In a similar state-sponsored campaign, the Oregon Health Division televised a series of advertisements which advocated for abstinence and monogamy, feeding into the ‘gay lifestyle’ moral panic on the basis that frequent non-monogamous sex caused HIV/AIDS. Unlike Understanding AIDS, rather than provide information on HIV/AIDS prevention, these advertisements intended to instil fear into viewers. Whilst showing the hands of a mortician caressing a corpse before covering them with a sheet, a voiceover read, ‘sex with multiple partners is how people like you get AIDS. And every new partner you have increases your danger. It’s time to stop loving dangerously. AIDS is a killer. Protect yourself’. Directing the message at the viewer, this form of advertisement exacerbated the rhetoric that a promiscuous lifestyle caused AIDS diagnosis, a lifestyle many in Middle America would associate with gay men in urban areas.
Yet, educational campaigns led by queer activists demonstrate how marginalised communities resisted the challenges posed by the Helms Amendment. Historicising AIDS education requires discussion of the education and prevention efforts of queer activists at the forefront of the epidemic throughout the 1980-90s. AIDS education has often been left to the hands of those affected, as government decisions forced disenfranchised communities to advocate for their own healthcare. Activist campaigns provide People With AIDS (PWA) autonomy in their own narrative and history, demonstrating how in the wake of censorship and repression, community care and education flourished.
Community-led educational resources and initiatives have long existed in the queer community. In the context of AIDS, two 1980s publications provide some of the earliest safe-sex education material. Play Fair! was published in 1982, five years before Reagan even publicly addressed the AIDS crisis. It was created by the San Francisco based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), a protest group, community service, and performance organisation satirising the Catholic Church founded in 1979. The pamphlet provided prevention advice on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including condom usage. Play Fair! offered information on ‘Karposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia’, two of the symptoms of AIDS, rather than AIDS itself – as the acronym (for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) was coined in July 1982. Karposi Sarcoma (KS) refers to a type of cancer often found on the skin and lymph nodes, whilst Pneumocystis Pneumonia (PCP) is a form of lung infection. Back then, KS and PCP were referred to as “gay cancer” and “gay pneumonia” respectively. Play Fair! highlights how queer activists have always provided healthcare information to their own community.