HIV/AIDS history through the pages of Out Front

Public health officials were growing increasingly frustrated with a lack of concern and attention from the federal government, which was accused of putting the situation – referred to once as “gay compromise disease” because it was by then understood to compromise immunity – on the back burner because it was affecting mostly gay men.

The second June issue of Out Front Colorado was the first to finally give the condition it’s name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, introduced in contributor Phill Nash’s interview with an anonymous gay AIDS patient in San Francisco. In that city, Nash wrote, the disease was widespread – “In San Francisco and New York, it is hard to find someone who has not been touched by the grave illness or death of a friend or acquaintance due to the recently-discovered syndrome.” The story’s subject – dubbed “David” while concealing his real name, had suffered health problems for much of his adult life but doctors had finally informed him he was dying.

In August, Out Front reported that a local Health Department employee was selected to serve on a national AIDS task force, and that a local group was sponsoring a forum at the Unitarian church in Capitol Hill to present what was known about AIDS. Known cases were still limited to larger U.S. metropolitan areas. In September, Denver gay bar BJ’s Carousel hosted a benefit for AIDS, which was announced in a full-page ad calling it “Anti-Immunity to Disease Syndrom.”

Mentions of a Pneumocystis Pneumonia, Karposi’s Sarcoma, “gay syndrome” or “immune diseases,” appeared in nearly every Out Frontissue from then on – ranging from updates on who was more likely at risk (one October 1, 1982 column explained sufferers are “more likely… to have had a greater number of sexual partners in the year before the onset of symptoms, to have a history of syphillus, and to have engaged in fisting and rimming”), to doubts that that the crisis was real – a letter in the same issue reported speculation that the Karposi’s Sarcoma reports were faked to inspire homophobia.

In November 1982, the story came home: Out Front reported that four AIDS cases had been discovered in Colorado, with two cases of Karposi’s Sarcoma. (6) The column advised of the symptoms, including fatigue, weight loss, fevers, enlarged lymph nodes and dark lesions. Another piece in the same issue was the first to suggest condom use, noting that “a significant difference between men with the diseases and men without them is that the former are far more likely to be the receptive partner in anal intercourse.”

In December, Out Front Colorado’s“Year in Review” recap reported that “By far, the biggest concern of gay men in the last year has been health issues,” but it was still unknown what caused AIDS. Was it the product of several lesser sexually-transmitted infections in a ferocious combination? Was it caused by antibiotics? Lifestyle issues like drinking and poor diets?  Nitrate inhalants (poppers)? Or was it, as the more savvy picked up, caused by a single pathogen – that perhaps needed to re-infect the same person several times or await a time of weakened immunity or stress to get the upper hand and become AIDS?