"SUDDENLY, in the summer of 1985, when a movie star was diagnosed with the disease and the newspapers couldn't stop talking about it, the AIDS epidemic became palpable and the threat loomed everywhere...Rock Hudson riveted America's attention upon this deadly new threat for the first time, and his diagnosis became a demarcation that would separate the history of America before AIDS from the history that came after." Randy Shilts, And The Band Played On

ALL TRUE. Before Rock Hudson's diagnosis was revealed to the public in 1985, many Americans had never heard of AIDS. Afterwards, most had. One press release confirming the affliction of one national idol had done more to raise awareness about the disease than countless volumes of medical journals ever had.

But to say that Hudson's death sparked an intense national debate about AIDS would be a vast overstatement, if not a complete myth. In much of America, AIDS remained a taboo topic, and whatever vastly increased awareness the Hudson announcement had generated never translated into vastly increased understanding, despite vastly increased funding. Hudson himself never said a public word about the disease. And he wasn't the only one keeping mum. One actor friend of Hudson's refused to utter the word "AIDS" in public until 1987, seven years after the epidemic hit the United States. That person was named Ronald Reagan.

Last week, America watched Los Angeles Lakers guard Magic Johnson tell a throng of reporters and cameras that he had tested HIV-positive. We heard him say that he was retiring from basketball. And we saw him vow to join the struggle against AIDS as a national spokesperson. This time, perhaps, the demarcation between Before and After will be a more meaningful one.

IF YOU DON'T KNOW anything about Magic Johnson, you'll have to take the word of everyone who does that he is an amazing person, a paragon of unselfishness, humility, hard work, optimism and public-mindedness totally anomalous in today's sordid underworld of professional sports. It is no coincidence that the hundreds of players, reporters and league officials who know him personally--not to mention the millions of inner-city teenagers, schoolteachers, police officers and corporate executives who don't--were devastated by his announcement.

But while it seems unfair, almost cruel, to portray Magic's personal tragedy in a good news/bad news light, the fact remains that this 32-year-old athlete without a college degree has a chance to do what thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, doctors, teachers and advertisers have failed to do: get the American public, at long last, to listen to the facts about AIDS, to stop killing each other with unsterile needles and unprotected sex. Magic got tested--even if it was only for his insurance--and got his results. Anyone who has been exposed should be tested, too.

Perhaps we should not place our sports heroes on pedestals, but we do. And with the possible exception of Michael Jordan, who announced last week that he also plans to devote himself to the anti-AIDS campaign, none of our sports heroes occupies a loftier pedestal than Magic. His unblemished popularity crosses race lines, class lines, age lines, city lines. (Witness his dozens of successful product endorsements.)

That gives him a window of opportunity to prevent others from suffering his fate, the fate of thousands of less publicized Americans. Last Friday night, Magic launched his safe sex crusade, imploring viewers of the Arsenio Hall Show to use condoms: "I came to let the people know what time it is. Please put your thinking caps on and put your cap on down here."

AS THE MEDIA SHOWER Magic with adulation, it's easy to imagine that the roadblocks to AIDS education have been cleared. But obstacles remain. Obstacles like Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, a Democrat, who earlier this week told The Boston Globe that "I personally don't see how [distributing condoms in schools] is going to stop the spread of AIDS...Are we encouraging sex and therefore allowing further spread of the AIDS virus? That's something to be very concerned about, I think."

Magic Johnson can sell safe sex to a national audience, but there is little he can do about elected politicians out of touch with reality. Common sense tells us that Boston teenagers will probably continue to have sex even if Flynn (who was reelected last week with 75 percent of the vote) asks them not to. Common sense tells us that condom distribution, needle exchange and AIDS education could save lives. But politics, especially Boston politics, has never been known as an arena for common sense.

Misguided Puritanical dogmatism has always appealed to a certain clientele in the American marketplace of ideas. We can only hope that most Americans will buy the more enlightened product. The product Magic Johnson is selling.

Magic's unblemished popularity crosses race lines and class lines. Now, he has a chance to do what thousands of doctors, politicians and bureaucrats have failed to do: raise AIDS awareness.