Why weren't baths and gay clubs such as the Mineshaft not immediately closed after Aids started?

*It took them like 1986 to close them.

🎵 We wanted to fuck, fuck, fuck 'til the mayor took the penis awa-a-a-y.

You mean you just lived through Covid and you're asking stupid fucking questions like this?

Because you could have safe sex even in at the baths and it's not like COVID where transmission is possible without any physical contact.

People didn't believe it was sexually transmitted. Some people thought it was caused by poppers. Others thought it was the drugs used to fight the opportunistic infections that destroyed the immune system.

And some people thought closing the baths and such was a way to control gay men's sexuality.

Beause Republican officials thought the more of us that got infected and died, the better for the country it would be.

I'm actually kind of scared to start having sex being a bottom and all. Yesterday I watched a documentary about Aids in Germany and there was one guy, who contracted Aids after a condom broke.

This is so scary. That could happen to me as well. Should I not start having sex when I am abroad??

R6 But why didn't the gays figure it out themselves? They could have all started using condoms?

Faux naif, spergy weirdo alert.

R7 Ever hear of Prep?

Greed. The bathhouses were very profitable. As soon as the sexual transmission was known to be a real thing, many like myself stopped going. Others simply refused to let go of what had become their identity. There was a popular belief that closing the bathhouses was the beginning of the end of liberation. The bars would be next. I never understood that attitude. If a gay restaurant was serving tainted food, being closed down by the health department would not be a violation of my civil rights. People were dying and I knew a man with AIDS who deliberately had unprotected sex at the baths. He was bitter and didn't care who he took with him to the grave. I was disgusted with him and still have not forgiven him. He died quickly.

R8, they did figure it out. Safer sex guidelines were created by the gay community, not any other agency.

R11 That guy is so awful. All of the poor men he must have infected. And I am sure he was not the only reckless person. It's good that you are still here with us, eldergay daddy.

I cannot imagine going to a gay bath now. I just image waddling through pools of cum in all its various conditions.

R10 Yes, should I go on it?

Wrong, R6, it was Republican officials & their ilk who led the campaign to shut these places down. It was gay activists who resisted.

Is GermanGayGuy (R)Umpy? He's annoying in similar ways.

FR13 If you're concerned about contracting AIDs, yes.

R16 I will look into it.

Is he stupid? Or a troll? Either way, tiresome.

You need to understand it was considered a gay cancer and they were not sure how it was transmitted. Straight people could have unprotected sex and not get it.

I forgot to write this story in my book, but after inventing Post-Its I took Jack-leen Onassis to The Mine Shaft and she decided right then and there, as I was shaking my touchie on top of the bar for free drinks, that she would abandon her efforts to save Grand Central Terminal and work to preserve the layers of nacreaous permacum at the club instead. Watch for my updated book!

Lots of cities never closed their sex venues - like Amsterdam. People took care of themselves and the government provided education in the baths. I never liked the idea of forcing it all to shutdown - even if I understood it as an emergency response. It got caught up in the whole 80s zeitgeist of crushing and banning anything pro-sex.

Terrible, R11. There were such about then. I knew a cute-enough short Polish guy, big dick, in Riverhead NY who had the virus. Still kept going to rest stops near the courthouse. Died, taking two he was sleeping with with him.

R10 There was no such thing as Prep in the 80s or 90s.

Why was the Mineshaft more debauched than other clubs?

Gays are selfish. They demanded action and attention and wanted a lot of money and research into a cure, but they didn't want to change behavior.

Soon after the effective drug cocktails were proven, porn started glorifying taking loads. Being bred. Taking as many loads as possible Being seeded. That wasn't even really the BIG thing in promiscuous days of the 70s and early 80s. Gay bottom pigs with no standards just liked getting high and getting fucked a lot. SIZE and and anonymity were king. In dark rooms, by strangers. All night. On their stomachs. Several nights a week. Hundreds of times a year. Or month. Getting fucked by strangers. Gross. But not deadly, until it was.

It's pretty well known that the receptive partner is far more at risk of contracting the AIDS. Don't argue.

So the sexually arrested gay men, of which there were many more than in normal populations, started sucking hundreds of dicks in glory holes instead and later, just accepting PReP as a fact of life and went back to taking as much dick and as many loads as possible.

Gay men in big cities are like Redneck Americans with their guns. You ain't about to take away multiple dicks from them or places to get them - so you better learn to protect yourself.

Isn't Fraulein OP supposed to be in Spain?

Oh, is this the one where Attmay pretends to be German?

“Soon after the effective drug cocktails were proven, porn started glorifying taking loads. Being bred. Taking as many loads as possible Being seeded.” R25

See I have always thought the Bareback phenomenon really started being huge in America and then followed into the rest of the world, because America was so absolute in it’s need to say everything basically caused AIDS in sex ,bar frottage.

I remember reading all the possibilities of what was seen as possible risks to AIDS in sex and it basically seemed like everything was in America. That added to the Puritanism of many Americans meant it was a place ready for extremes.

Coming from another English speaking country, we were scared ,but doctors were always assuring us that there were many things we couldn’t do that were absolutely ok and fine. My doctor, was a leading HIV doctor in the country and my boyfriend was a major Doctor of Mental specialising in HIV. Both spent many years helping men and who became infected come to terms with their HIV. Neither of them had any problems in me sucking guys and if they came in my mouth, would say it was a risk, but minimal. You could get it from that and people did, but it was still rare and therefore less a risk.

Because if this reasonableness, I think less people were uptight. When Bareback became a thing, it actually took awhile for people to talk about it. In America it felt all that pent up , sex equals death scenario just blew apart the safe sex message quite quickly.

When we say men are selfish and as Gay men we were incredibly selfish, I would say that is true. But let’s be honest here. If HIV affected Straight Men as much, there would have been a vaccine by 1983!!!

Frontline still made the best documentary on AIDS, ever. And they did so quite early in the pandemic. I was barely born then, but I have reason to know. My mother is a doctor and her friends are and were HIV primary care physicians. Your post is a bit suspect R28. Most every word of it.

The message that this was an American disease didn't last much longer than the message in March of 2020 that COVID was a Chinese disease! That AIDS *is* a gay disease, still persists. Unfortunately, with good reason. The United States seldom pays attention to anything not happening to them.

Americans are not curious and seldom smart. And the US media plays to people's fears and prejudice. Same today as always. Terrifying. AIDS was terrifying. So much suffering and loss.

Do not mistake my hard head for an uncaring heart. Watch this. It's a fantastic document. AIDS affected the WORLD. America just had the most GAY men.

Thanks for the link, R29, bookmarking to watch this rainy weekend.