This January closed with police raids on Seattle gay bars. In a scene reminiscent of 20th-century police raids of queer bars, officials with flashlights entered a bar unannounced, took pictures of patrons, and cited a bartender for having an exposed nipple. It’s no secret that queer bars have been heavily policed throughout American history, or that nowadays, lesbian bars are practically nonexistent in the U.S. Queer spaces still exist, but we have lost the thriving queer sex culture of the 1980s largely because of the American political response to the AIDS crisis.
Ronald Reagan and Creating the Conditions for Satanic Panic
The Satanic Panic almost perfectly coincides with former-President Reagan’s term, beginning in 1980 and dying out by the early 1990s while Reagan’s presidency lasted from 1981 to 1989. While Reagan himself did not acknowledge the moral panic, he created the perfect conditions for it and knew how to champion himself as its hero.
Anonymous, Anonymous
I have this dream of dying in complete silence, and when the neighbors call to complain about the smell a few days later (and the firemen kick the door in), they’ll find my mother sitting calmly at the dining room table, knife in hand around a halo of sunburnt faces cutting branches from the family tree
The History and Stigma of HIV/AIDS: HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day
Graphic by Christopher Ikonomou (Xe/He) In 1981, the first cases of what would later be known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were reported in America. In hindsight, there had been deaths that would later be attributed to AIDS as early…
