the feminist librarian reads

During the 1980s and 1990s, the LGBT community came face to face with not only death, but with sociocultural biases that rob death of dignity. Be it out of homophobia or fear, people with AIDS were routinely denied the right to a “good death.” Lovers and friends were barred from entering hospital rooms to comfort the dying. Bereaved partners lost their homes because they had no legal claim to the property. Some people dying of AIDS resorted to adopting their partners in the hopes that that would protect their inheritance. Many funeral homes wouldn’t accept the corpses of people who had died of AIDS, and entirely too many families wouldn’t claim them either. The dead were frequently disposed of in trash bags.