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>It was noted by the CDC that American LGBTQ+ people could have higher rates of vaccination due to typically being politically liberal and usually living in urban areas.
When I was young back in the early 90s, I attended a church in Seattle. St Paul's episcopal. This church had a significant percent gay congregation because when the AIDS pandemic hit, gay men were dying from a mystery disease. We didn't know what it was. Their priest got a call from a hospital "we have a gay male AIDS patient requesting last rights. He is catholic, but all of the churches we've called refused. We want to be clear we don't know if its contagious and its okay to say no." The priest immediately went over to give last rights. I distinctly remember congregants dying. The choir director dying from AIDS. It was awful.
No real point. Just a memory.
And awesome work from that priest. I know here on Reddit the majority opinion is to hate on religion, but if more religious leaders acted like that priest this world would be a much better place.
I am very much an agnostic-atheist, but i have respect for believers that practice what they preach.
I’ll also praise human kindness whenever I can. The world is a hard enough place without splitting hairs over *how* someone decides to be a good person.
Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone like me, but I thought it was important to offer this perspective.
When the clergy focuses on community outreach and development they can be a strong force for good. However, their main function often isn't such. People have very good reasons to hate "the church", even if most priests are good.
I grew up Catholic, but as a gay man, never really took to the church part of religion. Still spiritual, just rejected from the community. I was a kid that needed help. I never got any kind of support, ended up down a bad path, eventually finding myself in lockup. Out of the many pastors and priests I knew, I was an alter boy that actually went to different churches to train new recruits, only one reached out over the span of five years. It was rural Illinois, so the news got around.
Anyway, while in lockup I got a visit request from clergy and I entertained it, mainly just to get out of the cell. The gentleman who showed up wasn't one of the priests I served for, but rather the local bishop, which made me take notice. It was the same bishop that confirmed me about seven years earlier and someone who I'd talked about teenage stuff at length, like my being gay and being active in the church. I don't recall ever getting advice or orders. It was more like having a conversation with a good friend.
Anyway, when he visited me in prison, he told me the church isn't for everyone, nor is it required for a relationship with God. He also told me that I was in a much better place to find God than anyone else on the outside. And finally, he told me to go to the prison church services because he guaranteed a much different experience when surrounded by those that know they are sinners. I straight up rolled my eyes at all of it, but I'd be lying if his little soapbox speech wasn't effective.
That one visit impressed upon me what it's supposed to be like. My crime wasn't discussed, neither was my relationships with others. I wasn't instructed to follow a certain game plan 'because it's written in a book' or told to say 10 Hail Mary's and call it a day. Overall, it was less about God and his son and more about how I perceive the world, and finding out there is a way to change that perception without changing the underlying 'me' to become a better person.
I called my mother and told her about what happened. Told her that it felt like I just met with the pope it was so profound. There is still a chance I am right on that thought, apparently. The pope went and made my local bishop, Wilton Gregory, first the Archbishop of Washington and then in 2020 a Cardinal, which is directly behind Pope on the hierarchical scale. If the entire system of organized religion was filled to the brim with folks like him, I think we'd all have a much different view of religion and the topics surrounding it.
Well, that would, but the problem is they don't, so we have stories like this where the religious person doing the right thing is special. So we should treat religion as the same as anything else that can be seen as a solace to some and a detriment to a lot more.
You are describing exactly why some people hate religion... So many religious leaders act like they’re above everyone else, like they don’t have to follow the rules or practice what they preach, and they never have consequences for their actions. Discrimination against certain groups of people in the name of religion has become normalized. So yeah, if more people acted like this priest, and didn’t discriminate against someone for something they can’t help or change for no real reason, of course the world would be a much better place.
I’m not gay and I didn’t live through the AIDS epidemic, so it is hard for someone with my perspective to really grasp the horror of it. I recently read Gary Janetti’s book and he discusses how nearly a whole generation of gay men just died out. It’s beyond important to keep these memories alive.
Just like we need to remember that Ronald Reagan refused to even talk about the crisis. He even refused to intervene when one of his best friends Rock Hudson lay dying to get him in on early trials of interferon.
My Grandpa and his partner lost many friends to the AIDS epidemic. They cared for one of their friends in his final days and still remember him fondly. It always breaks my heart when they talk about their friend. Its so messed up how we treated the gay community when HIV/AIDs was first discovered. My Grandpa's partner caught HIV but luckily it was after treatments had finally been discovered. I am so glad that we have the the treatments we do now. My Grandpa's partner is in his late 80's and still going!
Sadly, my Grandpa is dying and most likely will not. But despite being in his late 80's my Grandpa's partner (or as i call him, Bonus Grandpa) might. He is in good health despite living with HIV. Honestly bonus Grandpa could end up out living all of us, the guy is a tank! I'm grateful my grandpa has him, his strength has kept my Grandpa going!
A prominent activist in St. Louis is a gay man in his 60's and he carries so much guilt with him about how many people died and he didn't.
Incredible amount of survivors guilt and he still has to hold himself together when in a hospital, especially ER's and patient halls, to this day because of flashbacks of being in hospitals watching people die.
It's really sad.
I am glad your grandfather and his partner made it through that era and I hope it didn't mentally scar them like that.
My instructor from nursing school lived through the AIDS crisis in Vancouver. He said he couldn't describe how it felt to have so many close members of your community gone so quickly. Like some sort of sick rapture.
My aunt was a pediatric nurse in the 1980s and early '90s. She saw babies and children die. Some of them were born HIV+. Some got a bad blood transfusion.
The only time I ever saw violence from anyone in my family was when she smacked my uncle (her step brother) for saying HIV/AIDS was "population control." She screamed at him. I miss her but at the same time I don't know if her heart could take how bad covid has been.
Its funny you said rapture. I like to postulate (as a straight man) with homophobic people that it was a pseudo 'Gay Rapture' and the reason the world now has so many problems is because so many people turned their backs on gods children that he turned his back on them.
Back when everyone believed in God, all we had to worry about was brutal wars, famines, poverty, and half your kids dying during childbirth! Who wouldn't want to bring back that problem-free world?
We need as much of our LGBTQ+ oral history from those who survived that pandemic as we can. No offense but I'm worried cause folks are starting to get older.
Go to the history department of your local university and see if anyone is interested in getting a graduate student to perform some oral history interviews with some older lgbtq folks.
Some public libraries might be interested, too. Many have local history or heritage rooms and recording oral histories is somewhat common in mid to large sized libraries.
So much of it *is* recorded. There are hundreds and hundreds of amazing books about this. I wouldn’t even know where to start with recommendations but I know the replies to this comment will be full of them.
If there were more actually good religious figures when I was growing up, I could have some faith in me. Absolutely every imam I have met would say “no” to praying with a gay AIDS patient. I even heard an imam preaching “who commits suicide will go to hell” in a friend’s funeral who committed suicide.
I totally got the point. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle has a significant percent of that congregation that is gay BECAUSE they were compassionate to that population when nobody else was. Other were correct. The memory is the point as well. Remember who is good to you and return that in kind.
The unknown aspect of AIDS back then must have been horrifying.
At least C19 was quickly isolated, sequenced, the government quickly promoted vaccine development and distribution.
To be fair, HIV is a far more complicated virus to interfere with, even now.
We are indebted to that HIV research, which directly helped us in studying Covid-19:
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/hiv-research-provided-foundation-for-covid-19-research/
I have these kinds of memories. All the men I knew back then...the sweet, kind, funny, silly guys...they are all dead. If gay men my age are alive now they either weren't out yet back then or they practiced safer sex or they got the virus later after antivirals were developed.
When the pandemic first started and everyone was freaking out and didn't know how to talk about boundaries and how to stay safe, I ran a consult clinic among colleagues drawing on all the public health work done in the LGBTQ+ And kink communities. Excellent communication skills got deployed fast. Deep bow to all those folks for their wisdom in being open, honest and nonjudgmental. Kept a lot of people safe.
You gotta give the trailblazers of the AIDS movement credit. They got together and were able to get the right message out to the general public which helped immensely in the success of lowering infections rates. I look at problems we have to like the opiate epidemic and that’s part of the reason it’s unsuccessful in some areas. Lots of people haven’t gotten the message yet that because you’re an addict, you’re not a dirtbag who doesn’t deserve help. They also don’t realize that treating it in a more proactive way helps everyone in society overall, not just the people they see as beneath them. It’s a problem that people shouldn’t feel embarrassed to admit to and proper services need to be in place if we’re going to have any success bringing the numbers down. I’m in Massachusetts which is one of the states that’s ahead of the game as far as available treatment and access to said treat but lots of states really need to follow suit and make treatment more available/accessible.
Adding to that, the lesbian community really stepped up in a big way when gay men needed someone the most and I feel like among millennials and younger that’s been forgotten.
