Benefit advertisement, Roxy, 1995
<p>Roxy was a popular nightclub located in Chelsea, New York City from 1978 until it closed 2007. The nightclub hosted weekly gay dance nights and held events benefitting AIDS-related charities like New York’s Gay Men’s Health Clinic. The bar culture was criticized as part of the problem in the spread of HIV, but it also became a part of the solution. The LGBT community used the bar culture to create a different sense of community—one that could help meet the challenge of AIDS.</p>
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<p>“I think in the beginning what drove the movement of we gay people taking charge quickly was this sense of we need to protect ourselves. We need to save ourselves. We need to do whatever we can to protect our own because of all the political ramification of that, historically all the oppression and all that stuff. You see, it was a new thing among gay people—the whole Stonewall thing was new.”</p>
<p><strong>Interview with Moises Agosto, National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC), 1995<br /></strong><em>John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection, 1901-2008</em></p>
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection
Poster, The Brig, early 1980s
<p>The Brig was a gay bar located in the Fells Point area of Baltimore, MD. The bar and bathhouse culture within the gay community was criticized by many both within and outside the community. It was seen by some as an unintended venue to spread HIV and a problem to be addressed. Conversely, the call to alter behavior and close specific bathhouses or clubs was seen by some as impinging on individual freedoms.</p>
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<p>“BILL: . . . I went to leave with him and somebody pulled me back in and said, ‘You don’t want to leave with that man.’ And when all this came down that he had AIDS, I was like, o-o-h somebody was helping me. But this was back in eighty-five. I didn’t think a thing about it. It’s like Rubber [another bar patron] and I were talking about when he started having safe sex. And he said, 1981. He was already HIV.”</p>
<p><strong>Interview with “Bill,” Shamrock Bar patron, 1999<br /></strong><em>The Shamrock Bar: Photographs and Interviews, 1997-2003</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I remember going into the Hippo [a gay bar in Baltimore, Maryland] and asking them to stop the music so we could recruit people for the study [Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study]. We were practically stoned—this was 1981/82/83/84. People said don’t bring us down; we’re out here having a good time, don’t talk about AIDS.”</p>
<p><strong>Interview with Curt Decker, lobbyist, 1995<br /></strong><em>John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection, 1901-2008</em></p>
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection
<p><em>Chicago Tribune TV Week</em>, November 10-16, 1985</p>
<p>In the television film <em>An Early Frost</em>, Michael Pierson (Aidan Quinn) is a young gay man with AIDS. Forced to be open about his homosexuality and the disease, he must also face the inevitability of his death. At a time when AIDS was seen as a certain death sentence, <em>An Early Frost</em> presented the tragedy of the epidemic to a wide audience. Media writer Kenneth R. Clark noted, “NBC . . . is the first to explore AIDS with a full-length movie, and a lot of people are nervous about it.” </p>
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<p>“We have to have in us the will to be the one to survive, to be the old, old man who will tell the world what happened. Because eventually the world will change. The one who survives out of the plague, out of the holocaust, out of whatever, to be the one to tell the world . . . .”</p>
<p><strong>Interview with Cornelius Baker, National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA), 1995<br /></strong><em>John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection, 1901-2008</em></p>
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection
Photo book and poster, <em>Longtime Companion</em>, 1990
<p>Set in Manhattan and on Fire Island, the film <em>Longtime Companion</em> follows the lives of a small circle of friends from the first mention of AIDS in 1981. As the story progresses, the disease devastates the characters’ lives, touching each one in a different way. The title of the film refers to the <em>New York Times</em>' refusal to acknowledge homosexual relationships in its obituary section, instead using "longtime companion" to refer to the surviving life partner of the deceased.</p>
<p>“Even at the beginning, even when families were involved . . . there was a real need to change the [funeral] ritual . . . to stamp it in a different way, how important it became when AIDS got mentioned one way or another, that the person was gay—those things became so important. The whole issue of what to put in the obit, the cause of death—how important it was to those who survived, friends and lover, that attention be paid not to write this off.”</p>
<p><strong>Interview with Judy Pollatsek, bereavement expert and therapist, 1995<br /></strong><em>John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection, 1901-2008</em></p>
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection
Movie poster, <em>Philadelphia</em>, 1993
<p>In the film <em>Philadelphia</em>, gay lawyer Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), is fired from his conservative law firm because he has AIDS. Beckett sues his former employer with the help of Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), a homophobic lawyer. Miller overcomes his homophobia and helps Beckett win his case before Beckett dies of AIDS. </p>
<p><em>Philadelphia</em> was lauded for addressing the subject of AIDS with major Hollywood talent and studio backing. It also was criticized as addressing the devastation of the epidemic after the fact and with a storyline that avoided more controversial aspects of AIDS.</p>
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<p>“<em>Philadelphia</em> to me was old when it came out.”</p>
<p><strong>Interview with Dominick Margarelli, Cure AIDS Now, Incorporated, 1995</strong></p>
<p><em>John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection, 1901-2008</em></p>
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection
Victory Deferred: how AIDS changed gay life in America
<p>John-Manuel Andriote interviewed nearly 200 individuals for his 1999 book, <em>Victory Deferred: how AIDS changed gay life in America</em>. In the book’s preface he stated, “I wrote <em>Victory Deferred</em> because, despite the abundance of books written about AIDS, no one until now has examined both the ‘big picture’ and its finer details in considering the many ways AIDS affected the nation’s hardest hit community, gay men.” </p>
<p>Andriote donated his interviews and research materials to the Archives Center in 2008. The <em>Victory Deferred</em> collection is a comprehensive resource of personal histories of the epidemic.</p>
<p><strong>Interview tape, copy of <em>Victory Deferred</em> and notes, 1995<br /></strong><em>John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection, 1995-1999</em></p>