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This is rather curious if you think about it a bit. I'm not sure exactly what we knew at the time, but knowing what we know now and what we did about Covid, the most effective thing that we could have done at the time to stop AIDS would have been to double-down on homophobia. Aggressively bust up gay clubs and meeting spots where the most promiscuous gay men would go to have sex with multiple strangers on a regular basis, shut down any mailing lists, newsletters, etc that were effectively used for the same, significant prison time for the worst offenders, etc. (Actually, maybe it's not such a great idea to lock up the most promiscuous gay men who might have AIDS in a prison with a bunch of other men... maybe you'd need a AIDS-only prison for them, then who cares if the end up spending all day humping each other, they've all got AIDS already anyways)
Last year I was in a pub bathroom and there was a sign hanging up giving advice for gay men on how to avoid monkeypox, a disease which disproportionately affects gay men. It was full of cheerfully unambitious and undemanding suggestions like "consider using condoms" and "consider only having sex with a small social circle" (as opposed to "every willing participant you come into contact with", presumably). Nowhere did it suggest that gay men should always use condoms, or avoid having casual sex completely for their own protection until a monkeypox vaccine had been rolled out - those demands would be far too onerous to make, apparently.
It's interesting to me that you can shut down every nightclub and bar in the country (including gay bars) for months at a time in hopes of preventing the transmission of a disease (a disease which disproportionately affects people who are so old and sick that they haven't set foot in a bar or nightclub for years, but whatever) - but the idea of temporarily shutting down gay clubs to prevent the transmission of a disease which disproportionately affects gay men (thereby protecting them from serious illness) is absolutely unthinkable. In fact I think it's entirely reasonable to assume that a public official who proposed this exact policy with this exact rationale would be accused of committing a genocide against LGBT people by denying them (even temporarily) a safe space. (How "safe" is a space exactly if going there makes you far more likely to contract an infectious disease than you would otherwise?)
The selection process for which policies sit inside the Overton window seems so fickle and arbitrary.
If you think so, you probably haven't discovered the actual criteria.
Note that I said "seems".
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I mean, locking them up and saying ‘they’re in prison for spreading a deadly disease by having gay sex constantly’ is a great way to get them murdered in prison.
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Comments like these are why I come to this website.
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