Act Up

“I think that we're showing the proper compassion and concern, so I can't tell you where [the widespread feeling that our administration is not doing enough about AIDS is] coming from, but I am very much concerned about AIDS and I believe that we’ve got the best researchers in the world out there at NIH working the problem. We're funding them- I wish there was more money, but we're funding them far more than anytime in the past.... So I think the appeal is, 'Yes, we care,' and the other thing is, part of AIDS it’s one of the few diseases where behavior matters, and I once called on somebody, ‘Well, change your behavior- if the behavior you’re using [is] prone to cause AIDS, change the behavior.’ The next thing I know one of these Act Up groups is out saying, ‘Bush ought to change his behavior.’ You can’t talk about it rationally!” - George Bush, first presidential debate, 1992


I grew up in a Pentecostal church, which surrounded me with dedicated people holding strong convictions. I also grew up in America in the 80’s, when millions of lives were being lost to the AIDS epidemic. At that time, my church and my government had the same policy: AIDS wasn’t the problem, homosexuality was.

My church preached that AIDS had been allowed by God as a punishment upon immoral sinners. The only cure was for these sinners to turn from their wicked ways and accept Jesus as their eternally loving and forgiving savior. Church-goers prayed, not for the disease to be cured, but for homosexuals to stop being gay.

It seems absurd that I should even have to explain how this is totally psychotic.

I don’t know how many of these people ever got to know anyone with full-blown AIDS. I have, and let me tell you, the symptoms of the disease are absolutely appalling. You don’t sit at their bedside and think, “I hope they don’t die.” Instead, you mortifyingly find yourself thinking, “How aren’t they dead yet?” and realize death isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The experience is profound, sad and humbling. AIDS is a disease you want not wish upon your greatest enemy… unless you were totally heartless.

Heartless is a term we use the way we do because Aristotle thought the heart controlled our sensory-perceptions and movements (and that the brain regulated blood temperature), and consequently our heart both evaluated our environment and determined our actions. In fact, the single reason why Western medical practices didn’t evolve for centuries was because of a persistent, unquestioning faith in Aristotle’s works on anatomy and medicine, which, it turns out, were completely wrong. When a solution to a problem is presented by a highly regarded source, it never occurs to most to question or validate that solution, even when it is completely unfounded or doesn’t actually solve anything.

The constitutional government of the United States of America, being a direct result of the Age of Enlightenment, understood this, and was designed with a system of checks and balances in order to force it to question itself and not rely on any single authority, including religious authority. In fact, the First Amendment forbids any law to be made as a result of religious bias and grants all individuals the right to practice whatever religion they choose, as opposed to officially declaring one superior to another. There is a very simple reason why this is a good thing, and it was incidentally stated by my mother when I mentioned I was writing this: Religions do not offer the possibility that they can be wrong. This explains both why religious people don’t understand how everybody doesn’t agree with them and why non-religious people don’t understand how religious people are so persistent. (It is worth noting that the framers of the Constitution were understandably less concerned with authoritarianism than in another rebellion. Hence, it was also designed to avoid mob rule.)

There is nothing greater to be feared than an entity that does not concede the possibility it can be wrong, except for those willing to unreservedly accept its teaching. Blind obedience to authority is the quickest route to committing abominable acts, because when we are simply following orders, we do not feel as culpable for our own actions. This is not simply my opinion: it is a well-researched psychological fact demonstrated, for example, by the Milgram experiments.

Pickpockets don’t steal by distracting you from your valuables; they do it by drawing your attention to something seemingly more important than your valuables. We are incapable of perceiving things outside of our focus. The simplest method for bringing about human cruelty is to distract humans from empathy by presenting something seemingly more important.

There is a documentary by Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, the premise of which is to ask his daughter the same five questions on each of her birthdays. This seems innocent enough, except this was being done during a time when it was illegal to shoot home movies in the Soviet Union. Mikhalkov justifies his subversion because he is convinced of the importance of an honest, uncensored understanding of how government policies affect the views of (at least one of) its citizens. At one point, however, he begrudgingly scraps the project, realizing it could be putting his daughter in danger. His explanation of this decision is sublime: “No idea is worth life of child.”

I feel the most important thing for everyone to understand is that none of our beliefs, ideologies, notions, actions, activities, pursuits, assumptions, theories, etc. should ever be considered more important or valid than any single living human being. When a human life is in the balance, every opinion is always less important than that life, and that life takes priority over every opinion. You don’t have to approve of a lifestyle, relate to a culture or agree with a point of view in order to evince unconditional respect and solidarity for humankind.

I recently heard contempt defined as displaying moral superiority, and that is precisely the person I find most contemptible. (Interestingly, the judicial use of contempt refers to someone who blatantly disregards authority.) This is a paradox I find myself struggling to reconcile, because I would have to honestly admit that I feel I am morally superior to those who feel they are morally superior. Perhaps this demonstrates a truth that we should all be wary of: everyone is capable of not only justifying but actually committing atrocities. None of us are immune to conviction’s ability to blind. I don’t know whether evil exists, but I am convinced its antonym is informed empowerment.

Dogmatic, socially conservative and exploitative people, to name a few, tend to fear education. Unfamiliar culture, art, literature, language, music, sport and food are avoided and disdained by those who want to maintain the status quo. This sort of egocentricity should never be trusted, because it is always guided by ulterior motives. It is, in fact, NOT a small world, but a diverse and complicated one, and that scares the crap out of a lot of people.

Judging the American generation that came after the baby boomers as having no wars to fight is skewed. The reality is that the privilege to choose whether or not to join in the battles their generation faced was offered to a wider percentage of Americans, especially white, middle-class, non-socialist, heterosexual males. There will always be those whose greatest concern is to avoid confrontation. There is a word for those people: cowards. This does not apply to subversives who skillfully avoid getting caught. Tact is an admirable trait that appreciates the importance of understanding the appropriate time for action. Too often, however, days, weeks, years, decades and even centuries go by with nary a person riling against a wrong. Cowards are those who feel every problem can be circumvented by patting themselves and others on the back and saying, “good job!”

Heroes, on the other hand, are those in groups like Act Up, who, in defiance of authority, sought out and negotiated ways to expedite the search for AIDS treatments, ultimately saving millions of lives.