Why I will remember Elizabeth Taylor fondly no matter how many silly movies Lifetime produces [View all]

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I turned 18 in 1985. I also started to really figure out I was gay and that that fact wasn't going to change. Being a gay male was tough back then. One of the reasons for that was AIDS. By January of 1985 we had 7,000 AIDS diagnosis and almost 6,000 deaths. We had no idea what spread AIDS but we did know it was attacking gay males and that both diagnosis and deaths were increasing exponentially. But what was worse than AIDS was the fear and loathing of AIDS by the government and the population. If you got AIDS back then you were a leper. Doctors wouldn't treat you. Your family would desert you. Funeral directors wouldn't bury you. Some mailmen wouldn't deliver your mail. If you swam in a public pool it was drained. We had US Senators openly calling for the tattooing of AIDS victims and putting them on an island. No one of any stature stood up for AIDS victims. It would still be over two years before Reagan would mention AIDS. Then Senate Minority Leader Harry Byrd of WV famously said that we shouldn't fund AIDS research since no one in WV was gay. No serious religious, political, entertainment, or any other leader came forward to try to educate the nation about AIDS.

Into that breach came an aging actress named Elizabeth Taylor. In January of 1985, Elizabeth Taylor was 52 year old, and let's face it. As male actors age we talk about how distinguished they have become but as women actors age we talk about how their beauty has faded. But far from fading, Elizabeth Taylor's beauty, her inner beauty, shone as brightly as a thousand suns, when in January of 1985 she agreed to become the public face of the campaign against AIDS. She also did the behind the scenes planning.

Elizabeth Taylor’s first order of business was the AIDS Project Los Angeles’ Commitment to Life dinner. She was approached by APLA to lend her support to the event in January 1985. Not only did Elizabeth agree, but she and her publicist, Chen Sam, also planned the dinner from a small office they rented. “I didn’t want to be honorary. I wanted to actually do the work, make the phone calls, because this was going to be a toughie.” Elizabeth again saw the bigotry surrounding the disease when she tried to recruit longtime friends and peers to lend their support for the dinner. “I have never had so many ‘no’s said to me,” remembered Elizabeth, “They didn’t want to come to the evening, didn’t want to be associated. Some very big names [said no].” Elizabeth also said that “People not only slammed doors in my face and hung up on me, but I received death threats. Something happened to the world, and I think it was massive fear.” However, Elizabeth ignored the senseless threats and pushed forward.

The fact is the rest of Taylor's public life was spent fighting AIDS. She made that fight something that was at first tolerable to be done and then something that was moral to be done. I am sure that someone else could have done this and she surely doesn't deserve all the credit. But she was the first public figure to stand up to the fear and the hatred that made AIDS that much more deadly. It took a courageous, beautiful person to stand up to the fear and hatred. She made fighting AIDS palatable to the great American public. She helped change the mindset that victims of AIDS deserved what they got into a mindset that AIDS victims deserved our compassion. It will take a Hell of a lot more than a Lifetime movie to wipe away that legacy.