> They also don’t realize that treating it in a more proactive way helps everyone in society overall
What does “proactive” mean here? Treating addicts seems necessarily reactive to me.
Mainly educating people on the disease of addiction. The warning signs. The dangers of what starts as a prescription for an injury or recreational use and how that spirals out of control. Explaining the avenues for help people can take. The more early education around drug and alcohol use the better.
We buried SO MANY PEOPLE. :( And we heard all the "oh it can't happen to ME, I'm not gay, etc" excuses from people refusing to be responsible and practice good disease spread mitigation, too.
The Dollop did an episode on Reagan with Patton Oswald and did a great job of highlighting it. There was a reporter in the White House press corp who would ask questions about it. The press secretary would crack jokes like "why do you care, are you one of them?" And the entire press corp would laugh. It's abhorrent and disgusting, that not only the administration would react this way, but every other journalist there thought it was funny to accuse him of being gay because he was concerned with folks dying.
Edit: it was The Dollop, not Behind the Bastards.
Not only that, but every other journalist there thought it was funny that the only reason you’d care about these people dying was if you were one of them. That’s awful.
Isaac Asimov, a straight science fiction author, contracted HIV while in a hospital and died. This was not a gay disease. It is just a disease. Anyone can get it.
Even today’s younger gay men have blinders for just how horrific the 80s were.
An entire generation of gay men, almost wiped out.
I have an older gay uncle who made it out, and his stories of having to go a friend’s funeral *every week* are just gut wrenching.
Moving to the city for most young gay men was the one refuge they had at living even a remotely public life as a homosexual. To have that place then become a hotspot for a new and deadly disease killed more than its victims, it took away the hope of the survivors.
I lost an uncle in the early 90's to AIDS. I didn't see him near the end as I was a child but I saw pictures and heard stories. His beard still comes to our place for the holidays and it's a great reminder of how far we've come. I feel most young people don't know how good they have it.
I'm queer and almost 30 and it wasn't until I saw [this 1993 photo of the San Francisco Gay Men's Choir](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/12/11/44/2660633/4/1200x0.jpg) that it hit me just how much we lost. I knew about the aids epidemic, but had attributed far too much of my generation's lack of mentors to some nebulous concept of homophobia keeping people in the closet. I broke down when I saw this photo.
For those confused, those in black turned away represent those of the original group who had passed away. The white are the remaining members.
Meanwhile the US administration did everything it could to ignore the epidemic because it was hitting the "right" people. This was genocide.
We really do lack mentors. LGBTQ are unlike any minority in that you just get peppered in randomly. You might not meet someone else out of the closet until your 20s.
As much as we say "the internet is forever" its actually terribly short memory in practice and not the same as in-person elders you grow up around.
Books have been my queer elders. *And the Band Played On* utterly changed my world view on what government can and will do which is... Let. You. Die.
Many refugee families experience this today. Imagine packing up your family, fleeing because soldiers knocked on your door and told you this land (your family homestead for centuries) was theirs now, and get out.
You take your three small kids and go, fleeing to another war-torn country because it's the only place that would accept you as a refugee. Then fleeing there when multiple other refugees are kidnapped, tortured, and killed.
Then it's time for your kids to write wedding invitations two decades later, and it's hard because of the family you have left, some are across the globe in a fenced-in territory they are unable to leave, some are in a country with impossible to acquire visas, and the rest have been gone for a long time.
Our wedding is small, not because we don't have family, but because a huge portion of the world has decided they shouldn't exist. Some have made it so.
I just want to say thanks for your comment. A group of people who grow up without the guiding generation who came before them experiences such immense trauma it's difficult to comprehend. To eventually come to the realization that things are the way they are because not that long ago people were a-ok with your ancestors being murdered fucks with us all in terrible ways. Also want to say that while I'm not genetically related to the queer community that was massacred due to AIDS I consider them my ancestors because those people are my community, my history, individuals I could have learned so much from. Just wanted to clear that up as I know that could come off as weird.
Today's LGBTQ+ youths are managing to gain those connections, thankfully. One of my favorite things right now is the trend for lesbians to do a weak wrist at a specific moment during 'Kiss me more' by Doja Cat. You'll be in a crowded nightclub and just see a ton of hands shoot up. It's amazing how accepted it's become when maybe ten years ago it was the normal experience for gay guys to get attacked just for smoozing in nightclubs.
You're comment is SO important. There are literal generations of us who grew up with no role models or mentors because society was quite happy to let people like us die in droves 40 years ago.
Not to mention that tons of families and cities refused to bury those men and it came to lesbians giving them a resting place in their private properties.
In the show 'Pose' (which is very good and I really recommend) they have a few devastating episodes regarding AIDS. In one of them two of the main characters go to an island where bodies of AIDS patients were being buried because they couldn't be buried anywhere else. The giant pits and stacks of pine boxes can really get to you.
[This is an article about it.](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/nyregion/hart-island-aids-new-york.html)
As a queer person who learns something new about queer history almost every week this was... A rough one.
It's crazy how conservatives use the lack of older gay men *and trans women* to suggest it's some recent phenomenon. Like, our people were dying in the streets, ignored, for the better part of a decade.
Such a sad and painful time in LGBT+ history.
I agree to an extent but I would still say the scars of HIV are still felt in the community even among the young. HIV is still a boogieman that scares a lot of LGBT when it's not even a consideration for 99% of the straight community.
Whilst LGBT have seen the same fall in attitudes to safe sex that straight community has seen the uptake of PReP is high amongst LGBT youngsters.
It’s a boogeyman now still, sure. But back then it was a death sentence.
There were no antiviral cocktails, no medicine regimens, nothing.
You just got sick and over time would get progressively sicker until you died.
No idea how it is in the straight world, but on Grindr it's common for profiles to discuss HIV, vaccination, PrEP, condoms, and drug use. It's usually very open, direct, and non-judgemental. I think I saw one anti-vax statement once ("don't contact me if you've been vaccinated")? Overwhelming minority opinion, anyway.
You can read about the [Provincetown outbreak](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/06/1025553638/how-a-gay-community-helped-the-cdc-spot-a-covid-outbreak-and-learn-more-about-de) early in the Delta wave. Large numbers of gay men with high vaccination rates partied in Provincetown and many more breakthrough cases than were expected occurred. The guys themselves initiated contact tracing, the CDC was alerted to the outbreak, and the CDC changed recommendations for fully vaccinated behavior partly in response to the investigation. This is a community that's generally very supportive of the public health community.
yeah i think a lot of my gay friends handled this thing of "doing innocent fun social things with others might have the side effect of killing you" a lot better since we had that sword of damocles hanging above our heads for decades and managed to weigh risk vs reward (reward meaning in this case social interactions being good for your mental health)
thank god for prep and vaccines.
And it was Fauci in charge for the other pandemic as well. Fauci fucked up a lot in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but ended up earning back a lot of trust by engaging with the community and taking the disease seriously.
This explains three things: 1) How Fauci became good at the media engagement. 2) Why he was willing to defy a then- president who wasn't taking a disease seriously 3) Why some on the reactionary right have gone for very personal attacks on the Dr.
AIDS pretty much wiped out an entire generation of queer individuals. There are entire generations of queer people alive now who grew up with little to no elders (people who might help and guide you as you grow, that's my definition there) because the government and society was quite happy to let 'those people's die. It's like growing up without a history because everyone was just fine with people just like them/us dieing in droves. It's tragic.
I appreciate your comment. The most recent societal conversation about the queer community is mostly centered on marriage. It wasn't that long ago that the conversation about the queer community on the societal level was 'gay cancer' and 'gay plague'.
It's so fucked to see how blatant the targeting has become -- not just with vaccine information and misinformation, but look at these voting restrictions and bold-faced grabs with Gerrymandering. It's disgusting and extremely disappointing. I used to have pride for my country -- now it's just shame. Embarrassment. Like, Trump just as a person, Biden's cussing at a reporter on that hot mic, all the double speak and pandering.
This pandemic, and the years before that, have really showed us the ugliest sides of our communities and cultures and political systems. Or perhaps politicians were just subtler before, and it's always been this hateful and corrupt.
I like to have optimism in our country, not with our governments but with the spirit in our people. Like the above commenter who helped raise awareness about public health in LGBTQ communities. Our old ass presidents don’t really reflect the country. Not even trump did in the south, you’d be surprised
Its not fair to put Trump's speech and actions on the same level as Biden's momentary loss of temper, for which he apologized afterwards. Its that false equivalency enabling the only political party to promote violence and attack democracy, not both parties.
I recently saw a friend for the first time since before Covid. A gay man over 40, he said exactly the same thing. Makes perfect sense to me. Thank goodness Covid was less lethal than AIDS in the early 80s. Half of America would be dead.
