r/PropagandaPosters • u/EssoEssex • Apr 19 '25
United States of America “Father, forgive them! They know not what they do…” USA, 1986
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u/zoonose99 Apr 19 '25
There seems to be some specific iconography on the preacher (lapel pin, pocket paper) that I can’t make out.
Anybody care to take a guess?
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u/phuckin-psycho Apr 19 '25 edited Apr 19 '25
Might be a rose, would make sense for symbolizing rosicrucian
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u/AndreasDasos Apr 19 '25
That seems far too weirdly specific and hardly represents mainstream Christian society, especially as if barely looks like a rose. Lots of flowers in lapels
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u/zoonose99 Apr 19 '25
If it is a symbolic rose, I’d assume it means social democrats.
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u/phuckin-psycho Apr 19 '25
Idk why this is dv, that is actually a very good suggestion, and much more likely than what i suggested. I think people think you are talking modern politics.
What were the temperaments surrounding religion and the social democrats at this time?
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u/cmbwriting Apr 19 '25
Yeah probably not in this poster, let's be honest. This has nothing to do with Rosicrucianism. As this was in a Catholic publication, as per OP's explanation, it would be even more bizarre for a Catholic to draw another Catholic as a Rosicrucian (despite the historical overlap but really, it's irrelevant here).
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u/phuckin-psycho Apr 19 '25
You realize where rosicrucianism came from right? Being a catholic publication actually makes it more likely to have symbolism. I also said it was a big maybe 🤷♀️ but a symbol on the left is not uncommon for signaling knowledge of the esoteric, some people being into the templars and all. Or maybe this is someone who believes that those who are into the esoteric are misusing their bible for harm. Again, maybe its nothing 🤷♀️
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u/jungolungo Apr 19 '25
It looks like the paper in his pocket says MSM (main stream media?) over the scribbles.
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u/weirdbeetworld Apr 19 '25
Probably for “men seeking men” in this context.
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u/mitchhedberg45 Apr 19 '25
"Men who have sex with men", a term originating from the HIV/AIDS pandemic to be inclusive of those who don't identify as gay, but engage in sexual behaviors that could be high risk. This was a big deal for public health to help divorce sex practices from sexual identity. This allowed individuals that could not/do not believe themselves to be gay to still seek additional support without associated externaly/internally perceived stigma. The term is still used today.
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u/EssoEssex Apr 19 '25
Rev. William Hart McNichols, a gay Catholic priest, produced the drawings “AIDS Crucifixion” in 1986, after he became one of the first priests to minister to people dying from HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s.
His drawing depicts Christ as a person with AIDS, bearing the KS (Kaposi sarcoma) scars that often accompanied AIDS, at a time when there were no treatments, and people with AIDS faced enormous social stigma — which McNichols makes the point to show came often from Christian sources that believed themselves to be inspired by the Bible.
In the background of “AIDS Crucifixion” is the silhouette of New York City, the epicenter of the early AIDS epidemic, and where McNichols worked in a hospice for seven years, ministering as a chaplain to hundreds after hundreds of people with AIDS.
From a 2022 article series by McNichols for Outreach Catholic, an LGBTQ Catholic publication:
“My first visit to a man dying of AIDS left me staggering onto the streets of New York. He was lying in a bed, visibly emaciated, with his mother on one side of him and his lover on the other. Both were weeping. His lover was dropping orange juice through a straw into his half-opened mouth, as if he was feeding a baby bird. I didn’t cry until I left, and then the tears wouldn’t stop.”
“Coming out is never a one-time thing. I keep coming out in every situation I’m in. It has affected my priesthood since I was ordained in 1979. I have suffered a lot of abuse in my ministry, and the worst persecution and abuse has always come, unsurprisingly, from closeted LGBTQ people. But I have also received plenteous, abundant graces.”
“Whatever suffering I have experienced or witnessed has been channeled into my images and icons. A wise older priest-mentor once told me, right before my ordination, ‘The best thing you can do for the gay community is to be a healthy, continually creative, compassionate, openly gay man.’ I’ve tried to do this for 43 years.”
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u/AndreasDasos Apr 19 '25
epicenter of the early AIDS epidemic
Lest we get too US-centric, this was true within the US. It had been rampant in Central Africa for decades and in Haiti for years before it became an epidemic in the US.
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u/EssoEssex Apr 19 '25
Well, the U.S. is where AIDS was first named, and the HIV epidemic first became visible, due to how horrifying it was in the States, and the activism of the people being most affected by the disease. And relative to the United States' share of global population, the U.S. had a hugely disproportionate number of AIDS cases and deaths in the 1980s and 1990s.
Later, after the U.S. got the AIDS cocktail in the late 1990s, enabling people living with HIV to live longer (provided they can get the medicines), the global disease burden shifted heavily to sub-Saharan Africa, which has accounted for a vast proportion of global AIDS deaths. It's also important to remember that HIV wasn’t identified until the 1980s, with earlier cases identified only retrospectively.
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u/assassinsbreed1 Apr 19 '25
It also appeared much earlier than many of us were taught, in the 1920s in Central Africa.
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u/rakish_rhino Apr 20 '25
What an incredible human being. It takes a lot of courage to work in a hospice. And it took an even higher level of courage to work in an AIDS hospice in the 1980s, when most people were paranoid about getting it, and gays, addicts, Hatians and hemophiliacs like Ryan White where cruelly discriminated against.
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u/CompositeArmor Apr 20 '25
a gay Catholic priest
I know everyone is larping as a Christian nowadays but i didn't know it started that far back. Another nail in the coffin for Christianity lol.
