The Gay Men's Health Crisis has a program of support groups for the 'primary care givers' of people with AIDS. Having been such a care giver, I joined a group during the final months of my friend's illness and the experience helped me get through those dismal days.
The group consisted of six gay men whose lovers had advanced AIDS infections, and a female volunteer therapist who directed and focused our discussions. The experience was warm, loving and often almost unbearably moving as we sustained each other through rituals of fear, anger and denial, and finally helped each other face our lovers' deaths.
Throughout my time in the group I was aware of a compelling fact: no one ever discussed or seriously contemplated leaving his ailing lover. I remember feeling that those homophobes who depict gay men as superficial, uncaring and incapable of deep and profound love and commitment to each other had obviously never been in such a room, or known such men.
— Gabriel Rotello, “Party’s Over,” a negative review of the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, Ph.D., OutWeek Magazine No. 2, July 3, 1989, p. 51.
