Lauren Munsalud H U.S History (Per. 5) Mrs. Heimbrock 16 April 2018 AIDS Epidemic: The New Scare AIDS Epidemic: The New Scare During the 1980s, people found themselves situated in health, education, and safety crises in both cities, rural, and suburban areas. The government also had to question human rights, in terms of abortion, drug abuse, and their education, where President Reagan followed through with conservative policies. When the disease, AIDS, first broke out between gay men, it took years and a number of deaths for people to notice. After it began to spread to not only homosexuals, that was when President Reagan decided to acknowledge the disease. This event should stay in the textbook because socially, the AIDS epidemic …show more content…
This gave a way for gay people to bring attention towards their rights and hopefully grow their community. While having to deal with discrimination, they also feared that the epidemic would complicate gay rights. Instead, it rose discussions between communities of people and soon they saw a progress towards this movement. As reported in The New York Times newspaper article, “Amid AIDS, Gay Movement Grows but Shifts” written by Thomas Morgan in October 10, 1987, Ms. Apuzzo, a gay rights leader stated that, “AIDS makes it impossible for heterosexual people to ignore us”. With AIDS insight, the gay rights movement evolved into something bigger and more people participated. With this new unity between gay men and lesbians, this eventually forced people to have conversations about this topic. While it’s expected that AIDS should have made it more difficult for this movement, instead the civil rights that gay people were fighting for was actually advanced in many states. According to MPR News, “How AIDS changed American culture” by Nikki Tundel, she stated that, “AIDS forced conversations about sexuality and homosexuality. And many believe it laid the groundwork for current debates over gay marriage and gay rights”. AIDS surprisingly caused an increase in people coming out. They saw that gay people did not want this disease to dictate their lives, which encouraged others to join in and not allow the mass amount of discrimination they were currently facing to not get to them. By showing their determination and courage especially during a time like this, it helped massively in attaining