12.4: LGBTQ Visibility -- The AIDS Crisis

We now find ourselves in 1978.

Jimmy Carter is President, there are solar panels on the white house, the first internet message board gets posted and Sony tests its first Walkman.

Gloria Gaynor recorded I Will Survive while in a back brace after she became paralyzed taking a fall off a stage. Only a few months after spinal surgery Gaynor commented, "When I read the lyrics, I realized the reason they'd been waiting for me to record that song..."

In June of the next year (1979), the Police in New York City brutalized a group of Gay customers at the Stonewall Inn. For decades, LGBTQ people had been pushed into the margins of society and routinely arrested, beaten, and worse. This incident caused the largest community consolidation that had ever occurred to this point and began the Gay Rights Movement, which continues today.

Tragically, this was also the beginning of a public health crisis - the AIDS epidemic. A sexually transmitted disease that is NOT confined to the gay community, but was still used to further discriminate by the hetero-normative culture of then-America.

I Will Survive became a rallying song for people fighting not only for acceptance, but also literal survival from a devastating illness.

• "First I was afraid, I was petrified..."
• "Oh no, not I, I will survive, Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I'll stay alive"

• Disco - dance music
• Piano flourishes, heavy pounding beat

• Claim your power, stand up for yourself.
• Survival message of endurance.