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The first reports of AIDS closely followed the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, whose 'family values' agenda and alliance with Christian conservatives associated AIDS with deviance and sin.

I have been hung in effigy by the gay community for a long time, from when I was on President Reagan's first AIDS commission.

AIDS is a global problem and there should be a global solution found by the entire international community. It is really scary to see and imagine our world fall into pieces because we refuse to share and put in the common vestiges of our civilizations.

We're still leaderless. We still don't have strong organizations that are fighting for us; there isn't a national AIDS organization out there worth squat in my opinion.

Early in 1986, the World Health Organization in Geneva still regarded AIDS as an ailment of the promiscuous few.

I think these last 10 years have seen just a huge shift in the psyche of this country as regards gay people. I think AIDS had a lot to do with it. So many families who really believed they'd 'never met one' were suddenly confronted with their sons becoming ill, and friends of sons. I think that brought a lot of it into the open.

AIDS is the biggest challenge, the major disaster facing this country and we would have wished for something more specific and far-reaching.

Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it.

When AIDS first appeared, people didn't know what it was. You'll remember that it affected mostly young gay men - it was actually called GRID for a short period of time: Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome - and people thought it actually might be recreational drugs or other types of toxins.