Now I know that there was a woman who worked with one of the lawyers in another firm who had aids who did not get fired. Now she contracted it through a blood transfusion which means it was not a sexual act. Andrew contracted his through a sexual act or at least as I understand it , does this means he was fired for being gay not having aids and if so how did they find out he was gay?
shareWell they would know if he had a blood transfusion. I mean that isn't something you can get without your employer knowing. They also would have assumed he wasn't a drug user based on the fact that he was a great lawyer and all and that their were no signs of drug use. So their only conclusion would have to be that he was gay because at the time it was still seen as a gay disease.
shareWalter Kenton, one of the senior partners at Andy's job, saw a lesion on Andy's forehead and seemed to suspect right then and there that it was a lesion caused by k. sarcoma, a skin cancer caused specifically by AIDS. Andy's doctor recently told him that his bloodwork came back with bad news, that he had progressed from being HIV+ to having full blown AIDS. Walter Kenton had worked with a woman at some other job or something who had the same KS lesions on her face. They are a cancer but for some reason, they go away and resurface later on other parts of the body, like when Andy had to unbutton his shirt later in the film. Andy was fired specifically because A.) His partners were TOLD by Walter Kenton that he had AIDS, and that scared the hell out of them. They were ignorant about how the disease can be contracted. B.) His partners were homophobic. 2 reasons: They didn't like gays and wanted him out, and they didn't want AIDS, and didn't know that they wouldn't get it from him unless they boinked him or something realllllly intimate.
I think Andy, after he hired Joe Miller to sue the partners for unlawful termination, was truthful about his homosexuality. He never lied to them, but they never asked either, and he never volunteered it. He never would have asked Mr. Wheeler, Hey are you gay? They found out he was gay somehow, but I'm not really sure how exactly, unless they found out only after Andy brought the lawsuit on them.
My guess is Andy was fired for both. One reason the woman in the other firm wasn'f fired was, yes, probably because she was "vitcimless" in her seroconversion, and also it maybe didn't include so many bigoted partners like Wyatt and Wheeler.
The partners did not have confirmation Andy was gay before framing him and then firing him, but they could guess it. They knew of the AIDS, and the odds back then were that an adult man with AIDS was gay. They probably further assumed it because Andy didn't share that he was infected. To them that meant he had more to hide from getting it "a dirty way." That's ridiculous, of course, but that's how these partners took it.
So I say Andy was fired for being a gay man with AIDS. Had he been out of the closet but not infected, would they have fired him? I don't know. My guess is, they'd have more slowly iced him out, but him having AIDS just made them even more on a mission to get him far away and ASAP.