Lady Di Destroys AIDS Stigma
By: Jeffry J. Iovannone
Tags: Culture, Health, LGBTQ, HIV, News

Lady Di Destroys AIDS Stigma

Before her tragic death in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, helped to challenge the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS and gay men.

Over two decades after she died tragically in a car accident on August 31st, 1997 in Paris, France, Diana, Princess of Wales, is back in the spotlight following the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (now known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex) on May 19th, 2018. In August of 1997, I was preparing to enter tenth grade, and the news of Diana’s death is the only memory that I can immediately recall from that summer. There was something about Princess Diana that captivated me. She was poised, stylish, and her blue eyeliner was on point. At the time, I knew nothing of her charity work, and especially not her work with persons living with AIDS at a time when stigma and fear circulated openly. I now recognize the quality that made Diana so admired was her willingness to display her humanity openly.

Born Diana Spencer to a British noble family, she rose to international prominence when, in 1981, she wed Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne. Diana was known affectionately as the “People’s Princess” for being both publicly beloved and an atypical royal. She was involved with a variety of charitable organizations, taking on issues not common of a royal, and spoke publicly about her struggle with bulimia and her troubled marriage. Diana began her charity work during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic when there was much public misinformation as to how the HIV virus was contracted.

The epidemic began in 1981, the year Diana became a member of the British royal family, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an American government agency, identified cases of a form of pneumonia that typically manifests in those with compromised immune systems in gay men. In 1982, the CDC labeled the new phenomenon as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or, AIDS. By 1983, the HIV virus, the cause of AIDS, had been identified by French and American scientists.

Once the virus was discovered, medical professionals could better understand how it spread. HIV is contracted through exchange of bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal and rectal fluids, and breast milk and is not spread via air, water, toilets, food and drink, or casual physical contact. Despite this knowledge, during the height of the epidemic misinformation about the transmission of the virus was widespread. This public ignorance and fear was exemplified by the case of Ryan White, an American teenager who contracted HIV in 1984 following a blood transfusion for hemophilia. Following his AIDS diagnosis, White was denied admission to his school in Kokomo, Indiana. When White advocated for his right to an education, he gained national attention, becoming one of the public faces of the epidemic.

As for the gay community, fear of the disease combined with homophobia to create a toxic mixture. Gay men, in particular, were considered both deviant and diseased. In the United Kingdom, AIDS stigma caused negative attitudes towards homosexuality to peak during the 1980s, resulting in the passage of Section 28 of the Local Government Act of 1988. Section 28 of the act, which applied to England, Scotland, and Wales, specified that the government “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”

Amidst this climate of ignorance, stigma, and fear, Diana made headlines when, on April 19th of 1987, she attended the opening of the Middlesex Hospital AIDS ward in London, the first ward in the U.K. dedicated to the treatment of HIV/AIDS. At the opening, Diana was photographed by the press shaking the hand of a man with AIDS without wearing gloves. The photograph shows the Princess, then only 26 years old, holding the hand of a patient seated in his hospital room and facing away from the camera, her expression one of compassion and interest.