After being arrested for
violating a restraining order against his husband, on November 24, 2013, Yale
professor Samuel See died while in lockup at the Union Avenue Detention Center
in New Haven, Connecticut. The death received a media attention around the
world, with readers arguing online about whether See's death was caused by
police misconduct, as his friends and colleagues charged in interviews and
during a well-publicized march and protest.
When an autopsy revealed that he
had died from a methamphetamine-induced heart attack, online commentary changed
dramatically, with See's many supporters rhetorically abandoning him and others
describing him as a stereotype of the gay meth addict who deserved his fate.
In
this article, I argue that his shift in the interpretation and meaning of See's
death can be traced to the discursive structures left by the moral panic about
crystal meth in United States (1996-2008), which comprised within it a
secondary moral panic about crystal meth in the gay community and its
connection to the spread of HIV and a possible super-strain (2005-2008).
Purchase full article at: http://goo.gl/9uBg95
Program in Global Health David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
More at: https://twitter.com/hiv_insight
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