A Historian Discovers that Students Today Don't Know that AIDS Originally Was Regarded as a "Gay Disease"

[T]his past fall, while teaching an undergraduate course called"Plagues and Politics: The Impact of AIDS on US Culture" at Dartmouth College, I was shocked — profoundly shocked — by the fact that only three of the 34 students in the class had any idea that AIDS was once widely regarded as a gay-male disease. As someone who lived through the AIDS epidemic, who has lost lovers and friends too numerous to count, I was literally stunned: how could this be?