It's a Sin - AIDS in the 80's - Real life examples

[smellywellies9]

I have just finished watching It's a Sin and it's really hit me hard, I was born early 80's and had no idea how AIDS victims were treated back then, I feel like this has almost been hidden from us.
I would be really keen to hear some real life stories from people older than myself who lived through this. Things that have shocked me:
They were imprisoned in hospital wards with no one allowed in or out.
Homosexuals were not allowed a mortgage in the 80's and possibly 90's?
People use to destroy all cups etc that homosexuals had touched for fear of catching it.
The general ignorance from the government on this.
The attitude from the general public, were people really that cruel??

Sorry to add to an old thread but here are useful links!

That I’m having problems pasting....

www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2ug992/serious_gay_men_who_lived_through_the_hiv/?st=1Z141Z3&sh=6f16e5f3

www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/w5x9w/gay_men_who_were_adults_in_the_early_80s_what_did/

Not sure why pasting multiple links in one message isn’t working

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2603aids.html

Forgot to say, one thing mentioned repeatedly is the exceptional help lesbian friends gave. Very touching and something that tied in with a thing an older friend in London said, makes me realise and appreciate what she was getting at (how she’d helped others). She was so modest about it

I remember when we bought our house in 2000 we were asked if we had had HIV tests. We both said no. We were both also lying - DH had one just after he met me before we were intimate, I had one when pregnant although I didn't realise I had, they didn't tell you they were testing for that).

@NastyBlouse

People certainly did think you could catch AIDS from touching someone who had it.

Indeed. This is why Princess Diana shaking hands with HIV-positive people without gloves was such a huge deal at the time.

Diana did a really Good thing by doing that.

The Fear was real. Whipped up by Govt posters / TV ads.
There was a mixture of 'it's okay it'll just kill the gays' in the redtops but fear too that no one knew (or was saying) how exactly it was transmitted so there was nonsense re 'catching it from teacups' etc.

I remember an old work colleague of my older boyfriend visiting us unexpectedly around 1987. My boyfriend was out at the time. I didn't know colleague well but knew from boyfriend he was gay and 'had HIV and possibly AIDS'. I'd only met him once before and he'd seemed nice enough guy, late 20's very sporty and good fun. This time he looked skeletal when he arrived and I was shocked tho I hope it didn't show.

I made friend a cuppa and a nice sandwich & cake late lunch for us whilst we waited for boyfriend to come home. I remember the friend crying as I was not especially careful with the crockery / didn't wipe everything down frantically. In fact I gave him a big hug when he got a bit tearful because that is just what you do when someone cries imo. Poor man to have so clearly (and with some justification re the news at the time etc) expected that even the 18 y/o girlfriend of his good old friend might ostracise him / not offer him a cup of tea even.

princess Diana really did make a massive difference to attitudes . At one point just having had an HIV test ( regardless of the results) would definitely result in not getting a mortgageage or insurance with some provoders

Philadelphia iqirh Tom Hanks s a good film about the prejudice faced by people with HIV and AIiDS.

A close friend of .my sister died of AIDS in the 80s, she has been an intravenous drug user until a couple of years before .

Section 28 was appalling and I remember protesting about it . I was in my 20s at the time.

If you go over to the Reddit on It’s a Sin there are loads of resources and people talking about exactly the questions you asked. There’s also a mega thread of different media too. You can find it all here at r/It’s a Sin.

@badpuma

Haemophiliac children were told that their factor VIII injections were perfectly safe and to continue using prophylaxis (injections every day to prevent uncontrolled bleeding into joints damaging the cartilage).

My DH is a haemophiliac. His parents didn't give prophylaxis. Most of his friends' parents did. His friends were mostly dead by 1990.

Yes I remeber this. So many heamophilacs died. It was awful

Speaking to my gay son about the programme he said that, in general, gay men are a lot more aware of how to not get aids than heterosexuals are.

It’s still out there.

And as others have said there was an issue about getting mortgages, life insurance if you'd just had a test, never mind its results.

I taught through all of the section 28 era. To my heads’ credit we were never told what/what not to say. I know that they would have defended me too.

I recently found out, from an ex pupil friend that I’d said some, for the time, fairly controversial things about accepting others. I’d long since forgotten but it had stuck in her mind and helped form her thoughts.

I'm another who could share stories but wouldn't do it in here

Re the war, history won't mention the things grandparents told me, like looters ready to go as soon as the all clear went.

It's really important to keep in mind how current things will be whitewashed.

Those ads with the chisel on the tombstone etc were terrifying. They were shown at about 6pm and I’m certain were the cause of the way gay people were treated, it was deliberately polarising.

I recall Rock Hudson dying and many dad age men and mum age women declaring he couldn’t possibly be gay.

I also recall a man at work having a special mug, because even late 80’s people were still scared of transmission.

