I am watching a Spanish Netflix series called Merli: Sapere Aude, and it is excellent. It is a dramedy, and the plot revolves around the protagonist, a young man named Pol Rubio, played by a fine young Spanish actor named Carlos Cuevas. Pol is a young man in his first year of studies in philosophy at a university in Barcelona. He has a bisexual orientation, and though he favours men, he does have dalliances with women occasionally. Pol is an anti-hero; while he generally strives to do good, he betrays a friend and his father when it serves his interests. He learns in the first episode of season two that he is HIV+. Pol is devastated by the news, despite the doctor’s assurance that the virus can be managed with treatment. He starts the regimen of taking the medication and tries to carry on. In a subsequent episode, Pol converses with a former co-worker who likely exposed him to the virus. His friend lost his job when the employer learned he was HIV+. The friend reminds Pol that people will feel sorry for you when you get cancer, but when you get HIV, you are viewed as a “dirty faggot.” Pol also converses with his employer, a mature gay man living with HIV. The employer lived through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and saw many gay men succumb to the disease. He recounted an incident where a friend was beaten to death for being queer. I bristled when I heard “queer” used to refer to a gay man, but I realized in the context of the anecdote that it was the attackers who called him a queer as they beat him to death. Queer is a slur, the last thing many gay men heard as they were beaten to death by gangs of thugs.

The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s seems so distant in 2024. HIV is managed with treatment, and there is PrEP that can stop HIV from taking hold if you are exposed. Yes, HIV is still out there, and you do not want to be exposed. I lived through the AIDS crisis and came through it unscathed. I know for sure that a man I dated in 1989 was HIV+, but we practiced safer sex. I entered a long-term relationship with another man in 1989 that lasted five and a half years. Following our breakup, I had love affairs with two other men before I met Mika in 1998. My doctor advised me in the early 1990s to take the Hepatitis B vaccine. Before the vaccinations could be administered, I needed testing to see if I had any sexually transmitted diseases. The tests came back negative, and I proceeded with the vaccinations. My husband Mika and I are monogamous, so there is no chance of either of us subject to exposure to HIV, at least not sexually. It is remotely possible that we could be exposed if we needed and received a blood transfusion from tainted blood.

Yes, it is good that HIV can be managed with treatment and that PrEP can protect the virus from taking hold. Still, the remark made by Pol’s friend that having HIV when you are a gay man is seen that you are a “dirty faggot” hit home. I remember well how widely that view was held during the AIDS crisis. People openly differentiated between the “dirty faggots” who brought it on themselves and the innocent victims. The innocent victims were people who needed blood transfusions, particularly hemophiliacs whose infections were collateral damage from the gay plague. In Canada, since the 1990s, there has been anonymous testing for HIV. If you are tested and found positive, the status is kept private. So, unless you disclose it to your employer, it is unlikely you will lose your job if you are HIV+. Also, HIV does not discriminate; it is a virus. It does not care who your sexual partners are. The actress Amanda Blake, who played Miss Kitty in the television series Gunsmoke, died from AIDS in 1989. I recall a friend commenting to the media how stunned she was at the news because her friend was a “moral person.” Go figure: AIDS did not care that Amanda Blake was a “moral person.”

I liked to think that HIV and AIDS were essentially a thing of the past, but it is a reality and not to be taken lightly. It remains a concern for gay men, particularly younger gay men who are sexually active in the dating scene. Gay men must not lose sight of this reality. Gay men’s health and welfare must remain a priority for gay rights organizations and not be sidetracked by quarrels over gender ideology and other unrelated issues. Life is good for gay men in the present, and the price to see that we retain our civil rights is vigilance. While there is no need to dwell on the past or wallow in victimization, gay men and their advocacy groups would do well to see that an accurate historical record of the hardship gay men faced in the past is preserved for posterity to ensure that future generations never suffer like those who came before them.

Posted by Geoffrey