Can’t stop thinking about all those beautiful souls lost to AIDS (since watching Its a Sin)

[Thoughtsfortheday]

like the title said, the series has had quite an emotive affect on me and I have spent the last week doing a lot of research and reading and trying to unpick what I had watched.

I grew up in Edinburgh (sometimes referred to as the AIDS capital of Europe) and was born in 1980 so I was just a kid when the 1st cases we’re reported. My parents were open minded and inclusive for their generation but also very protective and definitely would have turned the TV off during news reports or interviews to shield me. HIV was also rife among drug users in Ed and due to my dad being in the police I spent years terrified of these “monsters” with the dangerous and alternative lifestyles that were so alien to mine.

Of course as I grew up and educated myself and spent years feeling sad for all the life’s lost and the prejudices they had encountered especially at a time in their lives where they wanted to be touched, loved and comforted but I’m ashamed to say it’s only been since watching Its a Sin and since anything else I could get my hands on that I’ve looked at the people, lives and stories that came before the illness.

So much colour, pride, love, voice, creativity in these beautiful beings, many who who had fought to be seen and had just started to live and love how they wanted and I can’t stop crying for rage they must have felt at a disease that fuelled the discrimination and tried so hard to push them all back into the shadows.

If anyone else has been moved by this, I absolutely recommend “Don’t wipe Tears without Gloves” (Prime) Horizen “Trouble in the village” BBC1 player and also the Instagram page The AIDS Memorial which tells the story’s of many beautiful souls.

I watched the whole series on Friday night, it was so good it was worth staying up until 2am to get it finished. Episode 3 broke my heart.

I'm 35 so grew up in the aftermath of all the tombstone adverts and the major panic, or at least i was only aware of it very vaguely. I remember being told as a kid at primary school that if you kissed someone on the bum you would get aids but was too young to know what they were getting at.

I recommend reading How to Survive a Plague by David France. It charts the outbreak in New York and San Francisco from the first cases to aftermath of the development of treatment. It's a huge book, really in-depth but well worth reading. It's based on a documentary of the same name which is a much more condensed version.

I agree. It's an absolutely fantastic series, hilarious, joyous, thought provoking, harrowing and heartbreaking all in one. Olly Alexander's performance was outstanding. Yes, the AIDS situation was desperately sad and the show really brought home the amount of blatant prejudice and hatred all LGBTQ people faced in the 80/90s, let alone those with HIV/AIDS. The way people were just locked away in hospital rooms! It must have terrifying to be around and at risk at that time with so little understanding and help. Pose, about the lives of the LGBTQ community and ballroom scene in New York, is set in the same era, has similar themes and is also a great watch.

This was posted by Sali Hughes and it really hit home after watching

The programme was outstanding. It really hit home for the very first time. I found it haunting and has remained with me since watching. It's made me realise how big 'coming out' actually is, especially after seeing the ignorence that was displayed so recently.
Fabulously written, acted and produced.

It is utterly unbearable how they were left alone like that when they were ill and shamed and vilified by their families and society before, during and after. Wonderful series.

I'm 3/4 of the way through this ,it's so sad , I'm 47 so I remember the tomb stone adverts ,did they really lock Aids victims in wards on their own ? So bloody heartless

Amazing series but you might want to get ‘potential spoilers’ added to your thread title.
People tend to lose their shit despite clicking the thread

Gay history really isn’t told.

We still have people who think children should be protected from knowing that gay people exist, there are people on this very forum who support that view.

In some places, particularly San Francisco almost an entire generation of gay men were wiped out.

There are still places in the world that punish being gay with death.

There are still places where we can’t get married.

Our very own prime minister compares gay marriage to marrying a dog, he also calls gay men tank topped bum boys.

People still debate as to whether or not we should be allowed to have children.

The mainstream press publish articles titled “the myth of being both happy and gay”.

The press still posts shit like the two attached pictures, spot the difference by the same author.

You still have to be ‘straight passing’ to be safe outside your front door.

Every year we have the “what about straight pride” brigade.

This year on MN some posters were urging people not to put rainbows in windows because it would attract peadophiles to their homes.

In this century financial services could deny us their products, the financial sector is only advised not to ask men they suspect of being gay to disclose their HIV status, some will even ask how you contracted HIV, they need to determine if you are a worthy HIV sufferer.

When gay men were finally allowed mortgages we had to prove we were HIV negative. We couldn’t take a mortgage out with a partner because our relationships were not valid.

Until 2003 Section 28 was still in force in England.

Gay people in England still don’t get sex education at school, not any they can actually use anyway.

Today we all remember the holocaust, we rightly focus on Jewish people who lost their lives. However we need to remember the pink triangle and what it stood for, we also need to remember that gay people were not liberated from camps, many were sent to prison when camps were liberated.

