corral the spread of AIDS, once its sexually transmit-
ted nature had been identified. The facilities tried to
remain open by agreeing to post notices about the
importance of condoms and the dangers of unpro-
tected anal sex, but by 1985, most had been closed
for public health reasons, even as promiscuity among
gay men declined and the disease’s spread in that
group leveled out.
The gay and lesbian revolution of the 1970’s had
sparked changes in favor of gay rights. However, a
large percentage of the U.S. population still ob-
jected to what was widely perceived as immoral be-
havior. Conservative politicians used AIDS against
the GLBT community with growing success through-
out the decade. Many, like California legislator Wil-
liam Dannemeyer, masked homophobia under the
guise of concern for the public health. The AIDS cri-
sis exacerbated this perspective and encouraged po-
tential neutrals to join the backlash. Violence was
not uncommon, with hate crimes against gays tri-
pling in the United States between 1982 and 1985.
The “patient zero” myth, which theorized that all
AIDS cases in North America could be traced back to
one gay Canadian airline attendant, Gaetan Dugas,
did not help the GLBT cause, particularly as the
myth was long accepted as medical truth, even by
such strong GLBT advocates as journalist and au-
thor Randy Shilts.
The Religious Right and Politics Particularly vocal
in the antigay backlash was the right-wing funda-
mentalist Protestant movement known as the Reli-
gious Right. Led by such televangelists as Jimmy
Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the Reli-
gious Right argued that homosexuality was a perver-
sion and that AIDS was God’s punishment for sexual
deviancy. Furthermore, by equating homosexuality
with pedophilia, the Religious Right attempted to
make it difficult or impossible for gays and lesbians
to achieve workplace equality. Other efforts to
demonize gays and lesbians extended as far as oppo-
sition to hate-crime laws that would protect gays and
lesbians.
Some conservative religious organizations op-
posed to homosexuality opted to believe that homo-
sexual behavior could be changed with the correct
environment. Using reparative and aversion ther-
apy, both available since the 1960’s but not popular-
ized until the 1980’s, these groups set up centers
where gays could come to be “cured” of their condi-
tion. The centers gained wide support among con-
servative Christians; however, they generally served
as meeting places for gays, and most graduates re-
turned to their homosexual behavior. The Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association declared this form of
therapy unsuccessful and dangerous.
In 1979, the Reverend John Kuiper became the
first gay man to adopt a child. Only one state allowed
such adoptions, however, and those adoptions le-
gally applied only to one individual: Same-sex part-
ners could not both adopt the same child. Gains in
this area were limited in the 1980’s, and the idea of
both partners adopting a child was still considered
unlikely throughout the decade. Thus, in the 1980’s,
when one member of a same-sex couple was able to
adopt a child, that couple faced a dilemma: The
non-adopting partner was left in a terrible situation
in the face of tragedy or the end of the relationship,
in many cases losing custody rights entirely.
However, not all Americans were opposed to gay
and lesbian rights, and social, religious, and political
gains came throughout the decade as well. For ex-
ample, in 1980, Sergeant Leonard Matlovich final-
ized a win over the U.S. Army. After being dis-
charged for homosexuality in the 1970’s, he had
been fighting anti-gay attitudes for his reinstate-
ment. In September of 1980, a federal judge or-
dered Matlovich reinstated and given back pay. The
army instead worked out a costly settlement, which
Matlovich accepted, fearing that further pursuit of
the case would result in a loss at the Supreme Court
level. After winning a similar court case ahead of
Matlovich and pursuing the army to allow her to re-
turn in a lengthy series of lawsuits, Sergeant Miriam
Ben-Shalom was finally allowed to resume her post
and finish her tour of duty in 1988. (Unfortunately,
the army did not allow her to reenlist the following
year.)
Other gains in the decade included the federal
government’s 1980 decision to drop its ban on hir-
ing gay employees and Wisconsin’s 1982 decision to
outlaw all discrimination based on sexual orienta-
tion. The first Gay Games, modeled after the Olym-
pics, were held in San Francisco in 1982. In 1984, the
city of West Hollywood incorporated, breaking away
from Hollywood, and the majority of its city council,
an elected body, was gay or lesbian. In 1987, Massa-
chusetts congressman Barney Frank publicly ac-
knowledged his homosexuality.484 Homosexuality and gay rights The Eighties in America