How did he get aids ?
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butaneggbert — 12 years ago(December 03, 2013 10:03 PM)
I suspect there are some younger folks in this discussion who didn't live through those terrible plague years.
Despite the glam years, the disco era, and the wonderful freedom some people were finding to be publicly themselves back then, a celebrity - especially a male lead - simply didn't own up to anything but hetero relationships at the time. Hollywood was still largely a dark closet. Hell, Liberace had countless fans who just couldn't have believed he was anything but an exceptionally flamboyant straight guy.
That, and: no one - NO celebrity - publicly disclosed having AIDS if there was any possible way to avoid it. Rock Hudson was practically walking dead before he finally owned up to suffering something other than liver cancer. Freddie Mercury was just about on his last breath before he owned up.
And once the diagnosis was5b4 public? It was almost always "through a blood transfusion". Once in a while, that was even true - but rarely. Usually it was a desperate lie, a last-minute grab to shore up a fraying public image.
(I'm not judging anyone. It was a horrible, horrible time when you could wake up any day to hear yet another friend had vanished from the face of the earth. There one day, gone the next, into the dozens and then the hundreds and more. Those of us close to the storm all did the best we could. So: no judgment.)
But someone's cause of death in those years - and whether they were gay, straight, or danced between the two - isn't necessarily disclosed accurately in the public record. All we know is what people SAID was true. A publicist's press release reflects what s/he was paid to say. A spouse or friend's testimony may be the truth, or may be what they wanted to believe, or may be the tale they all agreed to tell.
Enough sources say that Elliot had both male and female lovers that, if I cared enough, I'd probably be inclined to believe it. But I don't mistake that for fact, and that's a direct result of living through the devastation. Who he loved, how he got AIDS - who knows. And frankly - what difference does it make? -
matthew-58 — 18 years ago(March 20, 2008 01:48 PM)
Sounds right. It seems unlikely that someone would live into their 70's if they had gotten AIDS.
I'm not clear what you are saying here. He didn't have AIDS early in his life, he contracted it during the 1980s. AIDS was only identified as an epidemic in the early 1980s and gay men with many sexual partners, like Elliott, were at the highest risk of getting it. Effective drug treatments for HIV and AIDS weren't developed until the mid 1990s, which was too late for him. -
humbleradio — 18 years ago(March 09, 2008 10:24 PM)
I'm replying to the whole thread here.
Why do people get so upset over someone's sexual preference? Who gives a crap? Try highlighting their lives on something besides their sexual preference. It's bloody boring!
If someone has had any sex out of the ordinary, whether it be homosexual, or bisexual, or even no sexual, you can be sure as little green apples, that this one point, this one single aspect of their lives will be emphasised over and over and over again ad infinitum. It will overshadow any accomplishment or deed they may have done.
What are we, children? No, we're worse, because even children don't act like this.
This, and the coarsening of society, with porno and tatts and pierces everywhere you turn, makes me want to leave this so-called sophisticated modern world and become a hermit.
Wait a minute. I just came up with my new movie premise;)
One more transfusion, and I'll be a full-blooded Irishman.
-Peter Cushing in Island of Terror -
MitchConnor24 — 14 years ago(January 02, 2012 10:47 AM)
Great post. It really does make me laugh how people on IMDB get so offended, when told whether an actor was gay, bi or asexual. Just shows me how many close-minded and homophobic people there are out there.
I'm not bothered by people being homophobic or close-minded in the slightest, the annoying thing is when people deny that they are either of these two things.