Yale Daily News

Why is everything labeled gay now? Many of these historical figures in question are from before the 1900's. Prior to the 1900's, it was common for people to share bed with the same sex platonically or be highly affectionate with their friends without being erotic or "gay". Such language and actions can be misinterpreted as romantic or "gay" these days. According to this line of thinking, someday, people will no longer be able to have friends because all those actions will be considered romantic or erotic.

Somehow, gay history would greatly benefit if such "historians" wouldn't label the smallest actions as gay and instead actually tried to interpret history for what it is. The gay people that existed in history are labeled as such, there are no vague suggestions to the contrary. Modern historical inquiry is in sad shape if scholars cannot seriously put their studies into the overall context of society at the time period being studied. Otherwise, everything in history is simply labeling based on the assumptions of the individual to push a political agenda.

"Declaring that queer and gender theories are 'relatively useless,' Kramer said gay history has been 'hijacked' by queer theorists."

D*mn straight!

Please realize that the words you are responding to are those of Larry Kramer, who is one of the most outspoken and provocative LGBT activists out there. Most people do not believe the people he listed are gay. I took Chauncey's course last semester and he emphasizes exactly what you are emphasizing - that people shared beds, the context of society at that time, the label gay didn't exist, etc etc. Though Kramer has done some amazing things in his time, he does not speak for the community.

"“The plague of AIDS was allowed to happen because most of the world hates us,”

I believe it has been unequivocally determined that "the plague of AIDS" happened as a direct result of people participating in unprotected intercourse with multiple sexual partners.

To a lesser degree, AIDS was spread by to exposure to contaminated blood products.

The actual cause of AIDS, therefore, was promiscous, risk-taking behaviour.

That this behaviour occurred primarily among men that have sex with men, is not, to my knowledge,something that has happened because "the world hates" gays.

This is a sad effort to avoid taking responsibility for self-destructive behaviour, and recast oneself as a "victim" of a hateful world. The hateful world has actually spent billions identifying treatments for AIDS/HIV.

#1 Pierson '11

I was unaware that history at Yale is being taught with labels. Back in my day we had to study and qualify sources, analyze facts, and come up with reasonable conclusions. There were labels in the museums, but many of them included the very important word "questionable".

If an error has been made in historical "conclusions", it's that all people were straight. Check out the voluminous attempts to deny that same-sex attraction, much less activity, existed in ancient Greece! Ever heard of hot pokers in England? And, ancient that I am, I was taught that Walt Whitman just loved men "platonically". Wait... where does the word "platonic" come from?!

Have you ever heard of Rock Hudson?

Consider the modern case of Larry Craig. A "married with children" U.S. Senator soliciting sex with a man in an airport restroom. Do you have a label handy?

And if you really want to get kinky, let's talk about J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde--not just gay but cross-dressing!

#4 cardio-psychotic

First, multiple partners are not required--one infected person will do. You do not have to be promiscuous to get AIDS--a promiscuous husband following the dictates of the "pope" will do.

If a behavior is not known to be harmful, that behavior is not self-destructive in any cognitive sense, nor does it involve "risk-taking" if there is no know hazard. In the beginning, no one knew anything about AIDS. "The plague of AIDS was allowed to happen" refers to the almost total lack of attention and wall of silence ordered by the Reagan administration:

"With no cure and no vaccine, educating the public on how AIDS was transmitted, who was at risk, and how to protect oneself was the only way left to slow the spread of the disease. Since this task fell under the mandate of his office, Surgeon General Koop concluded that "if ever there was a disease made for a Surgeon General, it was AIDS." Nevertheless, for the first four years in office, the nation's top health officer was prevented from addressing the nation's most urgent health crisis, for reasons he insisted were never fully clear to him but that were no doubt political. During the early years of the epidemic, AIDS predominantly affected people--homosexuals and intravenous drug users--who, in the view of President Reagan and his domestic policy advisers, brought the disease upon themselves by engaging in immoral conduct...For two years, Koop was excluded from the Executive Task Force on AIDS established in 1983 by his immediate superior, Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt. Journalists received instructions from Brandt's office in advance of press conferences that the Surgeon General would not answer questions about AIDS..."

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/QQ/Views/Exhibit/na...

The above is take from today's AmercaBlog which begins:

After the nonstop cable coverage of the declaration of a public health emergency today by the Obama Administration, I wonder WHAT IF President Reagan declared a public health emergency in the first week of the HIV-AIDS epidemic in 1981....how many lives could have been saved????

http://www.americablog.com/2009/04/what-if-reagan.html

And if you really want to know more about Reagan's hateful approach to the beginnings of the AIDS crisis read

Shilts, Randy
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

The hateful world started caring about AIDS when "straight" people began contracting it.

Thank you, #6 for clarifying. #4 was looking at it from a purely 2009 perspective with no sense of history or perspective (Hopefully he/she isnt a Yalie lol)!

As the founder of QueerToday I take offense that Larry equated queer with the n-word. Many of us self-identify as queer because it is the word we choose that best describes our gender, sexuality, and/or politics. No "leader" should police our identities for us.