WI: No AIDS Virus
- Thread starter LHB
- Start date
A ton of good people would still be alive and we might be a few years ahead of were we are today.
In a much broader sense the changes and challenges to traditional sexuality started in the 1960s and 70s would probably continue to pick up momentum in the United States. No AIDS means no omnipresent hovering doom putting a damper on sexual promiscuity and experimentation. If anything that might help the gay rights movement more than hurt it by leading to more dialog on the broader question of sex and sexuality.
And in a more immediate impact I'm betting the gay community would be in a VERY different place with so many activists, writers, and thinkers who were key to the first wave of Gay Liberation not being dead of AIDS. That by itself has some pretty huge impact and implications.
I could see the first three happening, but I'm not sure that Zimbabwe could develop that well. Mugabe's been in power since 1980, which I think is a big part (AIDS is also a key factor) in Zimbabwe's failures over the last several decades.
I don't think AIDS is nearly as much of a problem that that maniac is.
I'm with LHB AIDS did a lot to drain Gen X's party pool and drive us to more conservative viewpoints re: sex for everyone, straight, gay, or otherwise.
W/o AIDS and ACT UP, the gay community would be closeted and not near as oriented toward stability vs IOTL in the US.
A lot more people'd be alive doing good work longer, but a lot of good work done on immune response that' made significant advances in stage IV cancer treatments wouldn't have been done w/o AIDS spurring that direction in biomed research.
W/o AIDS' demographic hollowing of Subsaharan Africa, population growth and economic growth would be creating an environmental disaster as their consumption of resources scales up in both aggregate and per capita demand to Second World standards.
Eventually, they'd get their acts together managing resources better after 20-30 years barbecuing the tropical forests and savannas for bigger, better farms, roads, railroads, and airports, etc.
We'd only be seeing a lot of African megafauna (lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, antelopes et al) in zoos b/c the farmers and ranchers wouldn't stand for those animals stampeding over fences and eating their crops or culling their herds. Pay enough dudes bounties with AK's and helos to run them down and the animals don't stand a chance. In 5 years- there'd be nothing but bones left of anything bigger than a rat in the wild. Warthogs might survive as wild hogs have in the US but YMMV.
The people'd be immensely better off for a while until the competition for water and jobs and room to develop exhausts the resources. Hopefully, the education/affluence effect kicks in and pop growth drops enough not to stress the environment as much, but it's the massive consumption of resources for a generation, maybe two for that effect to tell.
W/o AIDS and ACT UP, the gay community would be closeted and not near as oriented toward stability vs IOTL in the US.
A lot more people'd be alive doing good work longer, but a lot of good work done on immune response that' made significant advances in stage IV cancer treatments wouldn't have been done w/o AIDS spurring that direction in biomed research.
W/o AIDS' demographic hollowing of Subsaharan Africa, population growth and economic growth would be creating an environmental disaster as their consumption of resources scales up in both aggregate and per capita demand to Second World standards.
Eventually, they'd get their acts together managing resources better after 20-30 years barbecuing the tropical forests and savannas for bigger, better farms, roads, railroads, and airports, etc.
We'd only be seeing a lot of African megafauna (lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, antelopes et al) in zoos b/c the farmers and ranchers wouldn't stand for those animals stampeding over fences and eating their crops or culling their herds. Pay enough dudes bounties with AK's and helos to run them down and the animals don't stand a chance. In 5 years- there'd be nothing but bones left of anything bigger than a rat in the wild. Warthogs might survive as wild hogs have in the US but YMMV.
The people'd be immensely better off for a while until the competition for water and jobs and room to develop exhausts the resources. Hopefully, the education/affluence effect kicks in and pop growth drops enough not to stress the environment as much, but it's the massive consumption of resources for a generation, maybe two for that effect to tell.
You'd need a pre-1900 for this, in the long run you'd need to substantially alter the development of SIV to prevent it from being able to jump to Humans, however to delay it you'd need to alter 19th century colonial policy in the Congo to prevent it from being able to make the jump and expand super fast.
Curiousone
Banned
This. I'd probably have gotten several times the amount of action I've had so far in life. There'd be a lot of money freed for other health research. Other STI's, simpler than HIV but less troublesome might well have been just something you got immunized for in school.
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
The thing with Mugabe is it all comes down to timing, ZANU-PF always had rather anti-democratic tendencies as an organization, but the time by which Zimbabwe went off the deep end into land seizure and subsequent economic collapse is actually quite recent.
