The Connection Between AIDS and Homosexuality in Literature :: Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues

     Ã‚  Ã‚   Disease permeates itself through all walks of life.   No one is unaffected by disease and the destruction it brings.   Families destroyed, communities torn apart, and societies in despair.   AIDS has taken its toll on the present society, and everyone is affected.   Much of the literature written on AIDS has tried to capture the disease and give it some form of meaning.   Where it comes from, how one contracts it, and the lifestyle of an AIDS victim many times is addressed in various novels and books.     Many of the authors that write on AIDS write with homosexual themes.   Homosexuality is prevalent in many books about AIDS and the question is why?   According to Les Wright many books with gay characters are written to counteract many of the assumptions made about AIDS and homosexuality.   The gay community is under attack, being invaded by both HIV virus and by the pathognomic counter-contagion of the social diseases of prejudice and hatred. In many narratives gay men respond with fantasies of military counter attack.   The historically disempowered, polluted homosexual turns the tables, identifying mainstream heterosexuals as pathognomically polluted and declaring them evil.   The Homosexuals claims victim status by virtue of the fascism of heterosexual society and casts his moral battle in political terms.   The outsider becomes hero; disease is rendered seemingly value-neutral.   Fire is fought with fire, and paranoia is attacked with paranoia (Wright, 55-57).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In one particular play that deals with the issue of AIDS and homosexuality, the writer shows characters that are different in background but very similar in nature.   The play, Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, written by Tony Kushner, is a tale about gay men dealing with societal values.   In dealing with these values they also encounter the issue of AIDS and how it impacts their lives and impacts the lives of the people around them.   There is a problem with character associating AIDS and its possible connection with homosexuality.   With the main characters, Roy Cohn, Joe Pitt, Louis Ironson, Prior Walter, and Harper Pitt, the reader visits the lives of these characters and learns how each person is affected by homosexuality and AIDS.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the novel The Plague, by Albert Camus, the main character Dr. Rieux is talking to a colleague about the plague.   "Naturally, he said to Rieux, you know what it is... I saw some cases in Paris twenty years ago.