Because organized gays saved us from a pandemic.

They stood in line for hours, a row of bodies wading through thick walls of summer heat. They wore short-shorts and loose tanks and AirPods while they scrolled and putzed around and occasionally shared nervous, hopeful glances. Technically, they were in line to get vaccinated for monkeypox, but, honestly, “waiting in line at my favorite gay bar had a similar energy,” says vaccinegoer Josh H.

“You were familiar with a lot of faces that you saw there,” says Patryk Kot. “I saw people that ran into people they went out with or close friends in the same line.”

“A lot of the health-care providers who were giving the vaccine were queer and trans themselves. Everybody was sort of looking at each other,” says queer activist Nick Diamond. “I was checking to see if any of the guys there were on Grindr. It was just—I dunno, it’s different.”

But that bond was also a product of mounting fear. By late July, the city had officially declared monkeypox a publichealth emergency. Nearly 100 new cases a day were being reported in New York, while federal mismanagement had led to widespread vaccine shortages.

“We knew that we really had to build a response that leaned on the lessons learned from aids activists and still considered new lessons learned from covid,” Diamond says. As summer progressed, gay clubs put up informational flyers in their bathrooms. Community-health workers set up booths at Pride events. Local queer and trans influencers who’d had monkeypox shared their stories, using TikTok and Instagram to show painful lesions. “At various times in gay history, gay men’s health was not prioritized by the larger medical community,” says queer community-health activist Michael Donnelly. That history creates a “basis upon which we can have uncomfortable conversations with each other a little bit more easily than some other groups.” Donnelly acknowledges there’s also self-interest in all that sharing. “There’s this really kind of beautiful self-reinforcing dynamic that says, ‘If I can help my community be healthy and happy, then I can be healthy and happy.’”

Just a few months later, around early November, new reported cases had gone down to two or three a day. “It was just another example,” Diamond says, “of the queer and trans community stepping up to take care of themselves.”