ABSTRACT
Nothing has brought home to me the weaknesses of gay and lesbian theology more than the manner in which it handled the AIDS crisis. The group of supporters also generally took the view that the majority of those gay men who died with AIDS had some sort of belief in the afterlife. Death hung like a pall over the lesbian and gay communities in the 1980s and 1990s until the advent of Combination Therapy in the late 1990s dramatically reduced the death rate. John J. McNeill has no time for the feminist argument that the desire for immortality is a construction of the male ego. Chris Glaser's demythologisation and dis-enchantment of Christian doctrine is a classic liberal approach. But like most gay and lesbian theologians he is more concerned with the ethical issues raised by AIDS than the theological ones. Carter Heyward offers some reflections on death and AIDS.
