Where it all started
In March 1992, in a cramped Clapham flat, there was a meeting of gay Aids
activists. The early HIV
and Aids work had gone out of its way to stress that HIV was an equal
opportunities infection; that everyone was potentially at risk. In an
effort to counteract homophobia, it became taboo to acknowledge that most
infections in this country were a result of gay sex. The resulting battle-cry
of this meeting was that something had to be done. Aids needed to be re-gayed,
and the newly formed Gay Men Fighting Aids set out to do just that.
From the start, GMFA was made up of HIV positive volunteers working alongside
negative volunteers and volunteers who did not know their HIV status.
The aims of GMFA were not just to reduce the transmission of HIV, but
to address the harmful consequences of living with HIV for those already
infected.
Volunteers came to GMFA for a variety of reasons. James Quinlan, for many
years the lead volunteer on GMFA's work for positive gay men and now a
member of the board, literally stumbled into working with GMFA.
"The Heath, that's where it all started for me. I used to go there
for all of the usual reasons. On odd occasions, a young man would jump
out, offer me a condom and disappear. I'd never had that happen to me
on Clapham Common, so I returned again and again. Eventually it just seemed
silly not to volunteer for GMFA."
After a couple of years of concentrating on HIV prevention campaigns,
some positive volunteers got fed up with their needs being ignored and
insisted that GMFA create a group specifically to address the needs of
positive gay men, the Positive
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