ABSTRACT
This speech was given at the Gay Men's Health Crisis AIDS Conference, held at Hunter College in New York City on June 15, 1985. Its text also served as the basis for a second address made by Summers at the Candlelight Vigil on Christopher Street on June 29, 1985, on the eve of New York's 1985 Gay Pride Day celebration. Summers died in 1986. Phil Lanzaratta, who was New York City's first publicly identified PWA (person with AIDS), gave a number of interviews for the media and wrote an account of living with the disease for Christopher Street magazine.
