American gay culture might be going through a golden age, but it’s come at great cost — most of the legislation protecting and ensuring our equality today would not have emerged without a series tragedies that forced it into the public consciouness.
Chief among these is the failure of President Ronald Reagan’s administration to address the AIDS crisis — or, to be exact, its refusal to acknowledge it even existed. Tens of thousands lost their lives and it took the death of screen idol Rock Hudson in 1985, and the publication of Randy Shilts’ searing And the Band Played On, detailing systematic government failures, to bring the disaster into the national conversation.