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Comment by EatingWithForks | Hacker News Reader

The difference with AIDS is that AIDS at the time condemned you to a slow, horrible, visible decline, in which your death was celebrated via a radio talk show host that at the time had an entire regular segment to name and mock the people who died.

Like, this doesn't apply to people who get cervical cancer from HPV or other similarly tragic outcomes of acquiring an STD. The cruelty on the scale is way above anything.

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Don't forget Reagan's press secretary mocking the so-called "gay plague"

https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids

There was also Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, who seems to have taken HIV/AIDS seriously and opposed stigmatization:

https://www.hiv.gov/blog/in-memoriam-c-everett-koop/

As painful a read as that was, I think it's really important to understand what the social norms were at that time. Thousands of people had died and the reaction, not just from the press secretary but from the press pool at large, was to laugh and joke. Really the only widely socially acceptable response to even the mere thought of gay male sexuality was complete and utter disgust. If you were a man, to not express disgust at this thought opened the door to "you might be a fairy too", which is why you see so many of these displays of "the banality of evil".

Audio from those press conferences is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzDn7tE1lU

That's revolting. Which radio show was this?

Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh? Or any of the right-wing radio hosts who mocked belittled and laughed at liberal/minority suffering, I'm sure.

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