From Crooked Media, this is unholyer than now. I'm your host, Philip Picardy.

Maybe it's hard to believe since there are no corporate pride floats or rainbow storefronts,

but this month was indeed Pride Month. no corporate pride floats or rainbow storefronts.

But this month was indeed Pride Month.

To all my friends at the LGBTQ community,

happy Pride Month.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,

I spent a lot of time talking to activists and organizers about the AIDS crisis

and the shocking and disturbing parallels between the early days of that epidemic with

the early stages of the new coronavirus and let's clear, these are two very different viruses with

very different stigmas attached to them. But still, the similarities are a

little hard to gloss over. Like COVID-19, the AIDS crisis laid bare the systemic discrimination in the health care industry,

disproportionately impacted people of color, left people in need of testing and treatment without options

until it was too late, and showed exactly what happens when an incompetent

so-called religious presidential administration turns its back on

marginalized people and refutes the science that's staring them right in the face.

And also like COVID-19, countless people died during the HIV AIDS epidemic,

and many of them didn't need to.

In fact, American history still has yet to effectively grapple with the systemic queer

phobia that led to these deaths, and just how much of it was motivated or endorsed by the

church.

Today we're going to talk to an organizer from Act Up.

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