––What were you doing when this drama occurred?

Albert: Variously nodding off in some obnoxious Advanced Placement high school course, cutting myself in the bathroom while my mother pounded on my locked bedroom door demanding that I turn down the Smashing Pumpkins, and using my ’84 Volvo station wagon like a bumper car.

Diamant: I was working as a freelance journalist around Boston as the disease was slowly recognized, its cause identified, and then ravaged the gay community. As a straight woman, I was on the fringes of the disaster in many ways, but I wrote several stories about its devastation and how the local medical and gay communities rallied and responded. I also had a few gay friends, who were closer to the epicenter of the disaster. Eventually, it "came home" as I lost a colleague, and then a cousin.

Lowenthal: I had spent all of Election Day with my friend Jennifer Haigh, up in New Hampshire, at Kerry headquarters, phoning Democratic voters and making sure they were going to get to the polls. It felt good to be doing something concrete to help the cause, and as the party-insider info started rolling in, it seemed clear that we were going to win. We were so exhilarated! (And, in fact, New Hampshire was the only state in the country that voted for Bush in 2000 and then voted for Kerry in 2004.) At the end of the day we came home to Boston and hosted a victory party. Except that by that evening the early exit poll data had been discredited and it seemed Bush might have won. The Kerry/Edwards team had been planning their own official victory celebration downtown, in Copley Square. I couldn't persuade anyone to go with me, so I went alone. It was cold and rainy. CNN was playing on a huge Jumbotron. Ohio was going for Bush, then for Kerry, then for Bush. In the wee hours, John Edwards came out onto the stage and told us, in the most hopeless voice I've ever heard, not to lose hope.

Shepard: See above.


––How did those around you react this trauma?

Albert: Respectively: by blaming the victim, blaming the victim, and blaming the victim.

Diamant: It was a very bifurcated response: total mobilization or full denial. The fact that then-president Reagan did not utter the word "AIDS" until late into his second term was the most vivid demonstration of the way that the political establishment and lots of other people wanted to pretend it wasn't happening; that we weren't losing a generation of smart, creative, wonderful people. On the other hand, the gay community grew up as a response to AIDS; gay men and lesbians of my generation took action, struggled, fought, coalesced, took care of their own, built institutions and organizations, and transformed the cultural landscape forever. They fought the war on AIDS. They were helped and supported by doctors, nurses, social workers, and volunteers I met while working as a reporter; those people threw themselves into the fight against the disease––both as clinicians and as researchers and as human beings––with total dedication and passion.

In the end, the AIDS crisis changed the way that vast segments of the straight community understood homosexuality and gay people. It was very personal, finally. The losses of brothers and sisters, children and friends helped turned the tide against homophobia, person by person, family by family. NOT TO SAY IT'S OVER. Matthew Shepard was murdered long after the disease stopped making headlines in America, long after AIDS became a chronic rather than a fatal disease for many. But attitudes were changed as a result of the public and proud acknowledgement of the presence of gay people everywhere in our culture and in our families.