Hostility and prejudice toward homosexuality has deep roots in American society. State sodomy laws criminalized homosexual acts. Federal immigration laws excluded homosexual aliens. The 1873 Comstock Act permitted postal authorities to exclude homosexual publications from the mail. Hollywood’s “Production Code,” adopted in 1934, prohibited the depiction of gay characters or open discussion of homosexuality in film. The American Psychiatric Association’s…

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In the early to mid-1980s, the disease Human Immunodeficiency Virus/ Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, known as HIV/AIDS, became a world-wide medical phenomenon. It had the potential human destructiveness of medieval plagues. It killed by breaking down the body’s ability to fight off other opportunistic diseases, such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and blood cancers. AIDS was transmitted sexually, primarily, although not exclusively,…

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The NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt, often just called the AIDS Memorial Quilt, is an enormous quilt made as a memorial to celebrate the lives of people who died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it was the largest piece of community folk art in the world as of 2016. (http://www.npr.org/2012/06/27/155868611/pieces-of-aids-quilt-blanket-nations-capital) The idea for the Memorial Quilt…

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