Op-Docs
She Believed Self-Love Was the Antidote to AIDS
Louise Hay’s controversial brand of self-love drew in thousands during the AIDS crisis.
Mr. Wolf is a filmmaker.
In January 1985, six gay men gathered in the self-help author Louise Hay’s living room to discuss a terrifying new disease. At that time fewer than 8,000 cases of AIDS had been reported in the United States. Yet as the deadly epidemic rapidly expanded — within 10 years, over half a million cases would be reported, and over 300,000 deaths — so did Hay’s “Hayride” support group meetings.
Hay began using her platform to tell gay men that they could overcome AIDS through self-love. Naturally those claims — a reflection of the spread of new-age philosophies about positive thinking — were met with pointed criticism for being unscientific and even harmful. Her message came, though, at a time when people with AIDS faced deep stigmatization. A 1985 Los Angeles Times poll found that a majority of Americans supported a quarantine of AIDS patients. Some respondents even favored marking them with tattoos.
In a time of hopelessness and government neglect, people cope on their own terms, and resilience can take unusual forms. The short documentary above explores how, for a number of people confronting trauma caused by a homophobic society and familial rejection, the Hayrides provided solace in the face of an almost certain death sentence.
As the film’s narrator, David Ault, says of the Hayrides, “there’s a difference between curing and healing.”
Matt Wolf is a filmmaker based in New York.
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Opinion | Louise Hay Believed Self-Love Was the Antidote to AIDS - The New York Times
"love" - Google News
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