The day Magic Johnson changed the world

Every generation, it seems, has a moment in time in which something happens that affects everyone. For
folks a little older than me, there was a November day in 1963, when
news of President Kennedy's assassination shocked the world.

For
my generation, it was a November afternoon in 1991, 15 years ago when a
different shocking announcement literally changed the world.

The
announcement, of course, was that Earvin "Magic" Johnson, a basketball
player for the Los Angeles Lakers, was retiring because he had tested
positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Everyone remembers
where they were when they heard the news. This wasn't just any
basketball player, or any retirement. And this wasn't just any disease.

At the time, the announcement sounded very much
like a death sentence for Magic. At the time, it was. One headline the
following day to a sidebar story on Magic was chillingly succinct:
"Magic's life expectancy uncertain." That article began this way: "Now
that Magic Johnson has been diagnosed as having the virus that causes
AIDS, he could live for as little as months or for as long as a decade,
physicians said ..."

On a subliminal level, it
was the end of a lifestyle that many men (not just professional
athletes) engaged in. No longer would it be possible to have multiple
sex partners without thinking of — or paying — the consequences. The
same week that Johnson announced that he had tested positive from
having unprotected sex with women, Wilt Chamberlain (one of the very
best players in NBA history) was promoting his book, in which he
claimed to have had sex with 20,000 different women. AIDS had been in
the public consciousness since 1981, but at the time it was largely
viewed as a disease that only homosexual men contracted