Eldergays, why did Ryan White become the Poster Boy for AIDS?

He was young and white, so it was tragic. He got it from a blood transfusion, so he didn't "bring it on himself" through sinful behavior.

Time article on him

Charlie Sheen looked terrible omg

His situation also showed the nastiness of his small-town community. He was banned from school, so his mom sued the school district so that he'd be allowed to attend. As a result, the family received all kinds of threats.

R3 How eerie that Charlie ended up getting it years later.

R4 are you joking? That mentality toward AIDS was all over the world, even major cities. If people knew you had aids you were pretty much shunned

R6, it wasn't common to see an entire town turn against a child for a condition out of his control. Ryan's family ultimately relocated to a new town, where people were more educated and empathetic, and Ryan found acceptance there.

[quote]His situation also showed the nastiness of his small-town community.

Even the Golden Girls had a very special episode about it. Sofia goes around marking all of Rose's dishes because everyone thinks Rose has AIDS.

R8 and they were in a major city, Miami.

That was the attitude EVERYWHERE when it came to AIDS in the 80s and early 90s. Hardly something only found in a small town.

[quote] [R8] and they were in a major city, Miami.

Rose got AIDS from eating the gay cook's food.

To the straights he was proof that anybody can get it and it wasn’t just a gay man problem.

Heteros didnt want to think about gays having sex, or even admit AIDS existed. President Regan was famous for reusing to even use the word in public. A white, hetero kid from a "traditional" type family who got it through no fault of his own got the Fraus attention. Suddenly, OMG what a terrible disease. And while even he had haters, the people that came to his defense didn't have to defend gays.

Kind of like how Republicans hate helping people they don't know but if it affects them personally, suddenly it's a national crisis they must make everyone aware of.

^ Regan was famous for refusing^

Did Arthur Ashe get it before or after Ryan White?

Wasn't there a lot of talk that he knew his attackers and that it was a drug deal gone bad? Was there any truth to that?

[quote]Wasn't there a lot of talk that he knew his attackers and that it was a drug deal gone bad? Was there any truth to that?

You're thinking of Mathew Shepherd. And yes, there was more to the story, but gays were so anxious to have a martyr that they ignored the rest of the story.

It still pisses me off that it took that for people to give a shit about anyone dying of AIDS. But at least, his legacy lead to the Ryan White Care Act which funds most of the HIV clinics around the country. Without that, most people could not afford the medical care. Keep in mind, back then, every insurance company would drop you if you were known or tested positive, they had the legal right to do so. And once you got dropped, no one would give you insurance at any price. " due to your per-exiting condition, our company cannot off you coverage at this time".

[quote] ^ Regan was famous for refusing^

STILL not right.

R E A G A N.

I can’t believe it took him getting sick for people to take notice.

His mom was a cunt frau. After Ryan died she wrote a piece in some magazine about the whole ordeal. She described an incident where she and her husband went to a restaurant to have some quiet time together. At the next table was a gay male couple who, she claimed, were affectionate with each other.

Cunt frau got triggered by the sight of them because, you know, just seeing two gay men together, reminded her of AIDS and her dying son at home. She told the waiter to cancel their order and asked her husband to take her home. Fuck that breeder sow. I bet she would not have reacted like that had it been some straight couple sticking their tongues down each other's throats.

Wow! Link r20?

That's curious R20. I hadn't heard that, but I do remember reading comments the parents made saying they refused to entertain any homophobia or the idea that gay men weren't as innocent as Ryan was, because it was the gay community who had reached out to the family, providing them with advice and support. They'd always sounded incredibly grateful to the gay community and in return stood up for them in any way they could.

That's what I remember reading at least.

R21 and R22, I may have gotten the young boys mixed up. When I looked it up the hits that came up were for the book "Go Toward The Light", written by Christine Oyler, about her son Ben who was hemophiliac and contracted HIV through a transfusion.

I don't know why I remembered it as the Ryan White story.

Yeah the White family were very thankful to the gay community for their love and support during all this.

It was that other one who was a homophobic bitch and almost seemed to blame gays for her son having it, because in her mind the disease exists because of them.

Netflix has The Ryan White Story available to stream. I highly recommend checking it out. Judith Light and Lukas Haas.

Wacko Jacko was extremely attracted to Ryan White but knew he could never do anything with him. Katherine Jackson was quoted as saying that "Michael gonna mess around with that little boy and get diseased."

R25 stop

He was considered an “innocent victim.” Geigh peeps? Not so much. As someone upthread already stated, we were seen as having brought it on ourselves.

I'll never forget the remark Meredith Baxter-Birney made when she was promoting an AIDS charity for children years ago, she told a reporter that children were innocent victims of AIDS, translation: gay men deserve illness & death.

Now, that Meredith eats pussy, I wonder if she still hates gay people?

R28 Link?

[quote] Did Arthur Ashe get it before or after Ryan White?

If only there was something you could look this up on without having to go to the library. I hope one day they invent something like that.

Children who get it are usually innocent.

Because he wasn’t gay. I remember at young age thinking there was a desperation to distance themselves from gay men with Ryan White. I didn’t know there was a word for it (homophobia) that’s the feeling that came over me.

[quote] even having people like Elton John and Michael Jackson show up to his funeral.

Maybe Michael wanted to console Ryan's friends. I'm sure it was a meat market.

