We Must Fight to Live: The Impact of AIDS on the Gay Community

This presentation investigates the impact of the United States AIDS crisis from 1981-1985, and specifically how the American medical establishment responded to the crisis, on the rhetoric of the gay movement. Following the liberating movement of the 1970s, the 1980s AIDS crisis, and the medical community's refusal to treat it as a serious threat, shifted the mood of the gay community from optimism to dread. Drawing upon personal accounts and journalistic investigations of the period, this presentation hopes to show the gay community's progression from denying the existence of the crisis to panicking over the medical establishment's lack of care over it, marking a transition from a fight for rights to a fight for life.