Washington Monthly - September/October 2019 - 116

the nascent national gay beat that he had "I'm always going to be a journalist first Dugas was the first person to bring AIDS
done so much to establish, more than a and a gay person second" was his mantra. to North America, that is how many in the
dozen publishers rejected his proposal for Shilts refused to let his sexual orientation media, egged on by the book's unscrupuAnd the Band Played On. Upon publication, get in the way of reporting a good story, as lous publicists, portrayed him. "The Monmost major news outlets initially declined
when he developed a cordial relationship ster Who Gave Us AIDS," screamed the tabto review it.
with John Briggs, the California state sen- loid magazine Star, while the ever-tasteful
The book, of course, became a huge ator whose 1978 Proposition 6 would have New York Post characterized Dugas as "a
best seller, and solidified Shilts's stand- banned gay people from teaching in public modern-day Typhoid Mary."
ing as the nation's premier journalist cov- schools. This personal code, along with his
Shilts remained an independent voice
ering gay issues. What enabled Shilts to
belief that "being gay is no more of a defin- throughout his career, repeatedly findignore the many naysayers was a trait all
ing characteristic for you as a human being ing himself at odds with gay activists.
great journalists share: a nose for com- than being left-handed," frustrated many When members of the AIDS advocacy
pelling stories. "[Y]ou can't hurt as many in the gay community. The animosity was group ACT UP began disrupting Cathopeople as get hurt under the status quo, most intense when it came to Shilts's cov- lic masses, Shilts asked, "What if Cathoyou can't disrupt that many people's lives erage of bathhouses, which he described lic militants vandalized the headquarters
without it ending up causing a kind of re- unflinchingly as hotbeds for the spread of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation?
action that breeds news stories," Shilts of AIDS. Some gay activists condemned Wouldn't ACT-UP be screaming 'Nazis!'?"
told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes shortly be- Shilts as a self-hating homosexual who Shilts also emerged as a cautious critic of
fore his death, describing the many ways
aimed to curry favor with straight society "outing" gay public figures, decrying those
in which homophobic discrimination, by branding his fellow gay men as promis- who demanded ideological conformity
cuous lepers; the head of on the part of gay public figures as "lavSan Francisco's gay Dem- ender fascists."
ocratic Club called Shilts
The quality of The Journalist of Castro
"the most homophobic per- Street is ultimately not at the level that
son in the Bay Area."
Stoner's subject matter deserves. The book
Shilts saw the matter often reads like the academic dissertation
differently. With equality from which it stemmed, and is at times
comes responsibility, he clumsy. Harvey Milk was not America's
thought, meaning gays "first openly gay elected official," nor did
should be held to the same Iraq invade "neighboring Libya" in 1990.
standard as straights. "Gay A fuller, more engaging biography of this
activists may be able to pioneering figure remains to be written.
bullshit some reporter
"There's no room in the gay community
from the Los Angeles Times for people of good intention having difboth official and customary, was inspir- by telling him that the baths don't play any ferent opinions," Shilts complained to the
ing resistance. Shilts also recognized that role in the AIDS epidemic, but they can't New York Times in 1993. If Shilts's unshakthe still-secretive nature of homosexual- bullshit me, because I know what goes on able insistence on not letting his gay idenin the bathhouses," he said in 1984. "I used tity overwhelm his professionalism was
ity gave him an opportunity to carve a
controversial twenty-six years ago, it is
niche explaining this mysterious world to go there myself."
Shilts forthrightly addressed gay pro- even more anachronistic today, as many
to mainstream America. Shilts became,
Stoner writes, an expert in "once-hidden miscuity in And the Band Played On, iden- gay writers who question various "LGBTA
subjects," like the gay sexual demimonde tifying it-alongside Reagan administra- community" shibboleths are routinely conthrough which a deadly virus spread, and, tion indifference and media apathy-as demned as sellouts and faulted for not belater, the centuries-long saga of gay men one of several factors that "allowed [AIDS] ing team players. Randy Shilts belongs to
and women in the U.S. military, the sub- to happen." While rightly remembered as that storied tradition of gay iconoclasts
ject of his final book, Conduct Unbecoming. a classic, the book has in recent years been who, gleaning from their minority status
faulted for its sensationalist portrayal of the value of intellectual pluralism and inAccording to a friend, "his audience was
really straight people, because he wanted Gaëtan Dugas, a dashingly handsome and dividual integrity, proudly refuse to abide
insatiably randy Quebecois flight atten- by any sort of orthodoxy.
them to understand what it was like to be
dant whose sexual exploits across North
gay in America."
Crucially, Shilts saw himself not as a America Shilts blamed for spreading the James Kirchick, a visiting fellow at the Brookrepresentative of the gay community, but disease, and who posthumously earned ings Institution, is author of The End of Europe:
as a reporter who happened to be gay-an the moniker "Patient Zero" because of his Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark
approach that set him apart from most proximity to many of the earliest AIDS Age. He is at work on a history of gay Washingother gay journalists working at the time. cases. Though Shilts never claimed that ton, D.C.

Shilts saw himself not as a
representative of the gay
community, but as a reporter
who happened to be gay. "I'm
always going to be a journalist
first and a gay person
second" was his mantra.

116

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