ABSTRACT
Nineteen-ninety-three has been an exceptionally grim year in relation to HIV/AIDS.1 The prospect of effective, available anti-HIV drugs seems more elusive than ever, whilst the scale of suffering and death continues to worsen, as many of those infected in the late seventies and early eighties become symptomatically ill. It is a moment of intensely painful contradictions, as for example the Lesbian and Gay Studies movement rapidly gains academic respectability, while all the resources of cities as large and sophisticated as New York and Paris cannot sustain a reliable weekly or even monthly lesbian and gay press. Much of the energy which accompanied the emergence of activist organizations such as Queer Nation in the US and OutRage in the UK have run out of steam, while the AIDS activist movement continues to flounder.2 The inability of the organizers of the 1993 Washington March to articulate the epidemic politically in relation to other lesbian and gay issues is symptomatic of a deeper failure to understand AIDS as a national tragedy which strikes to the very heart of gay culture. This is in itself evidence of the long-term fall-out of the epidemic, as many of the ablest have already died. It also reflects the vast scale of personal devastation, death, and loss throughout our communities, across every division of class, race, age, and region.