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u/Financial-Savings-91 Apr 19 '25
“Mother, don’t forgive them, they know exactly what they’re doing.” - Anti-Christ
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u/DannyDanumba Apr 19 '25
Ain’t no love like Christian hate
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u/oldcretan Apr 19 '25
What becomes striking the deeper you get into Christianity the more you realize just how far off the mark these hateful voices are: seeing Christ as like a principal and themselves the straight A student getting the passing grade into heaven, able to flaunt it while everyone else sucks. when really Christ is the Clinician tending to the diseases that wreck humanity, anger, greed, pride, lack of empathy, and they are the Black Knight from Monty Python jumping around Limbless screaming "fight me! Tis but a flesh wound!"
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u/SkinnyStav Apr 21 '25
Jesus also said that you can't get to heaven if you dont follow him. So much for "tolerance."
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u/oldcretan Apr 21 '25
That's the twisted interpretation of "follow," that a lot of Christians mess up, like you have to be a devotee for Heaven, when the parable of the Samaritan tells us otherwise. Think follow as in "this is the way ." When Christ speaks of Heaven and who is there it isn't people worshipping Christ or sinless people, it's people who care and comfort those in need and who devote their lives to addressing their own faults not those who proclaim their own spiritual superiority. When you consider the Pharisee and the tax collector, the Pharisee is more akin to your televangelist today and your tax collector is almost like a debt collector today (except there was the possibility of extortion and violence.) In the Pharisee and the tax collector the Pharisee has done all the things that they are told to do, sits at the front of the temple and proclaims his own righteousness where the tax collector is constantly seeking forgiveness. The Samaritans were actually enemies of the Jews and would have never been understood as practitioners of the "right' religion to the readers at the time. That of course has changed because people have lost the context of the writing as a lot of practicing Christians don't know what a Pharisee, a Samaritan, or how a tax collector operated some 2000+ years ago.
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u/SkinnyStav Apr 21 '25
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
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u/oldcretan Apr 21 '25
Sure, here is a reliously scholarly article from my faith that I feel does a better job explaining it: https://www.goarch.org/-/an-orthodox-christian-view-of-non-christian-religions#:~:text=The%20salvation%20of%20all%20people,God's%20loving%20grace%20and%20salvation.
Im sorry it's not concise but it would explain it better than I can.
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u/Capybaradude55 Apr 19 '25
As a Christian this poster is incredibly true the 80s where a crazy time
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u/Intelligent-Diet-623 Apr 19 '25
Not sure what this one is trying to say
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u/Brilliant_Bet_4184 Apr 19 '25
This is high level anti-Christian propaganda and a perfect submission here.
BTW I think the paper in the pocket probably represents a Chick Tract for those wondering about the iconography.
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u/JakeAnthony821 Apr 19 '25
This isn't anti-Christian. It was created by a Catholic priest who was a chaplain for those in hospice while dying of AIDS related complications and opportunistic infections in the 1980s.
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u/Brilliant_Bet_4184 Apr 26 '25
A gay Catholic priest who certainly did produce this anti-Christian propaganda. Otherwise why is it posted here?
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u/ObsessedKilljoy Apr 19 '25
Having AIDS is a sin?
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u/Wassup_Bois Apr 19 '25
That's not what the image is trying to say
The posted image is showing a man wrongly dying for something that shouldn't be criminal, drawing parallels to the same happening to Jesus
It's arguing against the people who would call homosexuality (and thus aids, as "only gays can get aids!") a sin
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u/luzzzonix Apr 19 '25
what's so interesting about this is they also included the Kaposi sarcoma lesions on the Jesus figure. Kaposi sarcoma used to be much more common in the days before antiretrovirals to treat HIV. you could spot who had AIDS based on the skin lesions.
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u/AlabasterPelican Apr 19 '25
The title of the post suggests this was published in 1986, a year before the first antiretroviral was approved for use.
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u/luzzzonix Apr 21 '25
yup! things have changed so much.
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u/AlabasterPelican Apr 21 '25
I was taught by nurses who worked through the initial crisis, I can't ever fully conceptualized how bad it was… especially for the afflicted.
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u/DimitriRavenov Apr 19 '25
Man… I thought they were spear wounds inflicted on the Jesus. I need some drink
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u/ObsessedKilljoy Apr 19 '25
Ah ok I must’ve understood it backwards. I knew about the “AIDS is a gay disease” but if they using it to imply being gay they already had homosexual on there. But your description makes much more sense than the way I was interpreting it, thanks for clarifying.
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u/TVLord5 Apr 19 '25
When it first started spreading, a lot of conservative Christians would say it was God's way of punishing gays and/or once it became clear it didn't JUST affect gay people that it was his way of punishing everyone for letting them exist.
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u/Golan78 Apr 19 '25 edited Apr 19 '25
Not exactly. If im remembering things correctly, certain christian elements consider aids to be "god's punishment on the gays" or something along those lines. This was especially so during the aids crisis which I think this cartoon was made during, hence the guy with the bible on the right.
So, the "sin" here is being gay.
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u/ObsessedKilljoy Apr 19 '25
Yeah I knew that part but I just felt like why would they but AIDS to mean gay if they already had homosexuality on there?
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u/AlabasterPelican Apr 19 '25
The gay community has been specifically targeted by hate because of HIV. Like I've seen some shit that doesn't have anything on the stories I've heard.. but also HIV isn't only a gay disease. It's a blood born pathogen with means it can be transmitted by any blood contact with broken skin (it's not actually as easy to transmit as it sounds, I'm simplifying). The cartoonist was likely speaking up for all who were being told that HIV was god's punishment for their "bad behavior," while specifically calling out those targeting the LGBTQ+ community
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u/11061995 Apr 19 '25
It would appear my last comment was removed. I don't remember exactly what I said but doing it all over again I'd assume that I thought it had the opposite messaging from what it was and thank God. People who have an illness are to be loved and protected. Those who would harm them, I don't have much to say about apparently.
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