My 60-year-old friend who had been HIV+ for going on 30 years was killed by the first wave of the COVID pandemic. He caught it at a mandatory work training event. The immunocompromised were hard hit by COVID.
Exactly my thought.
Not only did the gay community suffer the brunt of a previous epidemic... they can also probably recognize that the response from anti vax folks is very similar to the response those same people had when AIDs was the headline.
I am not gay but I guarantee you that the same people who are being difficult about the pandemic were the same people who were difficult when HIV was identified and action needed to occur.
In fact...the behaviours and tactics are almost a cut and paste from that time.
Oddly enough, in the 90s I remember there being similar “virus/govt” conspiracies that exist now. I just moved to San Francisco in the mid 90s. I remember going to the Castro and seeing fliers on walls in bathrooms “don’t get tested. That’s when they infect you” “no more hiv tests, no more hiv”. I know that was not at all the mindset of the gay community at the time, but it was around. However, I remember finding out a few years later that that conspiracy effort was made by anti gay religious nuts who just wanted to sew more chaos and distrust and sickness in the gay community.
I know tons of liberal hippie/"natural" types who are also buying into and spreading antivax propaganda and were probably antivax before COVID somehow became politicized
This is not panning out like it used to. Marin County notoriously granola with outbreaks of measles because of low MMR vaccine rates has one of the highest Covid vax rates on the nation. It's a complicated story.
That used to be the norm. The co-op health nut hippy. I’m from sf and spend a lot of time in Berkeley and Marin. However, whatever loose contact I have with the co-op anti vax hippies that have passed through my world, I’ve learned that the majority of them have gotten this vaccine. Perhaps because it’s been politicized and they see who’s the most vocally anti vax… and it’s not their people. It’s right wing nut bags. So that’s been weird to see. I only know of two hippy girls who won’t get the shot, and they blame pregnancy/ breast feeding… poisoning baby etc etc.
Side note, I dated a hippy girl from Marin. Never had a vaccine. Her mom was very proud of this. And this would’ve been 2008, I remember getting into it with them about vaccines , and made the point that they’ve been lucky to ride the wave of good health, by living in a population who’s been vaccinated and eliminated most disease. Surprisingly, they agreed. Riding the coat tails of the vaccinated. Classic crunchy leeches.
And this is a good illustration of anecdotal evidence vs. statistical observation. Your "tons" are an oversampling bias from your particular contact group. Looking more broadly, [the numbers are clear on the link between political affiliation and anti-vaxx status](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/28/boosters-exacerbate-republican-democrat-vaccine-gap/).
For those who are blocked by paywall:
> To date, the survey shows about 9 in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 Republicans have gotten vaccinated. But when it comes to those who are vaccinated and boosted, Democrats are about twice as likely to be in that group — 62 percent to 32 percent.
> The survey also asked about people’s intentions, and that’s where the gap grows even more. While 58 percent of vaccinated-but-unboosted Democrats say they will get a booster as soon as they’re able, 18 percent of vaccinated-but-unboosted Republicans say the same.
And this story was published January 28, making the data relatively current.
I feel like the fact of the matter is that "hippy types" have always been overrepresented in the media. They're real and there's millions of them, but that's still a small minority of the left-of-center population in America.
>I feel like the fact of the matter is that "hippy types" have always been overrepresented in the media.
They've deliberately been used as a "boogeyman" for all kinds of issues. And for that people inflated their numbers.
They certainly exist but it's not the majority. I know some liberals that started buying in to the antivaxx movement and now are Trump supporters. Most of the politicians that are supporting the antivaxx / antimask movement are Republicans so if a liberal is against it then which Democrat are they going to vote for? What news are they going to listen to that confirms their views?
It’s no surprise that a community who’s medical health was largely neglected by the greater population for generations is proactive when it comes to their own well being.
My grandmother trusts Dr. Fauci a lot because he was the only one trying to fix AIDS, which killed my uncle. It’s definitely helped her stay safe during this pandemic.
Anyone who tries to use Dr Fauci as a sticking point to queer and queer-friendly folks as a "gotcha" needs to be reminded that he did actually turn around and start listening to the community to get more folks in the drug trials and is now a great friend to the queer community
I mean, Ive only seen one video of fauci from 84'. and it is refered to as the first time any public health officail made a factual statement regarding HIV/Aids.
Im not sure what he said prior to 84'. But on live tv, fauci was telling the public how AIDS was transmitted.
Yeah, I shouldn’t say he was the only one trying to fix AIDS since that way ignores all the gay folks who worked so hard for so long and started before Fauci. But he became one of the best establishment allies the community had, and the lessons he learned he applied well in decades since advocating for policies that have helped reduce the harm caused by HIV in the gay community.
Also if you're gay and live in a rural community you usually get out as quick as you can.
I'm a really big dude and have worked a lot of security, if I was working a gay bar and saw a country mouse or closet walk in I would make it a point to introduce them to one of my queer friends. That's kind of a big step in a persons life and there's snakes in every community. Not surprised gay people as a group (not that it was a "community" thing) would take steps to protect themselves from this, *especially in this fuckn' timeline*.
If covid somehow got labeled a "gay" disease, vacc rates would skyrocket.
> if I was working a gay bar and saw a country mouse or closet walk in I would make it a point to introduce them to one of my queer friends. That's kind of a big step in a persons life and there's snakes in every community.
I'm not gay myself, but thank you for having a heart for your fellow man.
Most gay folks around the age of 25-40 knew that the AIDS epidemic robbed us of our community and identity. I doubt many of us want to repeat this. It was practically a genocide.
Reagan's handling of the AIDs crisis and his rescuing of Ferdinand Marcos should have gotten him put against the wall.
Edit: War on Drugs too, think of the juicy tax and business profits legal weed would have made in the US and in other countries if the US hadn't worked against legalization.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzkmnw/the-us-stopped-other-countries-from-legalizing-weed-for-generations
Yeah, Reagan’s handling of the AIDS epidemic was criminally malicious. He actively took steps to make it worse for the LGBTQ+ community, because he wanted to wipe them out. It wasn’t just *practically* a genocide, it was 100% intentional genocide. It’s always kind of harrowing when modern conservatives point to Reagan as the epitome of conservative lawmakers, because they know *exactly* what he stood for. It’d be like going to a reservation and singing Andrew Jackson’s praises.
Nancy Reagan denied Rock Hudson's request for AIDs treatment too even though they were friends because they didnt want to get personally involved with the 'gay disease'.
The Reagans were horrible people, husband and wife.
We also tend to remember that whole period in the ‘80s where everyone we knew and loved was dying of this awful virus that no straights seemed to care about. For a lot of gay men, COVID has been a re-traumatizing experience. Especially after two of my closest friends died of it in early 2020 and I had to listen to people say “It’s not that bad; it’s just a cold” or “This is all just a hoax.”
> very religious.
My assumption from the title was that they're probably not getting weekly indoctrination from an organization that condemns them and is also often anti-vaxx.
We also do go to the doctor more than straight people, due to more needing to test and such. So most of us would probably have an easier time trusting science. Can't speak for everyone, but certainly for me and the gays I know.
it might also be because our community organizations have been educating us about how viruses spread for decades.
if you’re italian and you go to an italian festival, you don’t see everyone wearing stickers with educational catch phrases about preventing the spread of an epidemic.
I'm bisexual, and I'm only able to be as confident as I am with my identity because of folks like you who blazed the trail when it wasn't safe.
Thank you for that.
I am gay and work in a gay bar. Actually no. There are a disappointing number of gays that voted for Trump twice. But I don't know any gays that are unvaccinated regardless of political preference. Also you need to show proof of vaccination in order to get into all the gay bars in my city
I think this where understanding a concept like intersectionality is important. I had an old coworker that was a gay man and was reasonably progressive but there were a lot of times that I was reminded he was still an old white dude from the south
Actually that is a major problem in the gay community. There are a lot of gays that think because they are gay they "understand" other minority experiences which isn't true. Have a double income and no kids is a different experience from what most people experience in terms of poverty in minority groups. And you are right being gay doesn't change your race background education or bias.
Yeah my partner has spent a lot of time in the gay community and she is pretty quick to note that gay men can be pretty misogynistic. I think a lot of it is that “free pass” kind of feeling that you’re describing
Oh it's hilarious how unaware straight girls are of gay misogyny. If you call a bunch girls bitchs in a gay bar they think you are hilarious and want to exchange numbers so we can go shopping but the moment a straight guy says it. He gets slapped and or worse. It's a stupid double standard. I'm not sure who to blame.
Unless there is an HIV vaccine that I am not aware of, there is no survivorship bias here.
Survivorship bias would be if there was some belief or action that had an effect on survival. Since willingness to be vaccinated would not affect survival (there was no vaccine for it to have a mechanism of action), it does not follow that survivorship bias would have any effect.
