Who is Luke Sissyfag?

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Who is Luke Sissyfag?

Advocate (01/25/94) No. 646/647, P. 45 (Bull, Chris)

While 1993 will be remembered for its large-scale, well- publicized AIDS demonstrations and worldwide protests, some activists say the most widely covered protest this year was the action of one 19-year-old man who dared interrupt the president during a speech on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. "Talk is cheap, and we need action," shouted Luke Sissyfag mid-speech. "Bill, while me and my community are dying in ever-increasing numbers, all you do is talk." Bill Dobbs, a member of ACT-UP in New York City, called Sissyfag's impassioned protest "a great moment in the history of modern-day AIDS heckling," adding that Sissyfag "forced a lot of people to wake up from the fog of complacency that is surrounding AIDS." The activist, who changed his last name from Montgomery to Sissyfag in 1992 to "take away the power of the insults I had heard," says he staged his protest to draw attention to what he perceives as the administration's sluggish response to AIDS. He also wanted to remind AIDS lobbying groups that they are responsible for failing to hold Clinton to his campaign promises on AIDS. Sissyfag says he hopes his one-man demonstration will trigger a resurgence of AIDS activism across the country. Political observers say that the fact that the most visible AIDS protest of 1993 was staged by a single person indicates the shifting politics of AIDS and the state of AIDS activism. "There's no question that the whole AIDS movement has undergone a transformation with the advent of a Democratic administration," notes Christopher H. Foreman Jr., a research associate at Brookings Institution, a Washington-based policy and analysis group. "Opposition is much more difficult to muster because the administration can no longer be defined as the enemy."

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