Op-Docs She Believed Self-Love Was the Antidote to AIDS Louise Hay’s controversial brand of self-love drew in thousands during the AIDS crisis.
By Matt WolfMr. Wolf is a filmmaker. In January 1985, six gay men gathered in the self-help author Louise Hay’s living room to discuss a terrifying new disease.
At that time fewer than 8,000 cases of AIDS had been reported in the United States. Yet as the deadly epidemic rapidly expanded — within 10 years, over half a million cases would be reported, and over 300,000 deaths — so did Hay’s “Hayride” support group meetings.
Hay began using her platform to tell gay men that they could overcome AIDS through self-love. Naturally those claims — a reflection of the spread of new-age philosophies about.