I drew some attitude parallels in Its a Sin and the Ripper documentary of the “establishment” attitude to gay men and women in society. I knew women going up to University in the early 80’s that would be the trailblazers for us to follow, but they were routinely sneered at and shouted down. The establishment, right wing press and some (not all!) men felt very threatened by change at that time and HIV played to their power of ostracism of difference.

I I was born in 1966.
I had my first gay friend at the age of 10, he was 12. He explained he liked boys, but didn’t know why he was different to other boys he knew. I liked boys and girls, and didn’t know why I was different either.

When I was 13, he got his first boyfriend, an older boy in his late teens. My friend came out to his parents at 16, and they threw him out, so he was then living with his boyfriend, having nowhere else to go. Amongst my friends and family, there was no issue or bigotry with regard to sexuality, but as I started to notice the the world more, I realised that this was not the case everywhere.

In 1985, I was nursing on a general ward, and there was a chap on the unit who, we were told, had a premature ageing disease, called HTLV-III. He was barrier-nursed. He was skeletal, and unbelievably frail. He was in a side room, but there was no locking away, visitors were allowed as long as they wore what we would now call PPE, and his sexuality never discussed or disclosed.

In 1986, I was at university, and joined the Women’s Committee, where all the bisexuals, lesbians, and quite a lot of the gay community hung out. We protested, we went to Pride, we went to conferences, we supported one another, we lived through the scary ‘Tombstone’ ad, we took part in the anti-porn ‘Off the Rack’ campaign. All the time, friends were being tested for HIV, the university set up a helpline to deal with misinformation and provide support.

I’ve tried to be factual, but it was both a terrifying, and unbelievably loving time of my life. Through my work now, I have many patients who are HIV positive, who are living lives without the same degree of fear, and the life-changing treatments which have made such a difference.

Sadly, as others have posted, this is not the case worldwide.

Sunnydayhere that’s so ace :) we had one teacher like you and it sort of made us so amazed and it made load of sense that obviously everyone’s normal and we get taught some aren’t when it’s just not true... sounds silly but when you hear the truth you sort of know it

I was born in the late 70s so I remember it very vividly in the press. My mum worked in the DVLA in drivers medical and one one driver wrote to say they had been diagnosed as HIV+ this was in 1988 so most people knew how it was transmitted but my mum was shocked that no one wanted to handle the actual letter. She dealt with it herself. She said this really upset her as it seemed so dehumanising.

When Freddie Mercury passed away, I remember his tribute concert being on Live TV and my grandmother was in a nursing home. She and all the other old ladies had never heard of him and all thought he was rather dishy! Bless them. I don't think they had any clue about the aids crisis

I used to work in labs doing blood tests back in the early 90s. I still remember that blood from HIV patients came in special bags clearly marked as 'Infection risk' and we took extra care with the samples.

Really we should have treated all samples with extra care as you had no idea if they could be infected.

@SushiSoozie

How? If you were a gay man and were or had been in a relationship with another man, you could be arrested

Where are you getting this from? Men were arrested in public bathrooms and on Hampstead Heath, there were vast numbers of people in relationships who had no fear of the law, it was cultural condemnation that was the real issue. Nobody was arrested for having been in or being in a relationship.

People need to stop saying things like "being gay was a crime". For one thing you're forgetting every single gay woman that ever existed.

www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oscar-wilde-arrested

I qualified as a doctor in 1980, and had quite a few hiv positive patients, but they were mainly iv drug users from the Edinburgh/Dundee outbreak, or recipients of contaminated blood transfusions, rather than gay.
I remember being gobsmacked at an elderly consultant colleague who announced that AIDS was a punishment from God on homosexuals. I asked him what God had against haemophiliacs, and he got quite grumpy!
We certainly never locked up hiv patients in my hospital. We just put them last on operating lists so we could deep clean the theatre afterwards, and we used gloves, masks and gowns for any clinical contact with them. They were treated exactly the same as hepatitis B positive patients, we used the same protocols.
I remember the tv adverts and the “Don’t die of ignorance” campaign. It didn’t seem to do much to cut the number of illicit liaisons between hospital staff, although all of us felt a bit nervous about the risks of transmission from infected patients’ blood splashes in theatre.

I watched It’s a Sin and I found it heartbreaking - I cried.

I think some people have been harsh on this thread. Although I agree that nobody should feel they have to discuss traumatic events in their life, some people actually want to because it’s cathartic. It’s not nice to just look for reasons to jump on the OP. I don’t think they meant any offence.

I was born in 1980 and my dad would not buy from the local convenience store because it was owned by two gay men and my dad thought that he would catch AIDS from the produce. Although I was only about 7, I remember how ridiculous I thought this was. It also didn’t stop me buying things in there after school.

There is no denying it was a much more homophobic society in the 80s and 90s.

If you have the chance visit newspaper archives for research, vv interesting.