In the absence of a cure, the global Aids crisis can’t end while LGBT+ people are denied equality

Damning statistics show that nations who stigmatise and persecute their LGBT+ communities have higher numbers of sufferers. It is more vital than ever to stop this

Evidence shows that draconian measures to stop the epidemic has a detrimental effect on numbers (AFP)

Half of the gay homeless kids in Kingston, Jamaica, are HIV positive. They’re homeless because they were thrown out by their families because they are gay. I met a couple of these kids a few years ago. They were children. They should have been lounging about at home watching TV and annoying their mums. Instead they were surviving on the streets. Hustling would get them some food. It may even get them a bed for the night and a shower. Their homelessness got them HIV.

The link between LGBT+ persecution and HIV is well documented. The most glaring statistic comes from the Caribbean. In the English-speaking parts, including Jamaica, where most countries criminalise sex between consenting men, one in four gay men are HIV positive. In the rest of the Caribbean, where gay sex is not a crime, the statistic is one in 15. Similar facts emerge from sub-Saharan Africa.

Countries with a recent history of LGBT+ hate have higher rates of HIV infection than those countries that haven’t targeted sexual orientation and gender identity in this way. Russia has an Aids crisis that remains out of control. Russia continues to use the full force of the state to marginalise and harm men who have sex with men.

While the people most vulnerable to HIV infection are outlaws, educating them about the risks of HIV in a way that is appropriate and accessible to them is impossible. Attempts to manage the Aids epidemic through draconian measures inevitably fail, or the price to be paid for controlling the crisis through punitive measures backfires. Fidel Castro’s policies of putting gay men with Aids in camps is such an example.

The Aids crisis was finally brought under control in the UK through a combination of successful treatments, a commitment to the equality of all people affected and effective education to help prevent people from becoming infected. Improvements to the UK’s HIV/Aids strategy must still be made (for example easier access to PrEP, the pill that prevents people becoming infected if they may have been exposed, must be prioritised), but once the UK’s policy was rooted in equality and dignity the battle was half won.

In today’s edition of The Independent there is an article by the actor Hilton McRae that celebrates the life and death of Ian Charleson. Ian was a remarkable actor. He played one of the two lead roles in Chariots of Fire in 1981. At the heart of the film was Eric Liddell, a Scottish missionary, played by Ian. His performance captivated the nation. He embodied all that was great about being British.

Ian died 30 years ago today. He was 40 years old. He died from Aids. When his death was announced, for a moment the nation stopped and drew a breath.

Hilton’s article is well worth reading. It’s almost poetic in the way it captures the Seventies and Eighties. Hilton was Ian’s very good friend. You imagine them as two dour Scots bursting onto the London scene. Hilton describes their journey together and Ian’s story poignantly.

The significance of Ian’s story cannot be underestimated. Ian was one of the many thousands of gay and bisexual men who died from an Aids-related condition in the UK before more effective treatment was pioneered in the mid-1990s.

Ian was born in 1949. As a gay kid growing up in in the UK, homosexuality was unmentionable. It was the ultimate taboo. The term homophobia hadn’t been invented. Everyone was homophobic. Every state institution from schools to the health service to police and the armed forces was virulently anti-gay. There were no laws protecting gay people. Laws were used against gay and lesbian people. Gay sex was a criminal offence. Gay bashing was carried out with impunity. It was state policy for mothers to reject their gay and lesbian children. Being associated with homosexuality brought only shame and stigma.

This was Ian’s world. As a gay young man seeking sexual contact, he would be able to find it, but only furtively. He would have no expectation of love. The suggestion that intimate love between two men could be reciprocated was inconceivable. Men who had sex with men committed crimes. That was the risk you took.

Then, in 1967, when Ian had just turned 18 years, England partially decriminalised homosexual sex. But that was no use to him, as Scotland waited until 1981 by which time Ian had long since sought sanctuary in London. And England’s laws still ensnared gay men. They would still be arrested for importuning or soliciting. The offences of gross indecency and buggery were still enforced. You could have a defence but only if you were both over 21 years and the sex took place in private.

Hilton writes vividly and endearingly about his and Ian’s early years as actors in London and at the RSC in the 1970s. These were heady times. Liberation was in the air. But while sex between men may have been allowed, homosexuality was still considered to be a lifestyle. It wasn’t an identity. For the overwhelming majority of the population, it remained frowned upon. It doesn’t matter that there were people like Hilton who were welcoming of gay and lesbian people, the shame and stigma persisted. Sex for most gay and bisexual men continued to be furtive and risky. They carried on being arrested and prosecuted in their thousands. Since 1967, the policy had been to put up with homosexuals – nothing more. It remained state policy to dislike and disapprove of homosexuality.

And then along came Aids, and with it a ferocious and savage anti-gay tirade was unleashed. Within this twilight gay world, which had barely moved from persecution to toleration, the ingredients that were to lead to the Aids crisis thrived. Men who had sex with men were most at risk of infection with HIV and the state had put these men beyond its reach. The crisis became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gay men were despised. Gay men should be tolerated but not protected by the state. Gay men were left vulnerable to exposure to the virus that caused Aids. Gay men died. Ian’s future was ordained.

Ian’s death was a watershed. This man who had embodied an upbeat British vision of itself in Chariots of Fire was now living out a different British reality, which included an ignominious death. It shouldn’t have needed the Aids crisis, or Ian’s death, but everything had to change.

Ian witnessed none of the revolution to come. He would not recognise the quality of LGBT+ life in the UK today. It only got worse for him. In what were to be the last years of his life, the British government even sanctioned the further torment of the gay and lesbian community by passing into law Section 28, an infamous provision that outlawed the positive promotion of homosexuality. At the time when gay men needed the state’s support the most, the government viciously turned on them.

When I read Hilton’s moving account of Ian’s life, I am reminded of the many questions I have about state complicity in creating a crisis that could have been avoided. It is impossible to establish, but it is possible to speculate on the number of gay and bisexual men who could have avoided HIV infection and ultimately their deaths were it not for the homophobic and persecutory culture in the UK. A friend of mine who died in the early Nineties was infected following his first clumsy and furtive sexual encounter. At the time, he had no idea about HIV or how to avoid it.

He was no different from those kids now living on the streets of Kingston. More or less half of the world’s countries still criminalise sex between men. That means that men who have sex with men are persecuted. With hate and state persecution comes an increased risk of exposure to HIV.

It’s heartbreaking to consider, but in the time it’s taken to read this article a gay young man, somewhere in the world where gay men are tormented, will have had his first sexual encounter and could have been exposed to HIV, because that young man has no idea about how to avoid infection. In the absence of a cure, the global Aids crisis can’t end while LGBT+ people are denied equality. I did not know Ian. I feel I do now. Ian’s story is every gay man’s who lived and died with Aids and therefore it needs to be told and told again.

​Jonathan Cooper is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers and a human rights specialist. The fee for this article is being donated to the charity Frontline Aids

Read Hilton McRae’s story on the life of Ian Charleson