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Remember When Buckley Wanted to Tattoo PWAs? |
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by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
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(l-r) the late Joachim Ragoczy, Bruce-Michael Gelbert, and Ken K. AKA Rollerena, demonstrating against William F. Buckley, Jr.
photo by Lee Snider |
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On February 27, National Review editor, author, columnist and Conservative Party candidate for Mayor of New York City in 1965 William F. Buckley, Jr. died at the age of 82 and people have been writing remembrances ever since. So here is mine, recalling an episode I did not want to see fall through the cracks.
On March 18, 1986, just two days before the New York City Council finally passed our city's gay and lesbian rights law, after 15 years of hearings, debates and unsuccessful votes, a New York Times Op-Ed article, written by Buckley, appeared, making a most modest proposal that, to some of us, called to mind nothing less than Nazi concentration camp practices.
"Everyone detected with AIDS," Buckley wrote, helpfully, "should be tattooed in the upper forearm to protect common needle users and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."
At the time, I was a charter member of the steering committee of the recently formed Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and, in response to Buckley's article, we called for a demonstration, consisting of a picket line and street theater, outside the offices of the National Review, then on 35th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues, late in the afternoon of April 30, 1986. We marched carrying wood-and-chicken wire 'prison bars' and 'branding irons,' made of wire hangers, with a brand of "AIDS," in black, on a pink triangle background; wearing pink triangles with 'concentration camp numbers' and signs designating ourselves as possible People with AIDS, lovers, friends or roommates of PWAS, or people who tested positive for what was then called HTLV-III; and chanting slogans such as, "Buckley and the CDC/Want to quarantine you and me/Hey, Mr. Buckley, here's the news/We don't want your damn tattoos."
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We also distributed to passersby a letter, addressed to Buckley, saying, in part, "The members and supporters of ... GLAAD find your position less suggestive of [Jonathan] Swift's [satiric] modest proposal than of Hitler's heinous final solution. We fear your intent was not to impel the public's constructive action but to inspire insidious backlash. Though you claim you seek 'to prevent the victimization of ... homosexuals,' we feel you instead encourage divisiveness, and defame responsible gay men and lesbians ... "
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