AIDS, Guns, and Orlando

 

06/17/2016 03:32 pm ET | Updated 3 days ago

 

In the days since the shooting massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando that took the lives of 49 people, mostly from the LGBTQ community, and wounded many more, there have been countless commentaries about how the LGBTQ community should respond to this tragedy. And as part of this discussion, both in published articles online, but also in the passing comments of friends on Facebook, I have seen the comparison between what occurred in Orlando this past Sunday and the AIDS crisis that ravaged the gay community in the US in the 1980s. The comparison between these two plagues—and yes, plagues is the right word—is understandable. The deaths and senseless loss of multiple people, the pain inflicted on an entire community, a pervasive sense of hopelessness and sadness left in the wake of tragedy.

And yet, upon further inspection, these two plagues, despite their surface connection of mass death, are strikingly different in ways that need to be remembered if we have any chance of defeating this current epidemic. When AIDS struck in the early 80s, in addition to the feelings of grief, helplessness, and rage that marked the period, there was also a profound sense of fear. A sense of not knowing how to respond or what needed to be done. So much was simply unknown. What was causing this disease? How did one contract it? How could it be stopped? In the early days of the epidemic, people lacked answers to these central questions and were left without any apparent solutions. Antiretroviral drugs like AZT and clear knowledge of HIV transmission were still years away. Our current world in which HIV/AIDS could be managed by drug cocktails, preventative measures like PrEP, and safe sex was barely a glimmer.

The gun plague, though, is different from AIDS in ways that I would argue are even more tragic. While the early years of AIDS were marked by a sense of powerlessness in a world without answers or solutions, the simple truth is that answers to gun violence do exist and have for quite sometime. Yes, the second amendment has done a number on our country making change seem impossible. But from banning assault weapons to more thorough background checks on individuals who want to buy guns, there are a number of ostensibly effective solutions to this wave of violence and yet, we have chosen not enact such policies. I say “we” because I see this as a collective act. Yes, our politicians are ultimately responsible for changing legislation, but we too are responsible for selecting these politicians, for putting pressure on them (or not), for empowering groups like the NRA that don’t seem to care about the interests or safety of the larger population at all.

As I scroll through my friends’ Facebook posts, and it is indeed a tough act these last few days, the general feeling out there seems to be grief. For me, it is anger. Anger at our government and ourselves for not demanding more. For allowing this plague to continue when solutions are possible, the type of solutions that our predecessors during the AIDS crisis did not have but could only have wished for.

If there is one thing to be learned from the AIDS plague, it’s this: that we do have agency. By acting together, like our LGBTQ predecessors did in the days of ACT UP, change is possible; the government did finally listen and put money into AIDS research. But if we only mourn, if we only ask “how did this happen?” when the answers are right in front of us, then we have no one to blame but ourselves and that’s the real tragedy. Hate may never be fully eradicated and there will be others who will want to harm the LGBTQ community and others in the future, but a “vaccine” for the gun epidemic is within our reach. We just have to choose to use it

 

www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-hoffman/aids-guns-and-orlando_b_10518384.html

 

Follow Warren Hoffman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/_WarrenHoffman

 

 

 

Source: Huffington Post