Micah’s Notes & Highlights for And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
The New York gay leaders seemed to view homosexual rights as something of a driver’s license-they were privileges that were doled out by the state. Bill Kraus saw the issue simply in terms of what gays deserved. They were talking about rights, not privileges, for Christ’s sake. Bill would later reflect that so much of what would happen in the coming years could be understood in terms of what happened at that 1980 convention, where the split between the California and New York styles of gay politics had so clearly emerged.