Elizabeth Taylor, the Academy Award winning actress, died today. She was 79.
Although Liz Taylor’s life and career are well-known, it is only appropriate to recall some of her good works. I am not referring to any of her 70+ films or television appearance, but rather her work helping to win the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Liz was, without doubt, one of the most inspirational figures in the fight against AIDS. In the early 1980s, at a time when most Americans thought of HIV/AIDS as something that didn’t affect them and a great many stayed silent about the epidemic, Liz Taylor was among the first to speak out on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS. Her commitment to the issue and considerable star power helped to take the fight against HIV/AIDS right into the mainstream of American society.
In 1984, Liz helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and started the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF). She also organized the first AIDS fundraiser to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles. Also that year, she befriended an Indiana teen named Ryan White who contracted AIDS from contaminated blood. Her friendship with White along with several others, including Sir Elton John and MIchael Jackson, sparked enough action to create what is known today as the Ryan White Act.
At her acceptance speech at the 11th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in 2000, Elizabeth Taylor said, ”There is no gay agenda, it’s a human agenda,” the icon added, ”Why shouldn’t gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else? What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance.”
Elizabeth Taylor was on Twitter. One of her last tweets was, “ Give. Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow.”
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