I'm not gay, but I am a hemophiliac, and was a teenager getting blood transfusions during the 1980s. Here are some of my first-hand memories of that time:

1) My seventh grade teacher flunked me because she thought she'd get AIDS from my homework. She told the principal she was hoping I would switch teachers. My mom still has a spelling test where I spelled every word correctly and it was marked with an F.

2) Hemophiliacs had to get tested for AIDS all the time back then, because the blood supply was compromised for so long. I saw protesters outside the AIDS testing clinic. My memory is fuzzy on exactly what they were protesting, but I remember them being pretty angry at people walking out of there.

3) I was 16 years old and I overheard some guys talking about how they waited outside a famous gay bar, the brass rail, with baseball bats and two by fours. They would randomly pick a gay couple, follow them home, and beat the shit out of them. I don't know if it actually happened, but they would brag about it.

4) I was 18 years old when I made a dozen gay friends. Three of them died of AIDS that year. This was just before Magic Johnson came out as HIV positive.

5) At 18, I was close to my best friend. We had different religions at the time, but we visited each other's very different churches. When he finally came out to me, he said he despised himself and knew he was going to hell because one of the few things that both of our religions agreed upon was that homosexuality was a sin close to murder. He said he wished he wasn't evil and he wished God loved him.

All in all, bigotry and AIDS made being gay very, very difficult.