When the song first came out (30 years ago yesterday), there was not a single review, comment, TV spot or similar that linked it to AIDS or the very scary, OTT 'don't die of ignorance' campaigns (launched the same year: 1987) played on a loop on terrestrial TV. There is zero homophobic in reacting negatively to an incorrect assertion being made 30 years after the fact (and I suspect Morrissey at the time would have made it clear if it had such a profound meaning as empathy for AIDS sufferers, but he was busy making new music).
The article is actually borderline homophobic - "Morrissey opens up pop heterosexual clichés – queers them.." is a very poor choice of words when the disease was attributed to only "queers" at the time. It took quite a while for the world not to view AIDS as a gay only issue and Morrissey certainly wasn't writing some amazingly forward thinking lyrics by making the song about a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend.
More article bollocks:
The title 'GIAC is an AIDS song' is a tiny clue to their agenda and is asserting a direct link to AIDS.
"How a unique alternative-rock tune became the Smiths' most controversial song". - utterly factually incorrect - far more 'scandal' with other songs.
"...is perhaps the most famous – and most scandalous – of all songs recorded by the Smiths. It's because of that shock, hilarity and scandal..." - nope, not the most famous, no real shock or scandal attached and would Moz really write about AIDS with 'hilarity' in mind? - the writer is doing this to link AIDS to something 'scandalous' and 'controversial' for drama more than fact. I remember more people laughing at the title and lyrics when on TOTPs than any links to people dying of AIDS.
"...the song's terse, subtle elegance goes on to address a worldwide trauma."
And
"It's a response to the crisis that took the lives and broke the hearts of so many friends and lovers – the holocaust of the 1980s." - both direct assertions that it's about AIDS - that is slightly more than an 'interpretation'. More drama added with 'holocaust' (we all know what happened to the last person who used that term!).
"The realization of suddenly threatened illness and possible death emboldens the seemingly simple, "shocking" subject so that this brief, two-and-a-half minute, song tests the substance of modern living, surviving and grieving during the Plague."
- Again, overused drama to really hammer home how right the writer is - the song is now about surviving a 'plague'.
"...describes the condition of a fragmenting society that likely was getting worse: Indifference to AIDS tragedy – which the song reproaches –anticipates the next millennium's extreme political polarization." - Morrissey writing 'I'd rather not get involved' morphs in to this drivel which ends with Morrissey becoming psychic about future world developments...just tripe.
There is no knee jerking nor outrage about the gay community or a killer disease. The reaction is to the over dramatic garbage and twisted facts. Yes we can debate fluffy concepts such as 'interpretation' ad nauseum, but songs can actually have ascribed meanings too - the whole tone of this article is definitive not speculative like it should be.
Living through its release shapes how you think about the record and the RS assertion, I suspect, is completely alien to anyone who bought the record in '87.
I think this kind of posthumous over examination would garner the same reaction from say Beatles fans if you said 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' was actually a song about a paedophile's desire to offend - yes, the lyrics can have a that interpretation, but it's bloody daft and factually / historically incorrect. People reacting to that type of assertion, much like this article are not doing so because of homophobia - it's simply because it's garbage.
Not even I read long posts,
FWD.