Angles, Punks and Raging Queens

"...I long for the mix of the bad old days of ball gowns and torn jeans...and I sing this song for the souls who have gone...sweet angles, punks, and raging queens..."*

            Four decades have passed since the Stone Wall Riots. As I sit and try to remember the "mix of the bad old days" my mind drifts to legacy and death.  Is it possible that no one in the masses that night that finally had had enough of police and social harassment in the gay community was HIV positive?  I find that hard to believe.  We actually do not have any firm date for when the virus infected us.  We only know when some researches noticed it.  And maybe even that isn't true.  We only know when some researchers finally got their findings published in the June 2001 edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  That is all we know, but I suspect we feel more.

If not for Stone Wall in 1969 what would have happened to the world in 2001?  As with any insurgency the power of the people is always grossly underestimated and unknown.  Were it not for the anger of pissed off drag queens would ACT UP have been born?  If not for all the punks would "die-ins" have taken place? Who knows?  Who cares? 

            All I do know is that those of living today with AIDS only have to look back to the "mix of the bad old days" and realize all those guys in ball gowns and torn jeans set the stage for one of the greatest health care revolutions known to humankind.  The birth of the AIDS epidemic gave real life to tumbling the towers of underserved medical sainthood.   What came crashing down when we got infected changed the world forever.  Nothing was the same anymore.  Closet doors burst open and slammed shut the pious hallowed hallways of science.  We fought for our lives and we did something only done by impassioned and oppressed people - we changed the world.  Not just in AIDS care but all of health care. The Larry Kramers became the Susan Loves.  The Red Ribbons changed to every color of the rainbow to fight for cancer, mental illness, the homeless, and all the lost.

            Forty years ago today a new nation was born.  Still highly imperfect, but new nonetheless. If we did not have Stone Wall we would not have changed the world.

            I know I owe my life to all that was done when it felt so right to share the night with angles, punks and raging queens.

* From Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens by Bill Russell and Janet Hood