Assimilation Lgbt Community

“My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you”, Audre Lorde wrote in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”(Lorde and Clarke 2007). The LGBT community has had to fight for social and political progress within many diverse spheres. Early movements often struggled to select the appropriate approaches towards achieving progress. Many issues the community has been confronted with were divisive in nature, with some preferring assimilation, while others preferred a more radical approach. In regards to some obstacles towards equality, working within the system quietly, while appearing to assimilate may prove beneficial in soothing the concerns of powerful opposing stakeholders. However, in the history of the contemporary LGBT movement, there have been instances in which quiet assimilation would not suffice. An unjustly marginalized population may only withstand oppression for so long before they will decide to catalyze progress through any means necessary. A historical personification of this community wide breaking point may be when Storme Delarverie encouraged her peers to fight back against the unjust treatment they were facing at the Stonewall Riots, and the community resoundingly responded. The HIV/AIDS crisis provoked a similar response amongst the LGBT community. Rather, the government and medical community’s negligence catalyzed a resurgence of justifiably radicalized activism. The 1960s and 70s were relatively progressive times for the LGBT community, particularly in contrast with the social stagnancy of the 1950s. The subsequent sexual liberation and increased visibility of the LGBT community made exponential progress seem inevitable. However, achieving political progress, particularly progress of a liberal nature, is an arduous and time extensive process. While it may take decades to positively alter a negative stigma, social progress can regress swiftly, particularly when strong emotions become involved, such as fear. In July 1981, an article in the New York Times stated that a new and rare cancer related to the immune system was afflicting gay men, 41 of whom had already died. Politically, the United States had been moving towards the New Right and the nation was about to enter a new era of conservatism and “moral” politics. This new disease was initially referred to as Gay Related Immunodeficiency (GRID), creating a negative association between the disease and the gay community. Originally, the disease seemed to only affect marginalized populations which the New Right already disdained, such as gay men or IV drug users. The new moral majority portrayed the affliction as a punishment for the behavior of the 60s and 70s, which they found morally deplorable. The HIV/AIDS crisis, and the subsequent stigmatization of those populations it affected, effectively reversed much of the social and political progress the LGBT community had worked to …show more content…
While the previous progressive decades had allowed for increased visibility of the LGBT community, there was still an overwhelming lack of knowledge or understanding of the gay population. Furthermore, little was known about the transmission of the disease, and fear fueled the misconceptions that subsequently ensued. People feared transmission through casual contact, even airborne transmission. Meanwhile, those initially afflicted with the diseases were faced with two unimaginably tragic new realities; they had become afflicted with a life-ending disease, and they were about to be feared by the majority of the