Biographer Discusses His New Book About Gay Rights

Before RENT was a musical and Ellen was Oprah, there were gay men and women who were left no choice but to fight the same fight all minorities have fought – for equality.

Vito Russo was one of those men.

Then there are men and women who write about the Vito Russo’s of the world, who document their struggles and replay in scenes instances that have flashed before their eyes and in dialogue, words that have passed through opening and closing lips, words that, in Russo’s case, have changed the world, forever.

Michael Schiavi is one of those men.

Having never met Russo, who died of AIDS during Schiavi’s senior year of college, he claims the two have a spiritual connection.

Friday night, at the , he stood at a podium, his pinstripe suit draped over his slim body, shiny black shoes slightly upturned at the toes and a well-manicured black goatee.

As he read passages from his book, Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo, to a crowd of about 40 people, all intently listening, his eyebrows furrowed. And, as he spoke of Russo, whom he spent four years formally learning about, his long, slender hands often went airborne, briefly frozen, further dramatizing the conviction he had in the point he was making.

“Gay people were perpetual targets of the law,” ended one of Schiavi’s passages about being openly gay in a 1980s New York where it was still legal to fire someone “just because they were gay.”

Russo did not only fight against injustices such as this, he was also outspoken about the AIDS epidemic, which, according to Schiavi, had killed 50,000 people before President Reagan had ever uttered the acronym in public.

“Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches,” Russo once said in a speech. “Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you've lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn't happening to them.”

In attendance was one of Russo’s former boyfriends, William R. Johnson.

He sat in the church’s lobby, selling books to an obviously moved crowd after the lecture.

“The book was a very difficult read for me,” he said. “Because not only do I know Vito, – not only did I know Vito – but I know everybody who was mentioned in the book.”

Exiting the Church, into the crisp September night, the nearby bars emptied noise onto the sidewalks and the crowd of about 40 people walked to their cars smiling.