was suddenly taken away and they were essentially punished all over again, some resisted changing their behavior. Not a surprise. And some men were just plain stupid. So?

Nothing was gained then by bashing all over again the people who were already victims of the dominant culture and nothing can be gained by bashing them now.

gay people aren't children.

Hope to see you there tomorrow.

-Adam