Playing On: Organise

Being organised matters. In the early 1980s half of all AIDS cases were in New York (even as the epidemic grew exponentially. But it was San Francisco that things happened, it was where the first AIDS clinic, and AIDS ward were set up and it was where the first funding was won at both the state and city level. Gays in San Francisco weren't just numerous they were organised. The book, possibly unfairly, attributes this to New York being full of closet-cases (although there does seem to be a problem if the President of the Gay Men's Health Crisis doesn't want to send out invitations with 'gay' on the, because then his mail carrier might know his sexuality). But the central point is that it wasn't coming out of the closet that helped San Francisco, it was getting organised