TO All Those We’ve Lost So Far

e’ve lost more Americans to this novel strain of the coronavirus than we did in the last 70 years of wars, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Gulf, and Korea. But it’s a different kind of war that many LGBTQ folks are reminded of: the battleground of bodies lost to the AIDS epidemic while the government refused to act to save the lives of our gay, bi, and trans friends, husbands, fathers, and forebears. Ironic then that among the earliest LGBTQ people known to die from complications of COVID-19 was beloved playwright Terrence McNally, who lived through and chronicled the AIDS epidemic for the rest of America. Just two days later, the first nurse to die in New