The onset of the epidemic only increased the burden of difference, not only for gay men but for lesbian women as well, because it empowered all the old lies that had been told about all of us from time immemorial. The modest political and social gains we had made in the late 1970s seemed on the verge of extinction. It was a desolate season, but as it turned out, it was only a season. Hopelessness gave way to anger and out of that anger a community organized itself to, in the words of the most famous of its factions, act up and fight back. That fight changed America in ways that are not yet fully appreciated because they continue to unfold. In this new dark age in which we find ourselves, let that resistance provide a template for how evil may yet be overcome.

Michael Nava

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