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Notes -
How far had the destigmatisation of male homosexuality got in blue states when AIDS turned up in the early 1980's? It looks like blue states and libertarian-inclined red states repealed their antisodomy laws in the 1970s but most of the South still had them. And of course that is only the first stage in destigmatisation.
In the UK, homosexuality was still broadly stigmatised, even in left-wing circles, well into the 1980's. (The Labour Party was still dominated by blue-collar unions at the time). For example, Section 28 (which prohibited public-sector organisations promoting homosexuality) was broadly popular when it was introduced in 1988
According to Wikipedia, homosexuality in the UK was partially decriminalised in 1967. This article by Peter Thatchell claims that ~100k men were convicted of homosexual offenses between 1885 and 2013, of which 15,000 were convicted after 1967 i.e. an average of over 1,000 convictions a year before 1967 vs. 326 after. Obviously the UK population was much higher in 2013 than in 1885, so convictions per capita in the two periods would be much more disparate. Taking the population sizes at the beginning and end of the two periods and averaging them suggests the period 1885-1967 saw 2.2 convictions/100k population/year, while the period 1967-2013 saw 0.5/100k population/year. In other words, a gay was more than four times more likely to be convicted for his sexuality in the period 1885-1967 than he was in the period 1967-2013.
This certainly seems consistent with the claim that increasing liberalisation and tolerance for homosexuality was a precipitating factor for the AIDS crisis.
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