Often, though, the obituary is all we have. But unlike other obits, they were laced with evasions-omissions effectively erasing a person’s life, effectively erasing AIDS. Like most obituaries, these carried the weight of individual lives, many taken too soon. (Abe) Rosenthal.īut all the while, it had been making its way to the very back pages, beyond the science section and Altman’s increasingly AIDS-related column-with an unknown portion of the 558 AIDS-related deaths that occurred prior to 1993 sandwiched right between the Arts and Sports sections, their names inserted into unbylined obituaries, stitched between evasive phrases, obscurities, and jargon-filled causes of death. News of the disease first appeared in the paper as a Lawrence Altman science story in 1981 under the famous headline “ Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” though it was kept off the front page until 1983, largely due to the homophobic tendencies of then–executive editor A.M. The paper’s earliest archives of the period are as much a testament to the pervasive cultural prejudices of the time as they are study in bias-borne editorial neglect.
The New York Times may be known as the “newspaper of record,” but nearly four decades ago, when the AIDS crisis began to ransack American cities, the publication’s coverage was sparse and far from dependable. This post is part of Outward, Slate’s home for coverage of LGBTQ life, thought, and culture.
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