CRAIG´S THOUGHTS

Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum

HEARD IT ALL BEFORE or DON´´´T REPLY WITH IGNORANCE

“To the folk who were around to remember, there is an eerie sense of déjà vu as our communities are swamped by not only the virus but the impending threat thereof”

You might say we have been here before. It’s true to note that as a comparable virus Covid-19 and HIV share limited common ground, but it is interesting to observe the response to our shared current crisis by the LGBTQ+ communities and beyond. Particularly those of an age. To the folk who were around to remember, there is an eerie sense of déjà vu as our communities are swamped by not only the virus but the impending threat thereof. The possibility of contagion hangs over us once more, only this time, gay-bies, we have company.

At the time of writing we are still permitted to leave the house once a day for our rationed exercise and while outside I am alternating between a run or a walk around the local park. Although it is saddening for others to grant me such a wide berth as I approach, there is a strange familiarity in a total stranger deciding to cross the street as they spot me heading their way and although more than 30 years on I am suddenly 17 again. In the late 1980s gays and those assumed to be might as well have been accompanied by an army of bell ringers crying “unclean”, but in 2020 the balance of fear has shifted. I have as much to fear from my fellow humankind as they of me and I am avoiding their approach in equal measure if they don’t get there first. We are as potentially unclean as one another. We are all bonded by an unwanted pandemiphobia but as the gatekeepers of experience and having been on the receiving end of this type of reaction for a lifetime, we are the best placed in this situation to take a deep breath and be the champions of kindness.

There is some cruel irony buried in the ease of transmission of Covid-19 which is apparently as simple to catch as it was assumed Aids was in those first 10 years. When HIV/ Aids first emerged there were years of ignoring a looming assault upon our communities. I sit here in April 2020 staring at a letter on my desk from Boris Johnson accompanied by a Government coronavirus leaflet drop when less than six months ago we were blindly ignorant of what was to come. The first death in the UK from Aids was in December 1981, it would be more than six years before a government information leaflet would drop on to the door mats of every household in Britain, and when it did a community was blamed. We were responsible for inflicting this potential horror upon the wider world. Gay men and those assumed to be were dismissed from their jobs without warning irrespective of their health status, and those who looked sick evicted by unscrupulous landlords. Birth families abandoned their sons in shame and then upon death swooped in to collect as life partners had no legal inheritance rights and found themselves homeless.

There was no government financial package for the employed, the self-employed or to prop up a business if the owner was too sick to run it. There were no government calls for additional PPE or any recognition whatsoever that anyone affected needed help and resources. We were on our own. The Conservative government of the day with its broadening ‘On Yer Bike’ approach would introduce legislation that accused local authorities of promoting homosexuality if they openly supported LGBTQ+ communities. At the height of an approaching pandemic under the fear of hastily introduced legislation, LGBTQ+ support groups were abandoned by local authorities when needed the most. Lifelines were severed.

Even some healthcare workers refused to tend early Aids patients driven by the fear of what was incorrectly perceived to be a high-risk duty. It was members of the LGBTQ+ community working as doctors, nurses and ancillary support who volunteered to help these patients, and no-one stood on their steps or balconies of a Thursday to clap for those people.

The emergence of the HIV virus and its then inevitable development into Aids-related illnesses was a gift to the conservative (with a small ‘c’). Those with a firm traditional or religious conviction held nothing back in linking the world’s ills to the sexual behaviour of the deviant and the virus among us as everything from a sign from God to a reason to return to our multiplication-times-tables.

Today the situation is completely different in that we are all in this together. And while there are reports that Covid-19 may disproportionately affect some communities more than others, these reports are upturned by pattern-breaking examples just as any early indication that this was a problem for old people has been swiftly addressed by fatalities stretching across all ages. Although as with most illnesses those already in the lower-paid jobs and most in need are more likely to be affected not only by the virus but by its far-reaching consequences.

No one is to blame. And while there is the odd fundamentalist citing responsibility for our current woes upon the growth in gay Pride events, these voices are so few they barely raise an eyebrow.

However, some responsibility does fall upon us to be part of the solution where previously we may have been treated as very much the problem. The smash and grab approach of panic buying we saw at the beginning of the current crisis is more likely to be a signal of anxiety than it is immorality. Illuminating behaviour from those who have never before faced the threat of life-threatening sickness just for existing.

We know how it feels to be isolated and ignored and rather than retreating into our own anxious sorrow or selfish copy cat choreography, we can step forward to help others considering that the need may not be immediately visible. It’s our responsibility to follow the rules and lead by example, not to have a casual approach to social distancing because we have been here before. It also falls upon those of us who were vilified in law, in Parliament, in the press and in the street not to repeat those patterns of communication particularly online. When our self-declared enemies fall ill through no fault of their own, we cannot and we must not seek comfort in this. Whoever falls ill or dies as a result of this coronavirus or is stricken with anxiety at the thought of the possibility must be treated with kindness, compassion and respect. Those of us who are all too familiar with the alternative must lead the way.