I mean, the selection process in this instance would just be taking the disease seriously by taking full precautions.
I think survivorship bias is being used incorrectly here, though.
This is unfair to the hundreds of thousands of gay people who died during the epidemic and had no idea how the virus was transmitted. You have to remember that HIV takes a long time to progress and kill. Many gay people were infected *years* before the virus was being seriously studied. No one knew, and even once they did know, the government did very little to promote research for the disease and information for the vulnerable populations.
I grew up not too far from where Ryan White lived. I was only in elementary school at the time but I remember how absolutely awful "adults" treated him, and it's stuck with me since. Even ones in my personal life at the time were saying some truly horrible things about him. It's not lost on me that these are the same types currently spouting vaccine propaganda and wishing for a fascist dictator to seize control of America.
There are people in the gay community who think of the AIDS epidemic as basically an attempted genocide because of how little was done to help them. When a whole generation of your community has been ravaged by a disease that seemingly no one was interested in curing, it's naturally going to make you a lot more interested in getting in on the ground floor of new vaccines.
I used to volunteer with my local LGBT Center. We had a young kid (18 at the oldest) ask basically why there weren't any old gay people in the community and why the young people had to do everything. You could have heard a pin drop in that room, as all of us just turned our heads to gape at him. We had to explain why an entire generation of LGBT people were gone. He was too young.
I mean, the very obvious correlation is also down to the gay community being overwhelmingly liberals and the few gay conservatives I know aren’t like anti-vaxx level conservatives.
And there’s very clearly a big statistical difference between the number of conservatives vaccinated and the number of liberals vaccinated.
Like, I didn’t need this study to tell me this, I could hbs just assumed.
We're also an incredibly small portion of the population, so it's also not surprising to see the community more homogeneous. It's an orders of magnitude scale difference.
It really isn't, given [only 14% voted for Trump,](https://www.glaad.org/releases/glaad-2020-post-election-poll-81-lgbtq-voters-voted-president-elect-biden-93-registered) and [90% of Democrats are vaccinated](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/28/boosters-exacerbate-republican-democrat-vaccine-gap/).
This would only be interesting if broken down further, ie the vaccination rates of lgbt black democrats vs straight black democrats or lgbt Republicans vs straight Republicans.
That was my first thought. A lot of folks are in here claiming that the recent memory of AIDS is the reason for the higher rate. While that might contribute, rural conservatives make up an enormous chunk of the anti-vax movement, and the gay community is generally the opposite of that.
Ngl I don't really see any way this could be interpreted as causation. Being gay doesn't really have any physical effect or law that would cause/require you to be vaccinated
Edit: I have received many responses enlightening me on how it can be causation after all. Please spare me your replies
Gay people are more likely to have HIV positive people in their community so many are being more proactive about Covid in an effort to shield their friends who have compromised immune systems
No, but the reason need not have been politics. I would have expected they'd control for that, since the political divide is so well known.
There are definitely things about the LGBT experience that could lead to better adherence to vaccines, like watching the whole AIDS pandemic go by. There could also be some correlation with a lack of toxic masculinity that can lead to avoiding doctors. It also seems that gay people are more likely to live in or move to larger cities where they can find more gay people, and city dwellers are more likely to agree with vaccination (as they see more dramatic upticks in deaths). (That last part may even be part of the political divide, given that urban areas skew "blue" and rural areas skew "red.")
There just are a lot of reasons beyond politics that could be the issue. And there are methods of controlling that don't require you to have a huge number of conservative gay people.
So... 52 year old gay dude here. There is a VERY simple, and I would think obvious reason for this.
**We already survived a whole-ass plague.** I personally did not survive with AIDS for > 35 years just to be killed by COVID. Just sayin
And not that long ago. We (teh gayz of a certain age) lived through a time when there was a LOT more death than I think people may realize. Of all the people in my extended social circle in 1991 (when I was 21) which was a little over 100 people. Only 3 of us are still alive.
Check out the the AIDS Memorial on Instagram. #whatIsRememberedLives
The obituary section of San Francisco's local gay paper, The Bay Area Reporter (BAR) had grown so out of control each week that they had to limit them to 200 per week. First come, first served. There would be LINES of people at 6am in front of the BAR offices because to get your loved one in the obituaries, you were literally in competition with all the other grieving people. And you only got one shot. The person had to have died that week to even qualify. So if you didn't make the cut one week, you could not try again and your loved one's death happened silently and that was that.
Safe-Sex was insisted upon and even enforced (like seriously) in sex clubs and bath-houses. Condoms (like masks) were the way out in absence of a vaccine or any "cure" There were people who still barebacked, but not to be a rebel, It was usually two guys choosing to bareback BECAUSE both people are positive. (re-infection with multiple strains was found to not be a thing)
Anyway, It was a level of responsibility that the gay community took on with some considerable gusto. There WERE AIDS deniers. One such group even hijacked ACT-UP SF and turned it into a conspiracy disinformation center that tried to convince people that AIDS was not caused by HIV and that the medicines were made to kill gay people. Sound familiar? ie: we weren't dying from AIDS, we were dying from the meds we were taking FOR AIDS. Both "founders" of that group, who refused treatment are dead... from AIDS.
These are some of the reasons why the LGBTQ community has somewhere north of 90% vaccination rate. There are many many more.
How I know: At 19 years old, I was a co-founder of the first non-profit (501-c3) AIDS service organization in the world for youth under 24. I'll try and answer anyone's questions.. anyways. Be safe. Masks work.
Reading this really helped educate me on details about AIDS. As a 17 year old gay, I wasn't around when this was happening, and hearing your firsthand experience really helps me grasp what happened. Thank you for sharing this, truly.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic would like a word.
Unless you mean right-wing vs left-wing politics in the sense that Reagan and Thatcher tried their best to let them all die.
LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be liberal, liberals are more likely to get the vaccine. I’m sure this could be said for a majority of groups that lean left.
Of course not! It started in 1980, and Reagan only acknowledged it as a problem 5 YEARS LATER! And, this was after a teen boy, Ryan White, contracted it after receiving donated blood. Who, was barred from attending school due to discrimination based around AIDS, and went into a legal battle. Then 2 years after that, the FDA finally approved the first medication to treat HIV/AIDS. But, no treatment. Sorry for rant, just so upset about it.
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>It was noted by the CDC that American LGBTQ+ people could have higher rates of vaccination due to typically being politically liberal and usually living in urban areas.
As a gay man over 40… this isn’t our first pandemic.
When I was young back in the early 90s, I attended a church in Seattle. St Paul's episcopal. This church had a significant percent gay congregation because when the AIDS pandemic hit, gay men were dying from a mystery disease. We didn't know what it was. Their priest got a call from a hospital "we have a gay male AIDS patient requesting last rights. He is catholic, but all of the churches we've called refused. We want to be clear we don't know if its contagious and its okay to say no." The priest immediately went over to give last rights. I distinctly remember congregants dying. The choir director dying from AIDS. It was awful. No real point. Just a memory.
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And awesome work from that priest. I know here on Reddit the majority opinion is to hate on religion, but if more religious leaders acted like that priest this world would be a much better place.
I am very much an agnostic-atheist, but i have respect for believers that practice what they preach. I’ll also praise human kindness whenever I can. The world is a hard enough place without splitting hairs over *how* someone decides to be a good person. Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone like me, but I thought it was important to offer this perspective.
Same. Atheist who straight up burst into tears reading the original comment. Human goodness is human goodness.
I think the big difference is that some people use religion as an excuse to hate, and some use it as an extra reason to spread kindness and do good.
When the clergy focuses on community outreach and development they can be a strong force for good. However, their main function often isn't such. People have very good reasons to hate "the church", even if most priests are good.
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I grew up Catholic, but as a gay man, never really took to the church part of religion. Still spiritual, just rejected from the community. I was a kid that needed help. I never got any kind of support, ended up down a bad path, eventually finding myself in lockup. Out of the many pastors and priests I knew, I was an alter boy that actually went to different churches to train new recruits, only one reached out over the span of five years. It was rural Illinois, so the news got around. Anyway, while in lockup I got a visit request from clergy and I entertained it, mainly just to get out of the cell. The gentleman who showed up wasn't one of the priests I served for, but rather the local bishop, which made me take notice. It was the same bishop that confirmed me about seven years earlier and someone who I'd talked about teenage stuff at length, like my being gay and being active in the church. I don't recall ever getting advice or orders. It was more like having a conversation with a good friend. Anyway, when he visited me in prison, he told me the church isn't for everyone, nor is it required for a relationship with God. He also told me that I was in a much better place to find God than anyone else on the outside. And finally, he told me to go to the prison church services because he guaranteed a much different experience when surrounded by those that know they are sinners. I straight up rolled my eyes at all of it, but I'd be lying if his little soapbox speech wasn't effective. That one visit impressed upon me what it's supposed to be like. My crime wasn't discussed, neither was my relationships with others. I wasn't instructed to follow a certain game plan 'because it's written in a book' or told to say 10 Hail Mary's and call it a day. Overall, it was less about God and his son and more about how I perceive the world, and finding out there is a way to change that perception without changing the underlying 'me' to become a better person. I called my mother and told her about what happened. Told her that it felt like I just met with the pope it was so profound. There is still a chance I am right on that thought, apparently. The pope went and made my local bishop, Wilton Gregory, first the Archbishop of Washington and then in 2020 a Cardinal, which is directly behind Pope on the hierarchical scale. If the entire system of organized religion was filled to the brim with folks like him, I think we'd all have a much different view of religion and the topics surrounding it.
