The Crystal Starshooter Outfit has dropped!

• A lot of emphasis was put on the mob mentality that people adopted at the time and the fact that information/science is better than paranoia.
• However, the information isn’t all, there also must be empathy; Courtney passes out fliers about HIV but that only affects a few of the other students. People get more persuaded to their side after Courtney shows an interview with Isaac at the school assembly, which prompts more people to actually look at the information she hands out. 
• The issues Isaac faces are not sugarcoated; he explains to Courtney that he was forced to use a separate bathroom in his old hometown, and that his house was graffitied. After people find out he’s HIV+ in California, students are pulled out of school, with people starting rumors about having to bleach and burn everything he touched. 
• When Courtney stands up for him, her locker is spray-painted, and people begin avoiding her, assuming she has “AIDS germs.” 
• Adults begin protesting outside the school, demanding that Isaac be pulled out, and when one mom sees Courtney, she directs fire at her, saying that she should be kicked out, too. Courtney has to cry in the bathroom and her mom basically has to sneak her past the protestors to get home, and she then has to stay at her Dad’s for a few days until things cool down. 

• Homosexuality was not addressed at all in the text, and only in one paragraph in the Looking Back section, which mentions that people thought it was “gay man’s disease.”
• It’s mentioned at first that Reagan opposed AIDS research, but later a speech of his about understanding a little kid who died from AIDS is quoted, so mixed bag there.
• Whether this is good because it doesn’t introduce kids to homosexuality via such a bad time in our history or bad because it focuses on how it affects the straight-passing characters* is up for debate.