ACT UP New York
“Stop Gay-Bashing at the Board of Ed!” flyer
New York, 1992
Manuscripts and Archives Division
“Stop Gay-Bashing at the Board of Ed!” flyer
The outbreak of HIV/AIDS, which doctors treating gay men in New York City and San Francisco first noticed in 1981, grew quickly into an epidemic on a national, and ultimately global, scale. The crisis of the illness itself was compounded by other, related crises: discrimination, queerphobia, and misinformation that made it harder to develop treatments, find care, support people living with the disease, and prevent further spread. The ongoing lack of mainstream sympathy for the groups most affected by AIDS, coupled with conservative officials’ hostility to sex education, led to notable confrontations on AIDS funding, education, and prevention during the 1980s and early 1990s. Congress passed legislation prohibiting Centers for Disease Control funding from being used for AIDS education materials “that promote, encourage, and condone homosexual sexual activities or the intravenous use of illegal drugs.” In 1992, the New York City Board of Education voted to ban certain AIDS education materials from classroom use and to instead emphasize abstinence. Activist groups like ACT UP and the Youth Education Life Line (YELL), which was dedicated to advocating for young people’s voices in AIDS education, criticized these policies.
Teach with this item from Unit 3 of the curriculum guide, Reading Dangerously: Censorship and the Freedom to Read in 20th Century America.
Transcript:
STOP GAY-BASHING AT THE BOARD OF ED!
an excerpt from testimony at the Board of Education:
“BOARD OF ED. HELD CAPTIVE BY HOMOSEXUAL THOUGHT POLICE!”
On October 14th, the Board of Education held a public hearing on guidelines for the AIDS education curriculum.
The aisles were packed with hundreds of Christian Fundamentalists.
Many of them believed that HIV/AIDS and safer sex education were equivalent to introducing pornography into the classroom.
Instead, they advocated a curriculum of exclusion, encouraging only abstinence, leaving out or restricting vital information about teen sexuality and decision-making.
WHERE WERE YOU?
Come to the next Board of Education public hearing on Wednesday, November 18th, 6:30 P.M. at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn.
(Take the 2,3,4,5,M,N, R or A,C,F trains to Court Street/Jay Street/Borough Hall.)
ACT UP Y.E.L.L. (Youth Education Life-Line)
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