Forty Years of HIV: The Intersection of Laws, Stigma, and Sexual Behavior and Identity

Forty years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) June 1981 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report about five gay men with a syndrome that came to be called AIDS, both the impact of HIV and the legal landscape in the United States for the most affected population have changed dramatically. Laws, policies, and how they are enforced reflect the values and prejudices of society, and laws can help or hinder public health efforts, regardless of intent. From the outset, HIV aroused widespread fear and new stigmatizing laws and policies, and the crisis revealed injustices in existing laws that compounded stigma and health disparities among the most affected groups. In the 1980s, HIV engulfed already stigmatized communities of gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) and people who inject drugs. The CDC’s HIV surveillance reports show that, throughout the epidemic, MSM have constituted the majority of annual and prevalent cases, and the burden on racial or ethnic minority MSM has increased disproportionately since the early 1990s.1 It is timely to reflect on the intertwining of HIV, laws, stigma, and inequity in the United States and their intersection with the lives of gay and bisexual men (both cisgender and transgender). (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 10, 2021: e1–e3. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306335 )