Street fighter extraordinare, Bobbi Campbell. Photo by Roger Ressmeyer
January 28th marked what would have been Bobbi Campbell’s birthday. In the fall of 1981, Bobbi became the 16th person in San Francisco diagnosed what would eventually be known as AIDS. I say eventually, because at the time of his diagnosis the term AIDS did not even exist. The first medical report in the United States about what would eventually become known as AIDS occurred in a report by MMWR on July 4th, 1981, “Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pnemocystis Pneumonia Among Homosexual Men-New York City and California.”
After being diagnosed with Kaposi’s Sarcoma, Bobbi, a public health nurse, started a campaign to inform others about the disease. He wrote an column in the Sentinel about his experiences, gave presentation and speeches, and became the self-declared “poster boy” for the new disease.
He was also the first person in the United States to come out as a person with AIDS.
Here, some context is needed. For those of us who are too young to remember, it is perhaps hard to come to grips with the full extent of the fear, prejudice and misinformation that surrounded the disease in the early years. As this study shows, even well into the 1990s, phobia against those with AIDS, along with false beliefs on how AIDS is transmitted were prevalent.
In the 1980s, prominent televangelist were spewing the belief that AIDS was “God’s punishment” against homosexuality, some people with AIDS faced ostracism from family and friends, discrimination in housing and employment. To compound the issue, it wasn’t until 1985 that the President of the United States first even mentioned the word AIDS, after thousands of Americans already died. Today, at least for most people in the Western world, it is possible to manage the disease and to live a full life. When Bobbi started to write his columns, a diagnosis of AIDS was essentially a death sentence.
So it is that climate that Bobbi first began to advocate on behalf of himself and all people with AIDS. As a drag queen, under the name “Sister Florence Nightmare” and member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence he helped create one the first safer sex pamphlet. In August of 1983, Bobbi and his boyfriend appeared on the cover of Newsweek (although the magazine identified his lover as his ‘friend.’) In 1982 he helped formed the People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement. Perhaps his best known contribution was being one of the architects of the watershed ”Denver Principles.
On July 15th 1984, Bobbi gave a speech at the National March for Lesbian and Gay rights at the Democratic National Convention: . One month later, he succumbed to his illness.
Comments
The same people who came up with the putrescent nonsense about AIDS being a retribution are still festering on whenever something dire happens – earthquakes in Haiti, tsunamis in Japan. The only thing that will make them happy is Rapture and the end of the world altogether. The worst punishment that a vengeful God can inflict is lack of insight.
Absolutely. I remember reading a quote from the late Sylvester that people were too eager to blame God for everything. In addition, the irony of “religious” extremists making the absurd claim that AIDS was God’s punishment on gay people, seemed to neglect the pesky little statistic that lesbians were/are less likely to get AIDS of all various gender/sexual orientation groupings. Nothing like facts to counter stupidity and prejudice
Rational people don’t view it as retribution, but it is a function of the lifestyle, not of gays in general, but of gay males. It’s a function of biology and lifestyle. Every new STD will rage through the gay male community like a wildfire. In fact, all of them have, HIV being merely one. It isn’t ignorant to recognize this. Ignorant people intuitively understand that the lifestyle of gay males brings great harm to their bodies, but in the absence of a scientific pronouncement of this obvious fact, they invoke god. Godless people, such as me, realize the obvious detriment of the gay male lifestyle and comment on it, not as religious people, but as rational human beings.