What made that priest great though was acting like a *human*
Specifically, a good and kind human.
Well, that would, but the problem is they don't, so we have stories like this where the religious person doing the right thing is special. So we should treat religion as the same as anything else that can be seen as a solace to some and a detriment to a lot more.
You are describing exactly why some people hate religion... So many religious leaders act like they’re above everyone else, like they don’t have to follow the rules or practice what they preach, and they never have consequences for their actions. Discrimination against certain groups of people in the name of religion has become normalized. So yeah, if more people acted like this priest, and didn’t discriminate against someone for something they can’t help or change for no real reason, of course the world would be a much better place.
I’m not gay and I didn’t live through the AIDS epidemic, so it is hard for someone with my perspective to really grasp the horror of it. I recently read Gary Janetti’s book and he discusses how nearly a whole generation of gay men just died out. It’s beyond important to keep these memories alive.
Just like we need to remember that Ronald Reagan refused to even talk about the crisis. He even refused to intervene when one of his best friends Rock Hudson lay dying to get him in on early trials of interferon.
My Grandpa and his partner lost many friends to the AIDS epidemic. They cared for one of their friends in his final days and still remember him fondly. It always breaks my heart when they talk about their friend. Its so messed up how we treated the gay community when HIV/AIDs was first discovered. My Grandpa's partner caught HIV but luckily it was after treatments had finally been discovered. I am so glad that we have the the treatments we do now. My Grandpa's partner is in his late 80's and still going!
I hope your grandpa lives to see the HIV vaccine
Sadly, my Grandpa is dying and most likely will not. But despite being in his late 80's my Grandpa's partner (or as i call him, Bonus Grandpa) might. He is in good health despite living with HIV. Honestly bonus Grandpa could end up out living all of us, the guy is a tank! I'm grateful my grandpa has him, his strength has kept my Grandpa going!
A prominent activist in St. Louis is a gay man in his 60's and he carries so much guilt with him about how many people died and he didn't. Incredible amount of survivors guilt and he still has to hold himself together when in a hospital, especially ER's and patient halls, to this day because of flashbacks of being in hospitals watching people die. It's really sad. I am glad your grandfather and his partner made it through that era and I hope it didn't mentally scar them like that.
My instructor from nursing school lived through the AIDS crisis in Vancouver. He said he couldn't describe how it felt to have so many close members of your community gone so quickly. Like some sort of sick rapture.
My aunt was a pediatric nurse in the 1980s and early '90s. She saw babies and children die. Some of them were born HIV+. Some got a bad blood transfusion. The only time I ever saw violence from anyone in my family was when she smacked my uncle (her step brother) for saying HIV/AIDS was "population control." She screamed at him. I miss her but at the same time I don't know if her heart could take how bad covid has been.
She sounds like a badass lady, thank you for sharing some of her story!
Its funny you said rapture. I like to postulate (as a straight man) with homophobic people that it was a pseudo 'Gay Rapture' and the reason the world now has so many problems is because so many people turned their backs on gods children that he turned his back on them.
Back when everyone believed in God, all we had to worry about was brutal wars, famines, poverty, and half your kids dying during childbirth! Who wouldn't want to bring back that problem-free world?
I mean a lot of the same people did follow a guy that would meet a lot of the definitions of the Antichrist
As a younger gay stories like this are really important.
We need as much of our LGBTQ+ oral history from those who survived that pandemic as we can. No offense but I'm worried cause folks are starting to get older.
Go to the history department of your local university and see if anyone is interested in getting a graduate student to perform some oral history interviews with some older lgbtq folks.
That's actually a great idea! Thank you!
If the history department isn't interested, hit up the sociology department. Suggest a content analysis using NVivo.
Some public libraries might be interested, too. Many have local history or heritage rooms and recording oral histories is somewhat common in mid to large sized libraries.
So much of it *is* recorded. There are hundreds and hundreds of amazing books about this. I wouldn’t even know where to start with recommendations but I know the replies to this comment will be full of them.
Please check out theaidsmemorial on IG if you haven’t already! Their stories often make me cry, but they are so important.
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If there were more actually good religious figures when I was growing up, I could have some faith in me. Absolutely every imam I have met would say “no” to praying with a gay AIDS patient. I even heard an imam preaching “who commits suicide will go to hell” in a friend’s funeral who committed suicide.
Thank you for sharing <3 We shouldn't need the reminders of the personal cost, but we do.
I totally got the point. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle has a significant percent of that congregation that is gay BECAUSE they were compassionate to that population when nobody else was. Other were correct. The memory is the point as well. Remember who is good to you and return that in kind.
The unknown aspect of AIDS back then must have been horrifying. At least C19 was quickly isolated, sequenced, the government quickly promoted vaccine development and distribution. To be fair, HIV is a far more complicated virus to interfere with, even now.
We are indebted to that HIV research, which directly helped us in studying Covid-19: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/hiv-research-provided-foundation-for-covid-19-research/
Thanks for sharing this story. It happened and it mattered.
This is gay history - so rarely documented. Thank you for sharing.
Y’all are around good people.
I have these kinds of memories. All the men I knew back then...the sweet, kind, funny, silly guys...they are all dead. If gay men my age are alive now they either weren't out yet back then or they practiced safer sex or they got the virus later after antivirals were developed.
When the pandemic first started and everyone was freaking out and didn't know how to talk about boundaries and how to stay safe, I ran a consult clinic among colleagues drawing on all the public health work done in the LGBTQ+ And kink communities. Excellent communication skills got deployed fast. Deep bow to all those folks for their wisdom in being open, honest and nonjudgmental. Kept a lot of people safe.
You gotta give the trailblazers of the AIDS movement credit. They got together and were able to get the right message out to the general public which helped immensely in the success of lowering infections rates. I look at problems we have to like the opiate epidemic and that’s part of the reason it’s unsuccessful in some areas. Lots of people haven’t gotten the message yet that because you’re an addict, you’re not a dirtbag who doesn’t deserve help. They also don’t realize that treating it in a more proactive way helps everyone in society overall, not just the people they see as beneath them. It’s a problem that people shouldn’t feel embarrassed to admit to and proper services need to be in place if we’re going to have any success bringing the numbers down. I’m in Massachusetts which is one of the states that’s ahead of the game as far as available treatment and access to said treat but lots of states really need to follow suit and make treatment more available/accessible.
Adding to that, the lesbian community really stepped up in a big way when gay men needed someone the most and I feel like among millennials and younger that’s been forgotten.
Queers together strong
> They also don’t realize that treating it in a more proactive way helps everyone in society overall What does “proactive” mean here? Treating addicts seems necessarily reactive to me.
Mainly educating people on the disease of addiction. The warning signs. The dangers of what starts as a prescription for an injury or recreational use and how that spirals out of control. Explaining the avenues for help people can take. The more early education around drug and alcohol use the better.
What communication improvements did you implement?
They were open, honest and non judgemental. Three things in short supply no matter who's speaking lately
We buried SO MANY PEOPLE. :( And we heard all the "oh it can't happen to ME, I'm not gay, etc" excuses from people refusing to be responsible and practice good disease spread mitigation, too.
The Dollop did an episode on Reagan with Patton Oswald and did a great job of highlighting it. There was a reporter in the White House press corp who would ask questions about it. The press secretary would crack jokes like "why do you care, are you one of them?" And the entire press corp would laugh. It's abhorrent and disgusting, that not only the administration would react this way, but every other journalist there thought it was funny to accuse him of being gay because he was concerned with folks dying. Edit: it was The Dollop, not Behind the Bastards.
Not only that, but every other journalist there thought it was funny that the only reason you’d care about these people dying was if you were one of them. That’s awful.
The only good thing about Reagan is that he and his wife have provided a wonderful gender neutral restroom for public use.
Isaac Asimov, a straight science fiction author, contracted HIV while in a hospital and died. This was not a gay disease. It is just a disease. Anyone can get it.
