This is so true. More than half my friends died. My best friend in Act Up with me was so filled with despair that he acquired HIV on purpose and died.

I wore the pink triangle for years, either in the form of buttons or a large patch sewn onto my jacket. I wore the triangle in protests and actions, and in daily life.

It astonishes me every time I realize that some people today think of Keith Haring as just a really interesting pop artist who used color and action well.

By the way, to add something interesting to your excellent history, many people who wore the pink triangle in Nazi concentration camps were not liberated after the war. They were taken directly to German prisons to serve out sentences for homosexuality.

While the US and other Allied armies may have tolerated homosexual behavior on the down low, they were quick to criminally punish it if it became public, and they did not liberate queer people from the camps the way did other people.

Queer concentration camp survivors fought for decades to have criminal records expunged. The effort eventually succeeded, but most of the victims did not live to see the day.