Pride Month has arrived in a country that continues to be shaped by pandemics. The Utah Pride Festival, which has been postponed until late September, will celebrate the fifth anniversary of an achievement —marriage equality — that was unthinkable before the HIV/AIDS pandemic laid bare the injustices faced by the LGBT community.
In the 1980s, as gay men died first by the hundreds and then by the thousands from AIDS, Ronald Reagan’s White House literally treated the subject as a joke. More than four years and nearly 25,000 souls passed before the President made his first public mention of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Cast out and condemned as sinners, far too many AIDS patients found themselves dying alone, denied the presence of partners whose love was not legally recognized, and excommunicated or shunned by churches upon the hour of their deaths. Sanctimonious politicians exploited fears of the disease to stigmatize the gay community; in Utah, one state senator even suggested quarantining AIDS patients on Antelope Island.
LGBT Americans suffered disproportionately from the HIV/AIDS pandemic and found themselves targeted by discriminatory laws that demeaned them as lesser human beings and denigrated their lives and family relationships. Both the federal government and states like Utah constructed legal regimes to discriminate against gay Americans from cradle to grave.
The LGBT community responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in classic American fashion. It sounded the alarm, organized protests, and built a civil rights movement that was first ridiculed, then scorned, and finally attacked before becoming ultimately victorious. This triumph was quintessentially American.
Just as the HIV/AIDS epidemic drew attention to the discrimination suffered by gay Americans, the present pandemic has exposed deeply-rooted social, economic and racial injustices in our society. Once again the victims of a global pandemic come disproportionately from minority groups suffering from discrimination and many are dying alone.
The world is watching the American epidemic with horror and consternation. More than 100,000 Americans have died prematurely and unnecessarily from what was a preventable pandemic; our national economy is in shambles, with tens of millions newly unemployed; and the incumbent president, abetted by his enablers, continues to shred constitutional principles. The First Amendment’s right of peaceful assembly was only the latest casualty.
American citizens engaged in civil protests outside the White House were rousted with tear gas or some chemical irritant, violating their Constitutional rights and endangered their respiratory health in the midst of a growing pandemic.
These problems stem, fundamentally, from structural injustices in our country. That is why the Infectious Diseases Society of America has issued a statement connecting the pandemic with the need for restorative justice: “Whether overt, or concealed within the structures of our nation’s laws and policies, racism fuels inequities that are detrimental to public health, including the profound disparities of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Many remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s maxim that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” But too few recall King’s explanation that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
Seldom is this more true than when a highly infectious virus is spreading through the population. Unlike citizens in almost every other developed nation, Americans do not have a right to health care. “Essential” workers in our state and country do not receive a living wage and millions of Americans have recently lost their health insurance.
Pandemics do not distinguish between red states and blue states, but President Trump has used the crisis to further polarize the country. He has ignored science and politicized sound public health measures, such as wearing masks to prevent viral transmission, in a cynical effort to deepen divisions within our citizenry.
Every Utahn and every American has been touched and harmed by the ongoing pandemic. It has revealed racial, social, and economic injustices that defy the true promise of America.
A generation after the LGBT community responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic by rallying and recruiting allies to change America for the better, the future of our republic now demands that we collectively address the inequities plaguing our country. Only by truly establishing justice for all can we promote the general welfare for ourselves and posterity.
A central credo of Pride should serve as an aspiration for America in responding to the present pandemic. We should recognize the equal dignity of every person while celebrating both our individuality and our common humanity.
John P. Burke, M.D.
John P. Burke, M.D., an epidemiologist, is a professor of medicine at the University of Utah and served as the chief of infectious diseases at LDS Hospital for more than 40 years.
Paul C. Burke
His son Paul C. Burke was the Utah State Bar’s 2019 Lawyer of the Year.
