Status Updates From AIDS: Cultural Analysis / C...

“Patient Zero is a news story while the criminal inaction of the Reagan Administration is not... Rock Hudson is a story, but the thousands of other people with AIDS are not... Heterosexuals with AIDS is a story; homosexuals with AIDS is not... Shilts laments this situation. His book [And the Band Played On] contributes nothing to understanding and changing it.”

“Gary Bauer... Reagan’s assistant, told Face The Nation that the reason Reagan had not even uttered the word AIDS publicly before a press conference held late in 1985 was that the Administration did not until then perceive AIDS as a problem: ‘It hadn’t spread into the general population yet.’ ...the ‘general population’ is the repository of everything you wish to claim for yourself and deny others.”

“Scientific research, healthcare, and education are the responsibility and purpose of the government and not of so-called “private initiative,” an ideological term that excuses and perpetuates the state’s irresponsibility. Therefore, every venture of this [artistic] nature should make clear that it is necessitated strictly because of criminal negligence on the part of the government.”