Marius, our resident South African, has said of Mugabe, and I happen to agree, that effectively if Mugabe had died in the 90's, he would have been remembered as one of the finer African statesmen along the lines of Kenneth Kaunda or Kwame Nkrumah. Because this was a time by which Zimbabwe's economy was still relatively functional and was also prior to the seizure of the farms.
Nobody ever really paid much attention when Mugabe killed tens of thousands of black minorities that resisted his regime and the Shona-majority ZANU-PF, but he seized a few white-owned farms and suddenly became the worst dictator of the century.
I'm not necessarily qualified to comment on what the lack of HIV/AIDS would do to Africa, but my instinct is to agree with those who say that South Africa, Botswana and Namibia would be better off economically but African wildlife would be worse off. Zimbabwe would still be in deep trouble - Mugabe is not going to turn into Syngman Rhee just because his people aren't dying of a new disease.
In the First World gay rights would be different. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. The current major issues for the LGBT rights movement are nondiscrimination (especially employment nondiscrimination) and equal marriage rights for same sex couples. The former concern would still be around, and equally important, but the latter would not exist at the same level. Bruce Bawer (IIRC) has pointed out that the successful push for gay marriage is as much the result of conservative trends within the LGBT community as it is the result of progressive trends within the broader culture. The first wave of gay activists to come out in the 1970s were sexual radicals who were opposed to marriage in principle and tended to treat promiscuity as an inherent part of being gay. They also tended to favor things like legalizing public sex and lowering or eliminating the age of consent, positions that the modern LGBT community tries to forget ever existed. Even gay men who paired off more or less permanently tended to have some sort of negotiated arrangement allowing for sex on the side. The AIDS forced the evolution of the gay rights movement in three ways. Firstly, AIDS killed off a lot of the radicals who had emerged from the counterculture; their places were taken by younger activists, and activists who came out later in life. These younger people drew their inspiration from the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation movements and campaigned for inclusion in the culture rather than fundamental change of the culture. Secondly, AIDS made gay men seriously consider monogamy.
So you would see a more radical LGBT rights movement in a world with no AIDS. It would probably be slightly less successful, both because it would get less sympathy and because the less radical activists would still exist and the movements goals would therefore be more diffuse. Probably marriage would be less common in the US, and single motherhood less stigmatized. Gay men would still be promiscuous, being out would not be considered an obligation, and pornography and nudity would be more public. Equal marriage would not be allowed in any state, though sodomy would have been decriminalized earlier. One or two states might abolish marriage altogether. Some big cities would have decriminalized public sex after certain hours and in certain locations. Pedophiles would be despised, of course, but there wouldn't be a hysterical witchunt for anyone who might possibly be a pedo. Men could sit on park benches without attention from the police, for instance.
In the First World gay rights would be different. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. The current major issues for the LGBT rights movement are nondiscrimination (especially employment nondiscrimination) and equal marriage rights for same sex couples. The former concern would still be around, and equally important, but the latter would not exist at the same level. Bruce Bawer (IIRC) has pointed out that the successful push for gay marriage is as much the result of conservative trends within the LGBT community as it is the result of progressive trends within the broader culture. The first wave of gay activists to come out in the 1970s were sexual radicals who were opposed to marriage in principle and tended to treat promiscuity as an inherent part of being gay. They also tended to favor things like legalizing public sex and lowering or eliminating the age of consent, positions that the modern LGBT community tries to forget ever existed. Even gay men who paired off more or less permanently tended to have some sort of negotiated arrangement allowing for sex on the side. The AIDS forced the evolution of the gay rights movement in three ways. Firstly, AIDS killed off a lot of the radicals who had emerged from the counterculture; their places were taken by younger activists, and activists who came out later in life. These younger people drew their inspiration from the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation movements and campaigned for inclusion in the culture rather than fundamental change of the culture. Secondly, AIDS made gay men seriously consider monogamy.
So you would see a more radical LGBT rights movement in a world with no AIDS. It would probably be slightly less successful, both because it would get less sympathy and because the less radical activists would still exist and the movements goals would therefore be more diffuse. Probably marriage would be less common in the US, and single motherhood less stigmatized. Gay men would still be promiscuous, being out would not be considered an obligation, and pornography and nudity would be more public. Equal marriage would not be allowed in any state, though sodomy would have been decriminalized earlier. One or two states might abolish marriage altogether. Some big cities would have decriminalized public sex after certain hours and in certain locations. Pedophiles would be despised, of course, but there wouldn't be a hysterical witchunt for anyone who might possibly be a pedo. Men could sit on park benches without attention from the police, for instance.