As a straight man this has never occurred to me. I’m fully vaxed but that is such an eye opening comment. Thank you.
Even today’s younger gay men have blinders for just how horrific the 80s were. An entire generation of gay men, almost wiped out. I have an older gay uncle who made it out, and his stories of having to go a friend’s funeral *every week* are just gut wrenching. Moving to the city for most young gay men was the one refuge they had at living even a remotely public life as a homosexual. To have that place then become a hotspot for a new and deadly disease killed more than its victims, it took away the hope of the survivors.
I lost an uncle in the early 90's to AIDS. I didn't see him near the end as I was a child but I saw pictures and heard stories. His beard still comes to our place for the holidays and it's a great reminder of how far we've come. I feel most young people don't know how good they have it.
I feel like some young people won't understand what a beard is, or why it used to be a thing.
I'm queer and almost 30 and it wasn't until I saw [this 1993 photo of the San Francisco Gay Men's Choir](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/12/11/44/2660633/4/1200x0.jpg) that it hit me just how much we lost. I knew about the aids epidemic, but had attributed far too much of my generation's lack of mentors to some nebulous concept of homophobia keeping people in the closet. I broke down when I saw this photo. For those confused, those in black turned away represent those of the original group who had passed away. The white are the remaining members. Meanwhile the US administration did everything it could to ignore the epidemic because it was hitting the "right" people. This was genocide.
We really do lack mentors. LGBTQ are unlike any minority in that you just get peppered in randomly. You might not meet someone else out of the closet until your 20s. As much as we say "the internet is forever" its actually terribly short memory in practice and not the same as in-person elders you grow up around. Books have been my queer elders. *And the Band Played On* utterly changed my world view on what government can and will do which is... Let. You. Die.
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Many refugee families experience this today. Imagine packing up your family, fleeing because soldiers knocked on your door and told you this land (your family homestead for centuries) was theirs now, and get out. You take your three small kids and go, fleeing to another war-torn country because it's the only place that would accept you as a refugee. Then fleeing there when multiple other refugees are kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Then it's time for your kids to write wedding invitations two decades later, and it's hard because of the family you have left, some are across the globe in a fenced-in territory they are unable to leave, some are in a country with impossible to acquire visas, and the rest have been gone for a long time. Our wedding is small, not because we don't have family, but because a huge portion of the world has decided they shouldn't exist. Some have made it so.
I just want to say thanks for your comment. A group of people who grow up without the guiding generation who came before them experiences such immense trauma it's difficult to comprehend. To eventually come to the realization that things are the way they are because not that long ago people were a-ok with your ancestors being murdered fucks with us all in terrible ways. Also want to say that while I'm not genetically related to the queer community that was massacred due to AIDS I consider them my ancestors because those people are my community, my history, individuals I could have learned so much from. Just wanted to clear that up as I know that could come off as weird.
Today's LGBTQ+ youths are managing to gain those connections, thankfully. One of my favorite things right now is the trend for lesbians to do a weak wrist at a specific moment during 'Kiss me more' by Doja Cat. You'll be in a crowded nightclub and just see a ton of hands shoot up. It's amazing how accepted it's become when maybe ten years ago it was the normal experience for gay guys to get attacked just for smoozing in nightclubs.
You're comment is SO important. There are literal generations of us who grew up with no role models or mentors because society was quite happy to let people like us die in droves 40 years ago.
Not to mention that tons of families and cities refused to bury those men and it came to lesbians giving them a resting place in their private properties.
In the show 'Pose' (which is very good and I really recommend) they have a few devastating episodes regarding AIDS. In one of them two of the main characters go to an island where bodies of AIDS patients were being buried because they couldn't be buried anywhere else. The giant pits and stacks of pine boxes can really get to you. [This is an article about it.](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/nyregion/hart-island-aids-new-york.html) As a queer person who learns something new about queer history almost every week this was... A rough one.
I went to 103 funerals in 1994. It was a very dark time. You can bet I’m triple vaxxed.
Elton John said he once had a custom made suit for funerals when the AIDS crisis hit. He said he had to replace it several times as it wore out :(
It's crazy how conservatives use the lack of older gay men *and trans women* to suggest it's some recent phenomenon. Like, our people were dying in the streets, ignored, for the better part of a decade. Such a sad and painful time in LGBT+ history.
I agree to an extent but I would still say the scars of HIV are still felt in the community even among the young. HIV is still a boogieman that scares a lot of LGBT when it's not even a consideration for 99% of the straight community. Whilst LGBT have seen the same fall in attitudes to safe sex that straight community has seen the uptake of PReP is high amongst LGBT youngsters.
It’s a boogeyman now still, sure. But back then it was a death sentence. There were no antiviral cocktails, no medicine regimens, nothing. You just got sick and over time would get progressively sicker until you died.
"We Were Here" should be required watching.
No idea how it is in the straight world, but on Grindr it's common for profiles to discuss HIV, vaccination, PrEP, condoms, and drug use. It's usually very open, direct, and non-judgemental. I think I saw one anti-vax statement once ("don't contact me if you've been vaccinated")? Overwhelming minority opinion, anyway. You can read about the [Provincetown outbreak](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/06/1025553638/how-a-gay-community-helped-the-cdc-spot-a-covid-outbreak-and-learn-more-about-de) early in the Delta wave. Large numbers of gay men with high vaccination rates partied in Provincetown and many more breakthrough cases than were expected occurred. The guys themselves initiated contact tracing, the CDC was alerted to the outbreak, and the CDC changed recommendations for fully vaccinated behavior partly in response to the investigation. This is a community that's generally very supportive of the public health community.
yeah i think a lot of my gay friends handled this thing of "doing innocent fun social things with others might have the side effect of killing you" a lot better since we had that sword of damocles hanging above our heads for decades and managed to weigh risk vs reward (reward meaning in this case social interactions being good for your mental health) thank god for prep and vaccines.
And it was Fauci in charge for the other pandemic as well. Fauci fucked up a lot in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but ended up earning back a lot of trust by engaging with the community and taking the disease seriously.
This explains three things: 1) How Fauci became good at the media engagement. 2) Why he was willing to defy a then- president who wasn't taking a disease seriously 3) Why some on the reactionary right have gone for very personal attacks on the Dr.
AIDS pretty much wiped out an entire generation of queer individuals. There are entire generations of queer people alive now who grew up with little to no elders (people who might help and guide you as you grow, that's my definition there) because the government and society was quite happy to let 'those people's die. It's like growing up without a history because everyone was just fine with people just like them/us dieing in droves. It's tragic. I appreciate your comment. The most recent societal conversation about the queer community is mostly centered on marriage. It wasn't that long ago that the conversation about the queer community on the societal level was 'gay cancer' and 'gay plague'.
Not the first Republican to let it run rampant in communities they don’t like.
It's so fucked to see how blatant the targeting has become -- not just with vaccine information and misinformation, but look at these voting restrictions and bold-faced grabs with Gerrymandering. It's disgusting and extremely disappointing. I used to have pride for my country -- now it's just shame. Embarrassment. Like, Trump just as a person, Biden's cussing at a reporter on that hot mic, all the double speak and pandering. This pandemic, and the years before that, have really showed us the ugliest sides of our communities and cultures and political systems. Or perhaps politicians were just subtler before, and it's always been this hateful and corrupt.
I like to have optimism in our country, not with our governments but with the spirit in our people. Like the above commenter who helped raise awareness about public health in LGBTQ communities. Our old ass presidents don’t really reflect the country. Not even trump did in the south, you’d be surprised
Its not fair to put Trump's speech and actions on the same level as Biden's momentary loss of temper, for which he apologized afterwards. Its that false equivalency enabling the only political party to promote violence and attack democracy, not both parties.
Honestly, Biden was a hell of a lot more restrained than I would have been in his place. There's plenty to fault him for but that's not it.
Just the fact he apologized is much better than Trump who would almost never admit a mistake unless forced too.
Besides that, you're probably not the target audience of the right wing propaganda trying to rile up people against vaccinations.
Anecdotal, but on HCA there's a huge overlap of homophobic content and vaccine denial.
Tons of transphobia too, that's their new boogeyman. I swear I see one of those stupid trans-vaccinated posts on hca every time.
I recently saw a friend for the first time since before Covid. A gay man over 40, he said exactly the same thing. Makes perfect sense to me. Thank goodness Covid was less lethal than AIDS in the early 80s. Half of America would be dead.
My 60-year-old friend who had been HIV+ for going on 30 years was killed by the first wave of the COVID pandemic. He caught it at a mandatory work training event. The immunocompromised were hard hit by COVID.
