Because the AIDs crisis wiped out gay communities, you absolute imbecile.

Yes, AIDs was thought of as a gay disease - yes, that is the driving reason behind a blatant lack of action from authorities like the Reagan administration, yes, it is the reason why so many people were stigmatised, the reason why Princess Diana's actions of visiting people with AIDs and holding their hands and talking to them was so important, because it humanised a contingent of people who were constantly, near-constantly shat on in society. Yes, everyone can catch AIDs. Yes, it's not just a gay disease.

But for god's sake, if you cannot separate out the wide misconceptions and prejudices about AIDs from the humanitarian impact on LGBT communities at the time, honestly, there is no fucking hope.

I don't know why you find it so difficult to separate the two, but I have to assume it's blatant ignorance, so let's lay out some god damn facts, shall we?

In 1981, there are 270 reported cases of gay men with AIDs in the US. 121 of these go on to die.

By 1984, testing for HIV has begun in the UK, and the American actor Rock Hudson dies of AIDs, leaving behind $250,000 in his will ($583,426 in 2018) to set up the American Foundation for AIDs Research. He's the first celebrity to acknowledge having AIDs, and by this point, people have sat up and noticed that the crisis is occurring.

In 1987, activist Larry Kramer founds ACT UP in New York. T

By 1994, the lead cause of death for all people between the ages of 25-44 in America is AIDs.