... and how do you get from a more pomiscuous gay culture which advocates for lowering or abolishing the age of consent, to that??? If anything, I'd say that such a huge target would make the witch-hunt far more frenzied!
Flocculencio
Donor
This too- far more advanced gay liberation across the First World along with a standard society much more open to sexual experimentation and alternative sexualities.
While it'd help some I don't really think no AIDS would really do that much as it's really only in parts of the West that AIDS became associated with homosexuality, and that was'nt until the 80's (and primarily because most of the the first real studied cases were among the LGBT population), while everywhere else that connection did not exist.
Ultimately the lack of AIDS is'nt really going to affect the sexual openness of the First World, I mean the 60's and 70's in America were basically that (I don't know the timeframes for other countries), yet that experimentation did not end because of AIDS but because it swung to an extreme.
@iori- You're making sense, sir/madam. That's s/t the US does after trying everything else in finally treating AIDS as a public health problem for everyone instead of further marginalizing the folks affected.
I heartily disagree with you re: AIDS not affecting promiscuity.
Chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes won't kill you.
AIDS will.
So will syphilis (and HPV if you get cervical cancer), but syph's treatable in primary and secondary stages with OTS antibiotics.
The Sexual Revolution happened b/c a casual hookup wasn't going to leave s/b pregnant and/or with a fatal, untreatable disease.
Also folks wanted to reexamine sexual roles outside the marriage straitjacket folks tried stuffing everyone back into after the dislocations of the Great Depression and WWII.
@ofotherworlds- Superb points re: various phases of gay activism.
I just saw Dallas Buyers' Club which hit several nerves for me.
One-it portrayed my hometown Dallas and the time of my teenaged years very accurately.
Two- Now, with the AIDS cocktail allowing folks to live decades with HIV, it's hard to imagine the desperation felt by AIDS patients in the mid-1980's.
Nobody knew what worked and the FDA's drug-testing/approval pipeline was way behind the curve for variety of reasons. It's easy to blame Reagan and his appointees at CDC and elsewhere for criminal negligence until ACT UP and various other activists got attention and resources to take AIDS seriously as a public health threat roughly five years late.
TBH, w/o AIDS to mobilize gays to create an "out" community and organize for self-protection, I argue you'd see nowhere the same progress toward recognition by straights.
Civil unions might be on the table not so much as a gay issue, but allowing folks to recognize LTR partnerships of all stripes and simplify access to partners' various assets, act as powers of attorney in various things, etc.
I think the 1980's US was in the midst of a backlash against the counterculture mobilized by the religious right. AIDS was a convenient excuse to marginalize gays further but regardless of AIDS, it'd have happened.
Butterflying that socio-political backlash IMO requires more than just the absence of AIDS but that whole sense of America adrift ca. 1980 folks felt the need to correct.
I heartily disagree with you re: AIDS not affecting promiscuity.
Chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes won't kill you.
AIDS will.
So will syphilis (and HPV if you get cervical cancer), but syph's treatable in primary and secondary stages with OTS antibiotics.
The Sexual Revolution happened b/c a casual hookup wasn't going to leave s/b pregnant and/or with a fatal, untreatable disease.
Also folks wanted to reexamine sexual roles outside the marriage straitjacket folks tried stuffing everyone back into after the dislocations of the Great Depression and WWII.
@ofotherworlds- Superb points re: various phases of gay activism.
I just saw Dallas Buyers' Club which hit several nerves for me.
One-it portrayed my hometown Dallas and the time of my teenaged years very accurately.
Two- Now, with the AIDS cocktail allowing folks to live decades with HIV, it's hard to imagine the desperation felt by AIDS patients in the mid-1980's.
Nobody knew what worked and the FDA's drug-testing/approval pipeline was way behind the curve for variety of reasons. It's easy to blame Reagan and his appointees at CDC and elsewhere for criminal negligence until ACT UP and various other activists got attention and resources to take AIDS seriously as a public health threat roughly five years late.
TBH, w/o AIDS to mobilize gays to create an "out" community and organize for self-protection, I argue you'd see nowhere the same progress toward recognition by straights.
Civil unions might be on the table not so much as a gay issue, but allowing folks to recognize LTR partnerships of all stripes and simplify access to partners' various assets, act as powers of attorney in various things, etc.
I think the 1980's US was in the midst of a backlash against the counterculture mobilized by the religious right. AIDS was a convenient excuse to marginalize gays further but regardless of AIDS, it'd have happened.
Butterflying that socio-political backlash IMO requires more than just the absence of AIDS but that whole sense of America adrift ca. 1980 folks felt the need to correct.