On December 10, 1989 ACT UP demonstrated both inside and outside St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, the building a bastion of Catholicism. Five thousand people, says ACT UP’s website, protested the Roman Catholic Archdiocese's public stand against AIDS education and condom distribution, and its opposition to a women's right to abortion.
As protesters jostled with police outside, a few dozen entered the cathedral, interrupted Mass, chanted slogans or lay down in the aisles. One pr