And the Band Played On and AIDS

The heart of Shilts' message is that AIDS was not effectively highlighted by the media or effectively treated by the government and the bio-medical community because it was seen as "The Gay Plague" (352). Consciously and/or subconsciously, these institutions did not see gays as a group of people who were as important as other groups. It was believed that only gays could acquire the disease, and that gays were engaging in "perverse" behavior which brought the disease upon themselves. One "homophobe" from the Midwest, a doctor, "described the gay community as a 'living, breathing cesspool of pathogens." He called gays "a subclass of people, who . . . are consuming prodigious amounts . . . of fecal material" (352). In other words, gays were seen as deserving of "their" plague. The only thing that could be done, the same doctor said, was to isolate them from non-gays.

Media response was symbolized by Patrick Buchanan's article, which declared, "The poor homosexuals---they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution" (311). Buchanan's article in May of 1983 was important because it set a media tr