One consequence of the AIDS epidemic was that America was forced, however grudgingly, to confront the existence of gay people for the first time-doubtless under less than ideal circumstances. Politicians never referred to gay issues the mainstream press ignored them almost categorically there were no GLBT support groups at the workplace or at school. There were no gay characters on TV or in the movies (with a few, largely sinister exceptions). Coming out allowed gay people to find each other for the first time-in bars, bookstores, coffee shops, gyms, bathhouses, and so on-but the ghettoized world that they inhabited as “gay people” rarely intersected with mainstream American culture. The era of Gay Liberation had brought greater visibility to GLBT people, to be sure, but rather in the way that a National Geographic special can bring greater “visibility” to an exotic people halfway around the world. HOW DID AIDS change the struggle for GLBT rights? The question has been debated from different angles ever since it became clear that the epidemic would irrevocably alter the trajectory of the equality movement as it had been waged from the Stonewall era up to the early or mid-1980s.
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