By Karen Ocamb

1979 seemed like a banner year for gay equality. Up to 100,000 gay people participated in the Oct. 14 March on Washington and President Jimmy Carter's mother Lillian attended, actress Lily Tomlin hosted, and California Gov. Jerry Brown delivered the keynote speech at a black tie gala roasting Sheldon Andelson, retiring L.A. Gay Community Services Center boardmember.

But Hugh Rice noticed something strange about a very sick, thin young penniless gay men who came to the Center's STD Clinic for a shot of antibiotics. He had purple lesions all over his body which Rice thought was some mysterious dermitological problem. It turned out to be Kaposi Sarcoma. Six weeks later, the young man died in isolation at L.A. County Hospital.

Meanwhile, Dr. Joel Weisman, a West Los Angeles internist, noticed a mononucleosis-like condition among two of his gay male patients who suffered weight loss, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. The following year, in November 1980, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, a 33-year-old assistant professor and immunology researcher at UCLA, diagnosed an emergency room patient with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, which was also characterized by weight loss and fevers. Word spread about the diagnosis and Weisman sent his patients to see Gottlieb.

“At that point, early in 1981, we had three patients, three gay men in their early 30s, with Pneumocystis, and we all had the queasy feeling that this was not going to be rare. We also knew from the experience of Joel and others that there were many other gay men with enlarged lymph glands and other milder unexplained illness,” Gottlieb told IN. “That lead us to believe that something peculiar was going on. By April 1981, Gottlieb realized an earlier patient had the same symptoms and this was the beginning of a new epidemic. “But if anyone back then had predicted that four case reports in 1981 would become 40 million people infected worldwide, they would have been considered mad.”

Gottlieb called Dr. Wayne Shandera in the Centers for Disease Control's L.A. office, who found a fifth patient. On June 5, 1981, the CDC published Gottlieb's report, marking the first public announcement of what would be called AIDS -- Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. On Aug. 28, 1981, The Associated Press reported: “Two rare diseases have struck more than 100 homosexual men in the United States in recent months, killing almost half of them, and a medical study group has been formed to find out why.”

Gay men in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco were terrified as AIDS spread, killing mysteriously, exponentially, rapidly, and randomly. By Oct. 1982, Matt Redman, Nancy Cole Sawaya, Ervin Munro, and Max Drew set up a hotline in a closet at the Center where Gottlieb-trained volunteers read limited information to panicked callers, saying the disease was a virus transmitted through sexual contact and blood. In New York, singer Michael Callen (who later moved to L.A.) invented “safe sex” and preached the use of condoms. He also co-founded the AIDS Medical Foundation (AMF) with Dr. Mathilde Krim and Dr. Joseph Sonnabend as an AIDS research organization. But many gays and most of society thought the disease could be airborne like tuberculosis or spread through casual contact.

After the heady days of gay liberation and sex-craved disco, gay men sank into a deep depression and inconsolable grief. Lesbians, who had developed their own separate culture, recognized gay men as their brothers and took care of them in hospitals and at home when they were deserted and considered untouchable by hospital staff, partners, and family. Redman and friends also realized the disease would probably not remain isolated among gay men so, after raising $7,000 at a Christmas fund-raiser, they founded AIDS Project Los Angeles to reach out to all those impacted by AIDS.

Faced with government indifference (with the exception of hearings held by L.A. Congressmember Henry Waxman), gay men and their friends realized it was up to them to help themselves. A number of volunteer-run organizations sprang up over the years, including L.A. Shanti, which provided grief counseling to the infected and survivors, and AID for AIDS, co-founded by Morris Kight. Dr. Mark Katz provided regulars AIDS updates. In March 1984, Joan Rivers appeared at a Studio One fund raiser that raised $45,000.

But it wasn't until the summer of 1985, when movie star Rock Hudson announced he had AIDS, that the other America took notice. With a $250,000 donation from Hudson, the National AIDS Research Foundation of Los Angeles was established, which was later merged with AMF to become the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR), with Gottlieb and Krim as co-chairs and Elizabeth Taylor as national chairman. With the founding of the City of West Hollywood, John Heilman and others created West Hollywood Cares, the first government-sponsored prevention program. By Dec. 31, 1985, 15,527 cases of AIDS were reported with 12,529 deaths.

The late '80s and early '90s were marked with vigils, protests, and fund-raisers to keep the AIDS effort afloat. The tide started to change with the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992 and the 1995 announcement of new combination drug therapies. But by Dec. 1, 2005, more than 40 million people had died of AIDS globally, nearly 29,000 in the L.A. area, according to Mario Perez of the County Office of AIDS Programs and Practices.

Over the last 25 years, the LGBT community has lost a generation of gay men, including Sheldon Andelson and Hugh Rice. Right-winger Patrick Buchanan was right -- there is a cultural war going on in America -- and these are our war dead. And once again the government's response on the domestic front is to propose budget cuts. But listening to anecdotal stories from therapists Dr. Don Kilhefner and Dr. Kevin Koffler, the epidemic of crystal meth coupled with the belief among many that AIDS is no longer a problematic disease -- and the emergence of a drug-resistant strain of the HIV virus -- may mean that without action now, the LGBT community may be on the verge of losing another generation.