ABSTRACT
Rural areas, small towns, and small cities in the early 1980s were not always void of openly gay men or organized gay communities, as some appear to believe. Changes occurring during the protease moment have presented new challenges to many people with HIV and introduced other divisions that are not easily healed. Many believe combination therapies are so successful that all people with HIV are eagerly trying to get these medications. Many of the gay men who are responding well to the new treatments fit the profile depicted in much of the media coverage: they are leaving public assistance, returning to work, and rethinking life goals and career options. Hence many gay men inhabiting gay communities throughout the nation no longer experience AIDS as a crisis except in the narrowest sense, as a political call-to-arms in order to garner energy and resources for continuing efforts against the epidemic.
