I favor the legalizing of most currently banned drugs. I have a long record of criticizing conservative moralists, most recently in a New York Times Magazine cover story lamenting the decline of conservatism. Most objective readers would, I think, characterize my politics as pretty libertarian. And no one now denies that that year was a watershed in the American epidemic, when death rates fell precipitously and new treatments liberated thousands from debilitating illness. There is also no evidence, contra Kurth, that this has reversed itself.
Death rates continue to drop, if more slowly.
Epidemiologically, the peak of AIDS in America is now widely recognized to have occurred in 1993. But I have long argued for basic civil rights for homosexuals, most importantly the right to marry and to military service. I regard these rights as more fundamental constitutionally and morally than the current identity-politics agenda of the far left, which is an honest difference of opinion. The difference is that I don't claim that the left has no concern for most gay people because of their beliefs. But he does more than this.