LAS LIBRARY

New Book Looks at the Politics of AIDS

"As the recent debate over health care reform has shown, arguments over the best way to keep people healthy are fundamentally political as well as medical," says Jennifer Brier, associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, associate professor of gender and women's studies and history and author of Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis(University of North Carolina Press, 2009). The book examines how the AIDS epidemic impacted American politics in the 1980s and 1990s and argues that the era was not as politically conservative as it is often characterized.

The following is an excerpt taken from chapter one of Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis,"Affection is Our Best Protection," pages 14-15.

In this chapter I explore the arguments made by these earliest AIDS activists who used the medium of the gay press to communicate a message that AIDS provided a moment in which to return to gay liberation, not run away from it. They struggled with, and argued over, the meaning of key terms, including "gay liberation," "health," "behavior," "fulfillment" and "promiscuity." They asked if gay liberation required complete sexual freedom, often described by critics and defenders alike as promiscuity; what role love and affections should play in liberated behavior; and how communities could be empowered by coalition building around sexual health. Taken together, these questions signaled that writer-activists struggled with how to develop complete and long-term sexual health for gay and lesbian citizens. Instead of calling on men to curtail sexually liberated behavior, they sought to reinvigorate gays and lesbians in the fight for political and cultural recognition as well as to push for equality of diverse sexual practices. These women and men argued that sexual expression itself held the potential for containing the spread of AIDS. Numerous gay and lesbian periodicals echoed the theme and struggled to describe a new disease to their readership. In the process, these writers created a conversation about the possibilities for queer community and queer poetics among people thinking about and studying AIDS.

Looking at this evolving community-based AIDS work provides an opportunity to see beyond the unfolding of scientific events and toward the kinds of conversations made possible by the scientific unknown. In a period of medical uncertainty, there was room for far-reaching conversation among a more diverse group of people, in particular laypeople trained not in science but in the intricacies of grassroots political struggle. Community members could talk about AIDS without being trumped by doctors and health professionals. This, when coupled with the legacy of the feminist health movement of the 1970s, which argued that women should participate in their own health care, produced a moment where a community approach to knowledge was possible.

Contrary to standard historical narratives of conservatism that maintain AIDS served as a rallying point for conservative activists during this period, Brier contends that AIDS divided conservatives. One example of the discord was between former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Gary Bauer, who served as under secretary of education and later, as chief domestic policy adviser for President Reagan. Brier writes that the conservatives fought over the role of testing for HIV, the promotion of condom use, and the need for conversations about sexual practices as the best way to change people's behavior.

"While Koop was never entirely successful in implementing policies that acknowledged people's sexuality, Bauer was equally stymied when trying to enact AIDS policies that were driven by his strict definition of morality," she says. "The disagreement among administration conservatives became even more visible as the Reagan administration entered the global AIDS arena in the late 1980s," Brier writes.

In her book, Brier explores how the AIDS crisis influenced American political matters involving health care and foreign policy, reproductive health, gay and lesbian rights and racial justice. The idea that healthcare reform is political as well as medical was put in sharp contrast in the first decades of the AIDS crisis, "as various constituencies—from AIDS activists to health care service providers to government officials—argued over what was necessary to deal with, and respond to, the multiple crises produced by the emerging AIDS epidemic," she said.

The book includes a look at how AIDS workers—a group Brier defines as those committed to addressing the effects of AIDS—were made up of contrasting entities such as gay and lesbian media, AIDS service organizations, private philanthropies and the U.S. State Department.

Brier argues that their combined efforts helped to shape progressive politics in the 21st century.