AIDS Crisis

The AIDS crisis beginning in 1981 provided the Christian right with what they framed as providential confirmation of their theology. Jerry Falwell called AIDS 'the wrath of God upon homosexuals.' Pat Robertson said the epidemic was God's judgment on a society that tolerated homosexuality. These were not fringe positions — they were stated from the most prominent pulpits in American evangelicalism. The theological framing of AIDS as divine judgment accomplished several things simultaneously: it provided apparent evidence that homosexuality was uniquely sinful (other sins didn't produce plagues), it mobilized evangelical opposition to any government response that didn't involve condemning homosexuality, and it positioned LGBTQ people as not merely different but as active threats to God's order. The Reagan administration's near-total silence on AIDS in its early years — a silence shaped in part by the evangelical base that had helped elect Reagan — allowed the epidemic to spread far more widely than it otherwise would have. The human cost of exploiting this event is measured in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Documented themes

• Anti-LGBTQ
• Christian Nationalism
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections to AIDS Crisis

• Jerry Falwell Sr. exploited (1983) — Falwell used the AIDS crisis as theological confirmation that homosexuality was uniquely sinful, calling it 'the wrath of God upon homosexuals.' This framing justified legislative discrimination and opposition to public health responses.
• Pat Robertson exploited (1983) — Robertson used the AIDS crisis to argue that God was judging a society that tolerated homosexuality, reinforcing the theological framework that LGBTQ people were a threat to God's covenant with America.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 118-125