AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic

Notes

Notes NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. Dr. Lawrence Mass, a gay physician, was the author of the first article to appear in a gay newspaper, “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded,” New York Native May 18–31, 1981, 7. Lawrence Altman was the author of the second, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” New York Times, July 3, 1981, 20. Jerry Falwell is best known as a television evangelist, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church, founder of Liberty College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and head of the Moral Majority organization, with close political ties to the administration of Ronald Reagan, president during the early years of the epidemic. Falwell is also a self-styled biblical scholar, and “Executive Editor” of the Liberty Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1983), in which homosexuality is configured as an apocalyptic signifier. In a gloss on Romans 1:26–27, the commentary claims that “Homosexuality is likewise the result of idolatry. . . . Increased homosexuality is a sign of the soon return of the Lord (II Tim 3:2)” (2211). In a reading of the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the editors allude to this passage from the Letter of Paul to the Romans: “Romans reveals that this [homosexuality] is the last stage in a society before it is destroyed” (55). 2. See Anita Bryant’s The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1977), 29–30. 3. Bryant, Anita Bryant Story, 42. 4. For a discussion of this prophecy conference and its implications, see Paul Boyer’s sixth chapter, “The Final Chastisement of the Chosen,” in When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1992). See Harold John Ockenga’s “Fulfilled and Unfulfilled Prophecy ,” in Prophecy in the Making: Messages Prepared for Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, ed. Carl F. H. Henry (Carol Stream, IL: Creation House, 1971), 291–311; and Wilbur M. Smith’s “Signs of the Second Advent of Christ,” in Prophecy in the Making, 187–213. 5. See David Edwin Harrell’s All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1975), 186–87; David Wilkerson’s The Vision (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1974), 50–51. 201 6. See Tim LaHaye’s What Everyone Should Know about Homosexuality, 4th printing . (Wheaton, IL: Living Books, 1978), especially 8, 11, 203–4. (The book was originally published as The Unhappy Gays.) LaHaye is now famous as the coauthor (with Jerry B. Jenkins) of a series of apocalypse novels, the “Left Behind” series, published by Harvest House. Books in the series have regularly appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List and are aggressively marketed in national chain bookstores. 7. See David Chilton, Power in the Blood: A Christian Response to AIDS (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishing, 1987), 39; and David Noebel, The Homosexual Revolution: A Look at the Preachers and Politicians Behind It, 3rd ed. (Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 1984), 27. 8. William Dannemeyer, Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America (San Francisco : Ignatius Press, 1989), 222–23. 9. Ed Rowe, Homosexual Politics: Road to Ruin for America, intro. Sen. Jesse Helms (Washington, DC: Church League of America, 1984), 12, 24–25, 36. 10. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 40; Robert Hodge, Literature as Discourse: Textual Strategies in English and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 17. 11. Barry Brumett, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric, Praeger Series in Political Communication, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr. (New York: Praeger, 1991), 6; M. H. Abrams, “Apocalypse: Theme and Variations,” in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 342–68; and Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarism, 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). See also Debra Bergoffen, “The Apocalyptic Meaning of History,” The Apocalyptic Vision in America: Interdisciplinary Essays on Myth and Culture, ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982), 11–36. Henry F. May’s The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) proposes a millennialist foundation for late eighteenth-century revolutions. In “Apocalypse: Theme and Variations ” M. H. Abrams finds links between apocalypticism and Karl Marx’s faith in...