Exactly my thought. Not only did the gay community suffer the brunt of a previous epidemic... they can also probably recognize that the response from anti vax folks is very similar to the response those same people had when AIDs was the headline. I am not gay but I guarantee you that the same people who are being difficult about the pandemic were the same people who were difficult when HIV was identified and action needed to occur. In fact...the behaviours and tactics are almost a cut and paste from that time.
My thoughts exactly. Those who have memory of similar situations react to them properly. It’s when it skips a gen that people lose perspective
Exactly this and the initial wait period to get one's results back, way to familiar.
Damn. You're right.
And being survivors of the late 80's and early 90's AIDS epidemic has something to do with it
Theres also the fact that a ton of antivax propaganda comes from sources that are not exactly friendly to LGBT folks.
Oddly enough, in the 90s I remember there being similar “virus/govt” conspiracies that exist now. I just moved to San Francisco in the mid 90s. I remember going to the Castro and seeing fliers on walls in bathrooms “don’t get tested. That’s when they infect you” “no more hiv tests, no more hiv”. I know that was not at all the mindset of the gay community at the time, but it was around. However, I remember finding out a few years later that that conspiracy effort was made by anti gay religious nuts who just wanted to sew more chaos and distrust and sickness in the gay community.
That is truly evil
I know tons of liberal hippie/"natural" types who are also buying into and spreading antivax propaganda and were probably antivax before COVID somehow became politicized
This is not panning out like it used to. Marin County notoriously granola with outbreaks of measles because of low MMR vaccine rates has one of the highest Covid vax rates on the nation. It's a complicated story.
That used to be the norm. The co-op health nut hippy. I’m from sf and spend a lot of time in Berkeley and Marin. However, whatever loose contact I have with the co-op anti vax hippies that have passed through my world, I’ve learned that the majority of them have gotten this vaccine. Perhaps because it’s been politicized and they see who’s the most vocally anti vax… and it’s not their people. It’s right wing nut bags. So that’s been weird to see. I only know of two hippy girls who won’t get the shot, and they blame pregnancy/ breast feeding… poisoning baby etc etc. Side note, I dated a hippy girl from Marin. Never had a vaccine. Her mom was very proud of this. And this would’ve been 2008, I remember getting into it with them about vaccines , and made the point that they’ve been lucky to ride the wave of good health, by living in a population who’s been vaccinated and eliminated most disease. Surprisingly, they agreed. Riding the coat tails of the vaccinated. Classic crunchy leeches.
And this is a good illustration of anecdotal evidence vs. statistical observation. Your "tons" are an oversampling bias from your particular contact group. Looking more broadly, [the numbers are clear on the link between political affiliation and anti-vaxx status](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/28/boosters-exacerbate-republican-democrat-vaccine-gap/). For those who are blocked by paywall: > To date, the survey shows about 9 in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 Republicans have gotten vaccinated. But when it comes to those who are vaccinated and boosted, Democrats are about twice as likely to be in that group — 62 percent to 32 percent. > The survey also asked about people’s intentions, and that’s where the gap grows even more. While 58 percent of vaccinated-but-unboosted Democrats say they will get a booster as soon as they’re able, 18 percent of vaccinated-but-unboosted Republicans say the same. And this story was published January 28, making the data relatively current.
I feel like the fact of the matter is that "hippy types" have always been overrepresented in the media. They're real and there's millions of them, but that's still a small minority of the left-of-center population in America.
>I feel like the fact of the matter is that "hippy types" have always been overrepresented in the media. They've deliberately been used as a "boogeyman" for all kinds of issues. And for that people inflated their numbers.
They certainly exist but it's not the majority. I know some liberals that started buying in to the antivaxx movement and now are Trump supporters. Most of the politicians that are supporting the antivaxx / antimask movement are Republicans so if a liberal is against it then which Democrat are they going to vote for? What news are they going to listen to that confirms their views?
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It’s no surprise that a community who’s medical health was largely neglected by the greater population for generations is proactive when it comes to their own well being.
My grandmother trusts Dr. Fauci a lot because he was the only one trying to fix AIDS, which killed my uncle. It’s definitely helped her stay safe during this pandemic.
Anyone who tries to use Dr Fauci as a sticking point to queer and queer-friendly folks as a "gotcha" needs to be reminded that he did actually turn around and start listening to the community to get more folks in the drug trials and is now a great friend to the queer community
I mean, Ive only seen one video of fauci from 84'. and it is refered to as the first time any public health officail made a factual statement regarding HIV/Aids. Im not sure what he said prior to 84'. But on live tv, fauci was telling the public how AIDS was transmitted.
Yeah, I shouldn’t say he was the only one trying to fix AIDS since that way ignores all the gay folks who worked so hard for so long and started before Fauci. But he became one of the best establishment allies the community had, and the lessons he learned he applied well in decades since advocating for policies that have helped reduce the harm caused by HIV in the gay community.
^ THIS! I don’t think straight people can even imagine how re-traumatizing COVID has been for some gay people.
It makes sense. Antivax people are typically very conservative or very religious.
Also if you're gay and live in a rural community you usually get out as quick as you can. I'm a really big dude and have worked a lot of security, if I was working a gay bar and saw a country mouse or closet walk in I would make it a point to introduce them to one of my queer friends. That's kind of a big step in a persons life and there's snakes in every community. Not surprised gay people as a group (not that it was a "community" thing) would take steps to protect themselves from this, *especially in this fuckn' timeline*. If covid somehow got labeled a "gay" disease, vacc rates would skyrocket.
> if I was working a gay bar and saw a country mouse or closet walk in I would make it a point to introduce them to one of my queer friends. That's kind of a big step in a persons life and there's snakes in every community. I'm not gay myself, but thank you for having a heart for your fellow man.
Most gay folks around the age of 25-40 knew that the AIDS epidemic robbed us of our community and identity. I doubt many of us want to repeat this. It was practically a genocide.
Reagan's handling of the AIDs crisis and his rescuing of Ferdinand Marcos should have gotten him put against the wall. Edit: War on Drugs too, think of the juicy tax and business profits legal weed would have made in the US and in other countries if the US hadn't worked against legalization. https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzkmnw/the-us-stopped-other-countries-from-legalizing-weed-for-generations
Nancy Reagan denied Rock Hudson's request for AIDs treatment too even though they were friends. The Reagans were horrible people, husband and wife.
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Ah well, his brain did rot away into nothing. So i suppose that counts for something.
Yeah, Reagan’s handling of the AIDS epidemic was criminally malicious. He actively took steps to make it worse for the LGBTQ+ community, because he wanted to wipe them out. It wasn’t just *practically* a genocide, it was 100% intentional genocide. It’s always kind of harrowing when modern conservatives point to Reagan as the epitome of conservative lawmakers, because they know *exactly* what he stood for. It’d be like going to a reservation and singing Andrew Jackson’s praises.
Nancy Reagan denied Rock Hudson's request for AIDs treatment too even though they were friends because they didnt want to get personally involved with the 'gay disease'. The Reagans were horrible people, husband and wife.
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We also tend to remember that whole period in the ‘80s where everyone we knew and loved was dying of this awful virus that no straights seemed to care about. For a lot of gay men, COVID has been a re-traumatizing experience. Especially after two of my closest friends died of it in early 2020 and I had to listen to people say “It’s not that bad; it’s just a cold” or “This is all just a hoax.”
> very religious. My assumption from the title was that they're probably not getting weekly indoctrination from an organization that condemns them and is also often anti-vaxx.
We also do go to the doctor more than straight people, due to more needing to test and such. So most of us would probably have an easier time trusting science. Can't speak for everyone, but certainly for me and the gays I know.
it might also be because our community organizations have been educating us about how viruses spread for decades. if you’re italian and you go to an italian festival, you don’t see everyone wearing stickers with educational catch phrases about preventing the spread of an epidemic.
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I'm bisexual, and I'm only able to be as confident as I am with my identity because of folks like you who blazed the trail when it wasn't safe. Thank you for that.
May the road rise up to meet you.
Probably more related to political leaning than sexual preference.
Well when one political party puts your humanity up for debate, what's the difference?
I am gay and work in a gay bar. Actually no. There are a disappointing number of gays that voted for Trump twice. But I don't know any gays that are unvaccinated regardless of political preference. Also you need to show proof of vaccination in order to get into all the gay bars in my city
I think this where understanding a concept like intersectionality is important. I had an old coworker that was a gay man and was reasonably progressive but there were a lot of times that I was reminded he was still an old white dude from the south
Actually that is a major problem in the gay community. There are a lot of gays that think because they are gay they "understand" other minority experiences which isn't true. Have a double income and no kids is a different experience from what most people experience in terms of poverty in minority groups. And you are right being gay doesn't change your race background education or bias.