R3, Charlie looks pretty good to me in that picture.

I remember it becoming a big story because he was a child that was thrown out of school for having aids and the family was shunned by the community. Nothing to Do with race you race baiting piece of racist shit, r1.

Elton John clamped onto this issue—but where was he when the gay community was getting ravaged by the disease?

Nobody challenges R1 with his race baiting (except R35) or use of “sinful”. Lol. Oh well.

Ryan’s story is still among the saddest.

Back in the 80s and 90s, my family had a restaurant. Whenever someone who disclosed they had AIDS, my grandfather would throw away the plate and silverware afterwards. Horribly homophobic of them, yet HIV was so new, and so unknowing. Kind of like COVID, in terms of the idiopathic status and learning about a it as a disease.

[quote]Whenever someone who disclosed they had AIDS

So they come in and tell the host they have AIDS? And how are they having an appetite or walking around if they had full-blown AIDS? They’d be at death’s door by then.

[R29] Back then, I do not think they would go around saying HIV-positive. Just early onset of it. Maybe they just knew from word of mouth that he had it, not entirely sure.

[quote]Maybe they just knew from word of mouth that he had it, not entirely sure.

Or maybe just an assumed gay man eating there. Gay = AIDS, you know. Or maybe just good ole fashion DL fan fiction.

[quote]It still pisses me off that it took that for people to give a shit about anyone dying of AIDS.

Well that was the Republican party in the 80's. The party of Reagan, who has since been canonized by both Democrats and Republicans as some great, beloved, transformational political figure.

But you cannot deny that Ryan White and even Magic Johnson brought AIDS awareness to many people who wanted to put blinders on to the whole thing. You couldn't run from it anymore now that people realized that anyone could get it.

What r12 said. Ryan White was called one of the "innocent victims" of AIDS. No shit. That's how it was played.

His story is so sad. Every AIDS death is so sad, don’t get me wrong, but he was just a little kid.

The TV movie about him, starring Judith Light as his mother, scared me to death. I was having prepubescent sex with my next-door neighbor (just naked humping, basically), and I was convinced I was going to get AIDS from it. I still remember the scene where his mother is comforting him as he throws up into the toilet in the middle of the night.

He would be fifty years old now.

Although he put a face to the disease he is part of the reason gay men today still cannot donate blood. They still blame it on gay men.

This was the pubic service announcement played on television here in Australia in the 80s and 90s. I was only 6 when this came out and it terrified me. As you hear in the opening: "at first only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS". The translation always seemed to me like: "so it didn't matter so much then, but NOW..."

It was a very successful advert at the same time at getting through to people.

Re: dining. Older friends of mine have told me that they were turned away from restaurants regularly in the 80s. None of them were HIV+, it was just being a group of men who read as gay that was enough for them to be denied service.

Actually it was a clever way for the progressives to get AIDS on the agenda.

Ryan White was a white kid hemophiliac who got AIDS through a blood transfusion.

By making him the symbol of HIV, even the evil Sen Jesse Helms had to vote for AIDS funding.

....

He had great PR.

Kokomo Indiana.

[quote]It was that other one who was a homophobic bitch and almost seemed to blame gays for her son having it, because in her mind the disease exists because of them

Who?

Um, did you read the post directly a-fucking-bove the one you quoted?

[quote]His situation also showed the nastiness of his small-town community. He was banned from school, so his mom sued the school district so that he'd be allowed to attend. As a result, the family received all kinds of threats.

Sweetie, you need to read about the Ray brothers from Arcadia Florida. Their house got burned down.

That "innocent victims" shit was so infuriating.

Anybody who gets held up as an example or a symbol (for any cause) will get rocks thrown at them.

Ryan White was white, nonthreatening, an "innocent victim" and not gay.

I don't care. It brought awareness into American living rooms.

Something, anything had to be done. I, like many of us, lived through the terror.

Ryan White was very open minded and non judgmental of gays and spoke out in their defense occasionally in interviews. I know because I've seen many of his TV interviews on local TV since I lived in his state. He was very mature for his age and I feel the disease gave him a wisdom beyond his years. He was very down to earth and pragmatic..he always knew how this would end but he showed no fear. I met and had a talk with his mother Jeanne at Ryan's funeral and she also was very open minded and accepting of all AIDS patients. Elton was there, right behind her and Judith Light and Lukas Haas were in the pews of the church to attend the funeral. Michael Jackson showed up at the very last minute and looked very uncomfortable. I basically got kicked out of the church by the Secret Service because I wandered in through a door reserved exclusively for Barbara Bush, who did arrive late. I recommend going on YouTube and listening to Elton John singing Skyline Pigeon at the funeral. Very moving.

[quote]Michael Jackson showed up at the very last minute and looked very uncomfortable.

He misread the invitation and thought it said circus. Imagine his chagrin when he arrived with an entourage of pre-teen boys and a Cost-co JUMBO bag of popcorn.

I had never heard of the kid until this thread appeared. Sad story.

oh the self loathing in this crowd... are y'all gonna take down Rosa Parks next for not being the first but the more marketable spokesperson?

or how the gay community wasn't all that great about it either... I know many will refuse to talk about how nuns broke away from the church to serve the gay community when it was still called grid. But then y'all were still probably hung up on Anita.

He was an ugly thing