The History of HIV/AIDS at The Body Politic

David S. Churchill

Department of History,

University of Manitoba,

Winnipeg, Canada

During the 1970s and 1980s the City of Toronto, Canada, had one of the most radical and politically engaged lesbian and gay communities in North America. At the centre of this community was the “gay liberation” newspaper The Body Politic (TBP), which, provided critically engaged and historically informed analysis of same-sex sexuality and politics across North America. Arguably, the most intellectual and leftist lesbian and gay periodical in North America, TBP operated as a non-profit collective whose members saw their publication not simply as a newspaper, but as an extension of their lesbian and activism. The focus on activism had its consequence, particularly the newspapers unflinching commitment to liberationist politics. As a result the TBP was subject to police raids and a series of lengthy and costly legal trials, which the newspaper eventually won. When the TBP ceased publication in 1987 however it had less to do with these legal battles and their aftermath and more to do with the effects of HIV/AIDS on the Toronto’s gay community and the TBP collective itself.

This paper will examine the impact of HIV/AIDS on TBP, how it was written about and covered in the pages of the newspaper, how the collective members responded to HIV/AIDS as a political challenge, and finally how HIV/AIDS impacted on the staff, contributors and collective members on a personal level. I argue that it was the operation of HIV/AIDS in the political activism, community organization and personal lives of the collective members that made TBP unsustainable and ultimately lead to the closure of the newspaper.