On Sunday, volunteers from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation erected a gigantic red ribbon on the eastern slope of Twin Peaks to mark the upcoming 30th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic. It was June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that a rare pneumonia had struck five otherwise healthy gay men in Los Angeles. This would be the first reporting of the opportunistic infection that would eventually be known as HIV/AIDS, which has since infected approximately 33.3 million.
Doing my best Kristy McNichol at Universal Studios in 1981
As it would happen, the summer of 1981 was also the summer I "realized" I was gay -- or should I say "lesbian," above -- when Billie Jean King first used the word in a press conference with her then-husband, Larry, in which she expressed remorse for an affair she had had with her former hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett, who was suing her for palimony. Although the CDC knew about "GRID" back then, it be another three or four years before AIDS became a household word -- thanks President Reagan -- and I've always known that it was just pure luck that I wasn't born a few years earlier, or hadn't been more sexually precocious, or else I (al)most certainly would be dead today. It's an eerie feelings, and one that I do not take lightly, especially as we mark anniversaries such as this. The ribbon will be up for a month. Read more HERE.
Doing my best Kristy McNichol at Universal Studios in 1981 As it would happen, the summer of 1981 was also the summer I "realized" I was gay -- or should I say "lesbian," above -- when Billie Jean King first used the word in a press conference with her then-husband, Larry, in which she expressed remorse for an affair she had had with her former hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett, who was suing her for palimony. Although the CDC knew about "GRID" back then, it be another three or four years before AIDS became a household word -- thanks President Reagan -- and I've always known that it was just pure luck that I wasn't born a few years earlier, or hadn't been more sexually precocious, or else I (al)most certainly would be dead today. It's an eerie feelings, and one that I do not take lightly, especially as we mark anniversaries such as this. The ribbon will be up for a month. Read more HERE.
(Via Queerty)
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