Reflecting on Pride Month

Lessons from a tragic history

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is shown for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., October 1, 1987 (Photo credit: Lee Snider)

June is Pride Month, a time for celebration but also determination. We have honored the strides our country has made for people to love whom they love. But we also recognize how much is left to be done to secure LGBTQ+ rights. And we have seen this year, amid the parades and parties, a sense of growing anxiety, fear, and pain.

Hate crimes are on the rise, and they’re not happening in a vacuum. Sadly, a growing number of politicians are eager to use divisive rhetoric and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation to cynically play to people’s fears and further their own quest for power.

A generation’s worth of progress is in danger of eroding. Much damage has already occurred. Yet, othering people for whom they love is not new. Neither are ignorance, fear, and misinformation. With these truths in mind, we want to highlight a heartbreaking anniversary that occurred earlier this month — one that almost always passes quietly, even though it ushered in decades of suffering and death.

On June 5, 1981, the CDC published in its weekly report a medical mystery that seemed rather limited in scale but was a cause for concern nonetheless: 

“Five young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California.”

That same day, a New York dermatologist reported several cases of a rare and unusually aggressive cancer among gay men in New York and California. Something was happening. Soon, there were more reports of deadly illnesses in gay men with weakened immune systems.

For a long time, the growing medical crisis received scant coverage in the press. Articles started appearing in the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle, but they were usually buried. With few if any exceptions, radio and television ignored the stories.

The nature of the mysterious ailments, or more accurately the nature of the people who seemed to be developing them, was understood to be the reason. David W. Dunlap, a reporter for The New York Times metro section in the early 80s, recounted in a retrospective on the newspaper’s AIDS coverage: “There were strong messages that you got that were not written on any whiteboard.” He added, “You knew to avoid it. It was a self-reinforcing edict: Don’t write about queers.”

The Times published its first AIDS-related story in July 1981 under the headline, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” It ran on page A20. It would take two more years — and 558 deaths — for the Times to put what was already then called AIDS on the front page. 

At the CBS Evening News, we first reported on the story in 1982. We noted that the cause of the ailments — which, by then, had also been found in Haitian immigrants, intravenous drug users, and hemophiliacs — was still largely a mystery. We were comparatively early on the story, but we should have reported it sooner.

Of course, now we know that what was once called the “gay plague” soon spread to other populations and around the globe. HIV/AIDS has killed more than 40 million people, leaving a trail of immeasurable heartache and loss. Today, thanks to medical breakthroughs such as the antiretroviral drugs, HIV/AIDS need not be a death sentence. Millions are living long and otherwise healthy lives with it. But we should ensure that these lifesaving medications are widely distributed around the globe.

One lesson from AIDS is how damaging bigotry, misinformation, and ignorance can be. As people lay dying, they were forced to hear how they had brought this fate upon themselves through the so-called “sins” of their behavior. They were shunned by family and friends when they most needed support. Entire communities that were once filled with vibrancy and life were decimated. Human connection became tainted with anxiety and doubt.

Too few political leaders had the courage to speak out with empathy for a marginalized community. Too few in the press covered a story for fear it might “offend” readers and viewers. 

Now, as the LGBTQ+ community is under threat once more, we can find some comfort in the number of public officials who stand in solidarity. We can see progress in the depth and breadth of press coverage on the topic, encouraged by the number of reporters who can now live openly without fear of losing jobs or being ostracized in newsrooms.

But we would be wise to pause and reflect on the early years of the AIDS crisis. It wasn’t that long ago, and the lessons we can learn from it are aptly suited to our current times. When the nation needed to come together to help people in need, we allowed our divisions to define us. Hate was prioritized over health. Fear over friendship. Exclusion over empathy.

The toll of that era is not measured only in the lives lost, but also in what those who died had to endure while they were dying. We have seen in the ensuing decades how much we have been strengthened as a nation by embracing greater inclusion, by letting people live the lives they want.

Pride Month is winding down, but the spirit that it celebrates — one of loving freely and joyfully — should always serve as a bulwark against those who use the very ideal of love to try to break our nation apart. We can find hope in our history. Love, inclusivity, and empathy have time and again conquered the forces of division; fortified by this knowledge, we can renew our commitment to a future built on dignity, respect, and, yes, love.

Sophia Cheng, a high school intern with Steady, contributed to the research and writing of this piece. 

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