Trump Administration Refused to Celebrate World AIDS Day - History and Current Backlash

BY: CAMILA TABORA / STAFF WRITER

A candle-lit vigil commemorating World AIDS Day. (ABC News)  

World AIDS Day falls on December 1 as a day to commemorate the struggles and losses of life of the millions of victims of HIV/AIDS, a disease that historically has had drastic effects on queer, impoverished, and BIPOC communities. However, this last AIDS Day was notably not recognized by the Trump administration, the first time since 1988.

AIDS was a disease that took out many famous stars, from Freddie Mercury to Gia Carangi, and even Rock Hudson. However, it was also one that past conservative administrations pushed to the side. The Reagan administration famously stayed silent for years after the first CDC report on the disease due to its association with groups like Moral Majority that spewed explicitly homophobic ideals. 

The following Bush administration finally planted its stake in AIDS prevention with PEPFAR, short for the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. PEPFAR exists to this day and was revolutionary for providing millions to AIDS research. Unfortunately, this administration was not perfect: due to its Fundamentalist Christian view, it ended up deploying homophobic leaders not only domestically, but also in African countries like Uganda that received aid from the United States.

The Bush administration, joined by then-mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, also played a large role in stigmatizing the sexual aspect of the disease. Besides them, though, other leaders like Jesse Helms, who used to be a senator for North Carolina, would continue the legacy of explicit political homophobia and block funding towards AIDS due to associating it with the gay community. 

Helms once, describing the gay community, exclaimed, “it’s their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease.”

In the general population, the combination of sexual stigma in general and homophobic tendencies led many to be kicked out of their homes, to lose their jobs, and even to be denied medical care. Many other at-risk groups, like intravenous drug users, were largely neglected by a government that saw a 134% increase in drug-related incarcerations between 1980-1986. 

Besides the obvious social rejection many HIV/AIDS patients would receive, AIDS itself is an incredibly painful disease, especially in its last stages. Since AIDS is a disease affecting the body’s immune system, patients die from severe cases of other illnesses, with some of the most common ones leading to illnesses like pneumocystis pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma. These can leave the victim experiencing being internally choked to death, diarrheal illness, disfiguring spots and rashes, losing vision, and brain infections and seizures. 

Gia Carangi, an aforementioned supermodel who died from the disease after contracting it from intravenous drug use, was, at the time of death, so disfigured that her body was already decomposing. Once she died, in moving her corpse to be sent to a morgue, parts of her skin were falling off the bone.

Eventually, political activist groups like ACT UP would start to form, championing more AIDS research, funding, and more programs to spread new treatments to more people. With modern-day PreP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, HIV transmission has seen drops in what used to be HIV/AIDS hotspots like San Francisco and New York. 

However, HIV/AIDS is far from gone, and still affects roughly 39.9 million people worldwide. The Trump administration has gone on record that it will still support PEPFAR, but stands by its silence this past AIDS Day. 

“An awareness day is not a strategy,” Tommy Pigott, the State Department deputy spokesperson, said, “Under the leadership of President Trump, the State Department is working directly with foreign governments to save lives and increase their responsibility and burden sharing.”

The Trump administration has made huge cuts to international health spending, affecting mainly African countries dependent on U.S. assistance, like Zambia, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This follows other countries, with the U.N. estimating there has been a 40% decrease in global funding for HIV/AIDS within the last two years. 

Many health experts and activists worry that this is a step backwards and will lead to more influxes of cases, especially considering the United States’ track record of being one of the largest global proprietors of HIV/AIDS relief. 

On World AIDS Day, a protest was held outside the White House championing the return of funding for HIV/AIDS and for a larger concern to be placed on this ongoing fatal issue. 

As Dr. Demetre Daskalakis put it, “... the strategy is already being unplugged by the administration, and, really, the commemoration day is just a symptom of that bigger disease. And that disease is a lack of concern.”