That is my point. We felt their absence more acutely because gay people our age +/- 10 were out in a way that previous generations had not been. Obviously, closeted gay people had cultural influence before, but I don't think the AIDS cultural fallout would have been as profound 20-30 years before.

Yeah. When I was in college was also when my father came out. Before that he'd just leave hints like saying Haight Ashbury was a gay neighborhood before it was a hippie hangout.

The gay community and the people close to them might have been even more devastated, to lose so many who never got a chance to live freely, just as that door was finally starting to inch open. But I do not think the rest of us would not have felt their absence as acutely.