Gay rights without HIV/AIDS

If HIV/AIDS never emerged, how would the progress of gay rights be affected? Without the “Gay plague”, would gay rights be furthered or hindered?
 
I think we would not be as far as we are now. The disease was something that brought out tabloid-level awareness, which brought the larger picture of glbt rights with it.
 
It's difficulty to really say. It definitely gave homophobia a shot in the arm in the eighties, as it played into a lot of homophobic tropes and gave homophobia a veneer of evidential respectability, however it precisely contributed to making the situation so bad that it got a lot of people at all levels of gay society organised and focused minds, as for a time it looked like we were heading for a struggle for existence. I mean, there were some calls for all of us to be put into camps.
 
One such call came from The Sun, a newspaper owned by the same person who would later create Fox News.

Making it all the fault of Rupie or the Tories is a great myth, unfortunately the tabloids were just echoing popular opinion at the time. Someone else can speak for the US, but the British public had been strongly homophobic even before Murdoch bought the Sun, and would continue to be until well into the nineties, when things started to turn. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, even in 1993, sixty-three percent of Labour supporters and even fifty-seven percent of Lib Dem supporters were saying homosexuality was 'always or mostly wrong'. http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-...-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx Around the time of the introduction of Section 28, ninety-three percent of people were saying gay men should be unable to adopt children. In short, it was a time of monolithic homophobia, and it's very hard to believe it was only all of thirty years ago.
 
Making it all the fault of Rupie or the Tories is a great myth, unfortunately the tabloids were just echoing popular opinion at the time. Someone else can speak for the US, but the British public had been strongly homophobic even before Murdoch bought the Sun, and would continue to be until well into the nineties, when things started to turn. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, even in 1993, sixty-three percent of Labour supporters and even fifty-seven percent of Lib Dem supporters were saying homosexuality was 'always or mostly wrong'. http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-...-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx Around the time of the introduction of Section 28, ninety-three percent of people were saying gay men should be unable to adopt children. In short, it was a time of monolithic homophobia, and it's very hard to believe it was only all of thirty years ago.
I wasn't saying that it was entirely Rupie's or the Tories' fault. I was saying that I would expect such a view to be far more fringe.
 
I think you would see a continuation of the trend of gradually relaxing attitudes towards homosexuality, but less of an organized gay rights movement. IOTL alot of the modern gay rights movement starts as a push to gain medical attention for AIDS and rights for the partners of men who'd died from the disease.
 
Making it all the fault of Rupie or the Tories is a great myth, unfortunately the tabloids were just echoing popular opinion at the time. Someone else can speak for the US, but the British public had been strongly homophobic even before Murdoch bought the Sun, and would continue to be until well into the nineties, when things started to turn. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, even in 1993, sixty-three percent of Labour supporters and even fifty-seven percent of Lib Dem supporters were saying homosexuality was 'always or mostly wrong'. http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-...-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx Around the time of the introduction of Section 28, ninety-three percent of people were saying gay men should be unable to adopt children. In short, it was a time of monolithic homophobia, and it's very hard to believe it was only all of thirty years ago.

I think the other user was refering to the idea of gay people being put in camps and I'm sure that was a far more fringe belief than the then widespread belief that homosexuality was wrong.
 
I think it would be healthier. AIDS was an easy bigotry against homosexuals from the straight majority, which bordered on a witch hunt of paranoia against contracting it. Remember getting AIDS from kissing and toilet seats. It was also easy for right wing Christians to point to it as a holy punishment. And it wiped out vast segments of the community like the Black Death. So many intellectuals, as well as friends and lovers, were lost. Gay acceptance was making great headway in the 1970s. Then came AIDS and the Reagan era bigots ran with it.
 
I think the other user was refering to the idea of gay people being put in camps and I'm sure that was a far more fringe belief than the then widespread belief that homosexuality was wrong.

It wasn't exactly mainstream but I'm not sure that it was exactly fringe. Quarantining people who tested positive for HIV was actually fairly widely advocated, and some people extended this to all "high-risk" populations (ie gay men and intravenous drug users). The leading advocate of a gay quarantine, psychologist Paul Cameron, was hired as an advisor to a member of Congress and his 'research' was published by mainstream conservative institutions such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, although his career would wane as attitudes towards gay rights evolved and psychological associations pushed back against them. These sorts of views would probably not have found substantial support without the AIDS virus to inspire a moral panic.
 
Keep in mind this is a male centric discussion - lesbians are a low risk population for HIV.

Ellen DeGeneres doesn't get enough credit for advancing acceptance. She comes across as very normal and mainstream - funny, good personality, talk show with interesting topics and guests, reasonably attractive (enough to land a modeling gig for Cover Girl), and has a wife most guys would date in a heartbeat. Best thing any non mainstream group can have is someone who shows the world that they don't have three heads.

The big question is with no HIV/AIDS, is the social environment of the mid-1990s one where she would feel comfortable coming out of the closet?
 
Making it all the fault of Rupie or the Tories is a great myth, unfortunately the tabloids were just echoing popular opinion at the time. Someone else can speak for the US, but the British public had been strongly homophobic even before Murdoch bought the Sun, and would continue to be until well into the nineties, when things started to turn. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, even in 1993, sixty-three percent of Labour supporters and even fifty-seven percent of Lib Dem supporters were saying homosexuality was 'always or mostly wrong'. http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-...-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx Around the time of the introduction of Section 28, ninety-three percent of people were saying gay men should be unable to adopt children. In short, it was a time of monolithic homophobia, and it's very hard to believe it was only all of thirty years ago.

It's not a one-way road - i. e. tabloids aren't just adopting public opinion on a peculiar subject, but they just like the rest of the media is influencing and reinforcing public positions on certain issues.
 
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