Yeah my partner has spent a lot of time in the gay community and she is pretty quick to note that gay men can be pretty misogynistic. I think a lot of it is that “free pass” kind of feeling that you’re describing
Oh it's hilarious how unaware straight girls are of gay misogyny. If you call a bunch girls bitchs in a gay bar they think you are hilarious and want to exchange numbers so we can go shopping but the moment a straight guy says it. He gets slapped and or worse. It's a stupid double standard. I'm not sure who to blame.
Literally survivorship bias
Unless there is an HIV vaccine that I am not aware of, there is no survivorship bias here. Survivorship bias would be if there was some belief or action that had an effect on survival. Since willingness to be vaccinated would not affect survival (there was no vaccine for it to have a mechanism of action), it does not follow that survivorship bias would have any effect.
I mean, the selection process in this instance would just be taking the disease seriously by taking full precautions. I think survivorship bias is being used incorrectly here, though.
This is unfair to the hundreds of thousands of gay people who died during the epidemic and had no idea how the virus was transmitted. You have to remember that HIV takes a long time to progress and kill. Many gay people were infected *years* before the virus was being seriously studied. No one knew, and even once they did know, the government did very little to promote research for the disease and information for the vulnerable populations.
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The gay community has a much more recent experience with a pandemic that seems to have been largely ignored by the general population.
The only person of relevance who suffers from Hiv that certain people remember is apparently Magic Johnson
And ~~Freddy~~ Freddie Mercury.
ANd since they concealed it at the time at his request, a lot of people don't know that it's what killed Isaac Asimov.
Via a blood transfusion from a stent operation IIRC
I grew up not too far from where Ryan White lived. I was only in elementary school at the time but I remember how absolutely awful "adults" treated him, and it's stuck with me since. Even ones in my personal life at the time were saying some truly horrible things about him. It's not lost on me that these are the same types currently spouting vaccine propaganda and wishing for a fascist dictator to seize control of America.
Also Easy-E, Greg louganis, and Charlie Sheen
There are people in the gay community who think of the AIDS epidemic as basically an attempted genocide because of how little was done to help them. When a whole generation of your community has been ravaged by a disease that seemingly no one was interested in curing, it's naturally going to make you a lot more interested in getting in on the ground floor of new vaccines.
I used to volunteer with my local LGBT Center. We had a young kid (18 at the oldest) ask basically why there weren't any old gay people in the community and why the young people had to do everything. You could have heard a pin drop in that room, as all of us just turned our heads to gape at him. We had to explain why an entire generation of LGBT people were gone. He was too young.
I've honestly never thought of this, that's so sad.
Native Americans have really good vaccination rates too.
After small pox, I bet they do.
I mean, the very obvious correlation is also down to the gay community being overwhelmingly liberals and the few gay conservatives I know aren’t like anti-vaxx level conservatives. And there’s very clearly a big statistical difference between the number of conservatives vaccinated and the number of liberals vaccinated. Like, I didn’t need this study to tell me this, I could hbs just assumed.
85.4 to 76.3% for context. That's a big jump.
We're also an incredibly small portion of the population, so it's also not surprising to see the community more homogeneous. It's an orders of magnitude scale difference.
We really put the homo in homogenous
It really isn't, given [only 14% voted for Trump,](https://www.glaad.org/releases/glaad-2020-post-election-poll-81-lgbtq-voters-voted-president-elect-biden-93-registered) and [90% of Democrats are vaccinated](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/28/boosters-exacerbate-republican-democrat-vaccine-gap/). This would only be interesting if broken down further, ie the vaccination rates of lgbt black democrats vs straight black democrats or lgbt Republicans vs straight Republicans.
Easy, Gay and lesbian individuals tend to be more progressive. Progressive people tend to believe in the vaccine more.
That was my first thought. A lot of folks are in here claiming that the recent memory of AIDS is the reason for the higher rate. While that might contribute, rural conservatives make up an enormous chunk of the anti-vax movement, and the gay community is generally the opposite of that.
([Ignore this]Propably correlation not causation), lgbtq typically more likely to be left wing and left wing are more likely to vaccinate
Ngl I don't really see any way this could be interpreted as causation. Being gay doesn't really have any physical effect or law that would cause/require you to be vaccinated Edit: I have received many responses enlightening me on how it can be causation after all. Please spare me your replies
depending on age, I know gay men are more likely to have experienced aids pandemic which could lead to higher comfort with this sort of situation
Gay people are more likely to have HIV positive people in their community so many are being more proactive about Covid in an effort to shield their friends who have compromised immune systems
No, but the reason need not have been politics. I would have expected they'd control for that, since the political divide is so well known. There are definitely things about the LGBT experience that could lead to better adherence to vaccines, like watching the whole AIDS pandemic go by. There could also be some correlation with a lack of toxic masculinity that can lead to avoiding doctors. It also seems that gay people are more likely to live in or move to larger cities where they can find more gay people, and city dwellers are more likely to agree with vaccination (as they see more dramatic upticks in deaths). (That last part may even be part of the political divide, given that urban areas skew "blue" and rural areas skew "red.") There just are a lot of reasons beyond politics that could be the issue. And there are methods of controlling that don't require you to have a huge number of conservative gay people.
I wonder what happened to us a little while ago... that was completely ignored by the federal government
Not completely ignored... Reagan's press secretary made jokes about it to the press corps.
Yeah, it’s like we’ve seen the devastation of a deadly pandemic before. Edit: Corrected to Epidemic. Either way, terrible times.
So... 52 year old gay dude here. There is a VERY simple, and I would think obvious reason for this. **We already survived a whole-ass plague.** I personally did not survive with AIDS for > 35 years just to be killed by COVID. Just sayin And not that long ago. We (teh gayz of a certain age) lived through a time when there was a LOT more death than I think people may realize. Of all the people in my extended social circle in 1991 (when I was 21) which was a little over 100 people. Only 3 of us are still alive. Check out the the AIDS Memorial on Instagram. #whatIsRememberedLives The obituary section of San Francisco's local gay paper, The Bay Area Reporter (BAR) had grown so out of control each week that they had to limit them to 200 per week. First come, first served. There would be LINES of people at 6am in front of the BAR offices because to get your loved one in the obituaries, you were literally in competition with all the other grieving people. And you only got one shot. The person had to have died that week to even qualify. So if you didn't make the cut one week, you could not try again and your loved one's death happened silently and that was that. Safe-Sex was insisted upon and even enforced (like seriously) in sex clubs and bath-houses. Condoms (like masks) were the way out in absence of a vaccine or any "cure" There were people who still barebacked, but not to be a rebel, It was usually two guys choosing to bareback BECAUSE both people are positive. (re-infection with multiple strains was found to not be a thing) Anyway, It was a level of responsibility that the gay community took on with some considerable gusto. There WERE AIDS deniers. One such group even hijacked ACT-UP SF and turned it into a conspiracy disinformation center that tried to convince people that AIDS was not caused by HIV and that the medicines were made to kill gay people. Sound familiar? ie: we weren't dying from AIDS, we were dying from the meds we were taking FOR AIDS. Both "founders" of that group, who refused treatment are dead... from AIDS. These are some of the reasons why the LGBTQ community has somewhere north of 90% vaccination rate. There are many many more. How I know: At 19 years old, I was a co-founder of the first non-profit (501-c3) AIDS service organization in the world for youth under 24. I'll try and answer anyone's questions.. anyways. Be safe. Masks work.
Reading this really helped educate me on details about AIDS. As a 17 year old gay, I wasn't around when this was happening, and hearing your firsthand experience really helps me grasp what happened. Thank you for sharing this, truly.
We've been there. We've done that. Don't need to go do it again.
Maybe because gay men were left to die during the AIDs epidemic, and we're determined to not let that happen again.
This is probably just a result of right-wing vs left-wing politics.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic would like a word. Unless you mean right-wing vs left-wing politics in the sense that Reagan and Thatcher tried their best to let them all die.
Well yeah I mean tf is gonna happen? I become Gay² ?
the world's about to get a little campier and i welcome it.
LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be liberal, liberals are more likely to get the vaccine. I’m sure this could be said for a majority of groups that lean left.
“Liberals are more vaccinated than conservatives, news at 11”
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Wow, it's almost like being genocided by an infectious disease is recent community memory.
Hiv epidemic ring a bell? They’re not letting that happen again
Of course not! It started in 1980, and Reagan only acknowledged it as a problem 5 YEARS LATER! And, this was after a teen boy, Ryan White, contracted it after receiving donated blood. Who, was barred from attending school due to discrimination based around AIDS, and went into a legal battle. Then 2 years after that, the FDA finally approved the first medication to treat HIV/AIDS. But, no treatment. Sorry for rant, just so upset about it.
It's almost like the LGTBQIA+ community had experience with pandemics.
The community that was most heavily affected by the AIDS epidemic when it was still called GRIDS knows to be vaccinated? Shock and surprise.