It's quite fitting that Sexuality Issues Week follows last Saturday's commemoration of World AIDS Day. Raising awareness of the global pandemic can't help but elicit shameful reminders of the HIV virus' outbreak in this country, and how it was nourished by a potent dose of insidious discrimination.

The systematic indifference of U.S. policymakers during the spread of AIDS in the 1980s was motivated in no small part by the fact that in its infancy, the disease predominately affected gay men. The stigma stuck fast, and before most people even knew the details of HIV, they were aware that it was, according to Jerry Falwell, "killing the right people."

As Mr. Falwell's Moral Majority began its perversion of the Republican Party, central players in the Reagan administration became complicit in society's shunning of homosexuals. Communications Director Pat Buchanan responded to media inquiries by arguing that AIDS was "nature's revenge on gay men."

Although President Reagan was not particularly homophobic himself, his advisers knew that the disease was affecting the very people they had campaigned against to acquire votes from the "New Right." The resulting policy priorities led to enormous setbacks for AIDS research and development. Instead of implementing health plans with comprehensive outreach and education programs, the "powers that be" closed gay bathhouses in San Francisco and prohibited teaching about AIDS if it "promoted homosexual activity." Pleas for increased funding from medical professionals at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health were repeatedly denied. But at least Mr. Reagan adhered to his campaign pledge to downsize government.

Once it was discovered that the "gay plague" was not so gay, a stereotype transformed into a full-blown cultural witch hunt. Now AIDS was not the homo cancer, but homos were definitely responsible for it. Prejudice and intolerance amplified; a few radicals even recommended the option of exterminating gay people. By the time Mr. Reagan finally spoke publicly about AIDS in 1987 — six years after it was first reported — 21,000 Americans had died from the virus. Stigmas attached to the disease finally began to evaporate.

But the ones attached to gays did not. Now, legislative bans "defining" matrimony have institutionalized the same discrimination that made America's response to AIDS an epitomizing moment in the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. Now, newly reinvigorated by these setbacks, the civil rights movement of our generation is in full throttle (pun most definitely intended).

Using rhetoric that likens the current struggle of the LGBT community to the plight of the black community might seem disingenuous, even unjust. Gays and lesbians were never classified as three-fifths of a person under the Constitution or subject to centuries of slavery and decades of segregation, beatings and lynchings. Hiding one's sexuality is a lot easier than hiding one's race.

But there are parallels. Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder until the 1970s, just as blackness was once thought to be a genetic defect. Like same-sex couples, interracial relations used to be seen as unnatural and a small step away from bestiality. Current LGBT leaders are demonized and discarded as "extremist" — the same label that was used to dismiss Martin Luther King Jr. And today's civil unions seem eerily similar to "separate but equal."

The LGBT movement of today is not the civil rights campaign of the 1960s or even the 1890s, before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. But it represents a historical and linear push by the American people to retain full civil equality regardless of their individual characteristics; whether gender, race or sexual orientation. First we had suffrage, then desegregation, and now… marriage?

If the issue was solely about marriage, no one would really care — especially homosexuals. After all, who wants to inherit a tarnished institution that's continuously mocked by adultery, divorce, Las Vegas and Britney Spears (or, dare I say, Rudy Giuliani)? If only it were that simple. If only gay marriage bans did not effectively strip gays and lesbians of more than 1,000 benefits and rights. If only policies were simply policies, and not veneers that render certain people politically inferior and culturally subordinate. If only homosexuality were a "choice" and we could just blame gay people for making foolish decisions that condemn them to second-class citizenship.

Throw out all the distortions of religion, petty politics and warped views of "morality" that surround these debates and it becomes brazenly clear that the LGBT community is fighting for a lifestyle, not an institution. No, it's not about preserving a sacred establishment. No, it's not about polygamy and people wanting to marry their lawn mowers. No, it's not about gender confusion or providing "stability" for children. What these issues boil down to is plain, unadulterated homophobia.

That's not to say that every opponent of gay marriage or gay adoption is a Falwell or a Robertson, or a radical bigot who, as the saying goes, is "insecure with his sexuality." But even seemingly logical arguments are unraveled to reveal one core assumption: being gay is wrong.

Of course, you don't have to approve of the gay lifestyle to acknowledge that gay marriage bans are blatant forms of institutionalized discrimination and have no place in a free and equal society. This needs to be told to people on both sides of the political aisle. While hypocritical "moralists" continue to hold gays responsible for AIDS and, more recently, the death of U.S. soldiers overseas for invoking "God's wrath," liberals haven't always helped. Many angry Democrats blamed President Bush's re-election on the LGBT citizenry for not "holding off" on civil rights, and none of the blue party's presidential frontrunners supports anything beyond a civil union.

In the future, we'll look back at this period with the same sense of absurdity that dominates our perception of the anti-suffrage and Jim Crow eras. We'll remind ourselves that not a moment is too soon for civil rights, and that all it takes is a little gall. In 1954, the Supreme Court desegregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education knowing full-well that society wasn't ready. A decade later, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act acutely aware that it would cost the Democrats their political strongholds in the southern states.

If only today's leaders would be so bold.

Adam Lichtenheld ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and African studies.