We Can’t Applaud Irresponsible Behavior
In a nation that often seems to have gone mad, nothing seems loopier than the idea of treating celebrity AIDS victims as heroes.
Greg Louganis, the greatest diver in the history of the sport and one of the most magnificent athletes the nation has produced, was received as a martyr last week after he told Barbara Walters that he had developed AIDS. He also mentioned that he was carrying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) when he competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics.
That second confession packs a wallop: In the preliminary rounds of the 1988 competition, Louganis smacked his head against the diving board, producing a cut that required two stitches. He didn’t tell the doctor who treated him that he was HIV positive. “I was so stunned,” he told Walters. “(This had) been an incredibly guarded secret. You could throw the entire competition into a state of alarm. Even more so than just having hit my head on the board, I was paralyzed with fear.”
The diver indulged in a common form of hypocrisy about AIDS. He assumed his infection was his business - and nobody else’s. That view remains common, thanks largely to the efforts of gay rights activists in the 1980s.
Various advocacy groups figured out early on that AIDS would give some people an excuse to stigmatize gay men. So the organizations tried to cover up matters by portraying AIDS not as a public health menace but as a civil rights concern.
They persuaded Congress that doctors and nurses had no right to know whether a patient carried HIV or suffered from AIDS. They tried to broaden public sympathy by noting that the killer virus (or viruses) could strike “anybody.” (That assertion remains dubious, since the syndrome continues to hit a disproportionate number of the nation’s gay men.)
Louganis, in his panic to hide his homosexuality and his health condition, may have justified his silence on grounds that his right to privacy outweighed the doctor’s right to get life-or-death information.
Most people understand this kind of ambivalence and forgive it. Americans have made a real and substantial commitment to fighting the grotesque killer. We spend an average of $120,000 to treat each AIDS patient and the cost continues to rise. The federal government sets aside at least $1.5 billion a year to study and fight the syndrome, and private pharmaceutical firms invest billions more. Scientists still have no clue what causes the body’s immune system to shut down, but most of us at least understand how to avoid getting AIDS. As a result, the growth in new cases has slowed dramatically.
That’s a crucial point. Although the disease strikes a few innocents, such as Arthur Ashe and Kimberly Bergalis, who contracted AIDS from her dentist, the vast majority of AIDS victims get sick through irresponsible behavior, such as “unprotected” sex, prostitution or drug abuse. Some folks wracked by the hellish syndrome are killers themselves, having passed the contagion to others.
No doubt this sounds a bit harsh: Anyone who has watched a friend or relative die of AIDS trembles in fear of the disease and wants desperately for researchers to find a cure. But those of us who have watched the syndrome nibble slowly at others’ lives also must come to grips with the fact that some victims sealed their own fates.
Indeed, the best way to think about AIDS is to set aside the issue of homosexuality and think of the syndrome as a venereal disease. That shift in thinking makes it possible to take a more sober and humane view of things:
From the beginning of time, people have ignored their better judgment in the thrilling quest for affection, love and/or gratification. In the case of AIDS, that search for joy leads to gruesome death. If we want to save lives, we should not urge people to venerate the foibles that have killed tens of thousands of young people. We should demand that society learn from their mistakes.
After all, nobody holds weepy tributes to folks who die when driving under the influence of alcohol. We don’t pin beer cans to lapels to celebrate the folks who hit bridge abutments while soused. The proper response to AIDS is love and compassion. It is to say to those staring into the abyss: “We love you, and we will stand by you every step of the way. But we can’t celebrate your behavior. You messed up - and now we all grieve.”