HIV/AIDS is still wrongly stigmatised, there are still people who want it to be criminalised. Currently drug users who contract HIV are still worthier than gay people who contract HIV.

It’s a sin has highlighted that the plight of a minority group often goes ignored until the majority group finally take notice as people will listen to their voices.

Since maybe mid May there has been a movement which essentially says if this is the first pandemic your community is living through be thankful and be thankful that you’re worthy victims.

If HIV/AIDS had been an issue in straight people first the handling of the illness would be very very different.

I can't stop thinking about it. Was so beautifully heartbreaking.

Feeling that despite working with members from LGBT+ community as a part of my day job, I was a slightly ignorant of it all in some ways and the sheer numbers involved. I wasn't born until late 80s so was too young to remember anything from the time frame in the programme but this seemed to personalise it a bit I think?

Going to look up some of the recommendations above for further watching/reading.

People still debate as to whether or not we should be allowed to have children.

In the cases where this requires the use of woman’s body, this is absolutely a matter for debate.

And there goes the thread

If you were moved by this/enjoyed it I highly recommend reading Allen Barnett's The Body and its Dangers, and looking for the documentary Silverlake Life: the view from here. Beautiful pieces, both, full of love, and agonising in sharing the realities people lived through with AIDS.

@SimonJT What a thought provoking post - thank you. And those two differing headlines are absolutely shocking.
I thought 'It's a sin' was a beautifully written and was especially moved by the different reactions of the parents in the series.

I'm mid 40's so remember it pretty well; the program mad me think about how gutting it must have been for gay men at the time that they were just starting to get a bit more social acceptance in the mainstream (just think how many gay pop artists there were at the time!!) and then HIV/AIDs comes along and sets them way, way back, providing fodder for all those prejudice against them. It's also worth noting how determined and organised the gay movement was in lobbying for pharma companies to invest in developing treatments; they wouldn't have got those at the same pace otherwise. Brave, determined, smart people. And yes, there is still plenty of homophobia about sadly. Never understood it - who cares what consenting adults do together?

*made

I've not watched it because of the large number of (usually) young men who died.

Thank you for the person who reminded everyone that gay men were amongst those persecuted by the Nazis.

I worked in HIV medicine in the early 90s & it was heartbreaking. All those skeletal young men waiting in the out patient clinics with fear in their eyes still haunt me. Thank goodness for the drugs that have been developed to enable people to live a normal life with HIV.

If you haven't already seen it, you should watch The Normal Heart. It's a film set in New York in the same time period. It came out in 2014 so I would have been about 19 when I watched it and prior to that I hadn't been aware of just how many lives were lost. It broke my heart and outraged me.

I'm also from Edinburgh and 5 years older.

There was a BBC Scotland documentary at the start of last year about the perfect storm that made Edinburgh AIDS capital of Europe - the Iranian Revolution and USSR invasion of Afghanistan meant that the city was flooded with heroin and infiltrated the schemes, particularly Muirhouse. Homosexuality wasn't legalised in Scotland until 1980 and the cheap Skytrain flights to New York and San Francisco meant it spread quickly through gay men. Lothian and Borders Police had a zero tolerance approach to drug use which meant needle sharing was rife. Not peculiar to Edinburgh was the infection of haemophiliacs with infected blood products.
I went to nursing college in Glasgow in 1993 and most of my cohort were local and made a big thing of my coming from Edinburgh, which was faintly ridiculous as I was a pretty innocent 17 year old, straight out of school.

Another documentary which is a heartbreaking watch is 'We were here' about AIDS in San Francisco. It's on vimeo.

@SimonJT The 'good' AIDS and 'bad' AIDS bit on Brasseye springs to mind.

I’m half way through and I don’t know if I can watch the rest of it.
I was a kid when it was happening so my recollection is vague and from odd bits of the 6 o’clock news.
Just so sad. How they were treated, just awful.

I do wish there was a version with the sex scenes cut so I could watch it with the 12 year old!!

I am 50 this year, so was a teenager and 'partying' in the time frame of the programme. It really reminded me of everything we learned so slowly and all the misinformation.
I remember the iceberg advert and how big a deal it was for it to be on the BBC.
My parents were very forward and open and we were not shielded from the news at all.
I found it matched my memories and when I spoke to my 19 year old about it I was shocked at how little he knew from the beginning of the outbreaks.

@dazzlinghaze has reminded me. I listened to an episode of podcast called Making Gay History which interviewed Larry Kramer, writer of The Normal Heart (which was originally a play and apparently will be back on in the west end this year, if we ever get to go to theatre again). Larry Kramer was a founding member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis & Act Up and a pretty divisive figure in the gay community in the 80’s. There’s an excellent documentary about him as well, I’m blanking on the name of it now but it was on Sky Arts. Both worth checking out if you can.