Ronald Reagan's Other Legacy

A number of news outlets are gushing over the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth - especially those that act as a branch of the increasingly insane Republican Party. As noted before, they rewrite history with abandon and leave out inconvenient chapters that are not to their liking. A case in point is Reagan's huge failure to address the HIV/AIDS crisis early on. We will never know how many lives were needlessly lost as a result of the failure to grapple with the crisis early on. Karen Ocamb has a piece on LGBT Pov that reminds us that Reagan failed LGBT citizens in a huge manner and also helped empower some in the Christian Right that helped turn the GOP into a quasi-sectarian political party and made gay bashing a party platform. Here are some highlights from Karen' s piece:
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America is gushing Sunday over former President Ronald Reagan in recognition of what would have been his 100th birthday. Produced by Reagan groupies, the long-weekend celebrations at the newly primped Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley are glitzy and reverent evocations of an imagined man.
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For LGBT people, Ronald Reagan’s presidency was the far different “mourning in America.” And unlike Nixon who was forced to resign for covering up the political Watergate scandal, Reagan didn’t even bother covering up his cold disdain, his deliberate neglect, his abject refusal to help gay men stricken in 1981 by a strange new communicable disease that turned out to be AIDS. But there was no “AIDSgate” for Reagan; the White House agreed with the Religious Right that gays deserved what they got – they deserved to die.
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Rev. Jerry Falwell, head of the Moral Majority, said, “AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals.” Patrick Buchanan, Reagan’s Press Secretary, said AIDS was “nature’s revenge on gay men.” Antigay Gary Bauer, Reagan’s domestic policy advisor, kept Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (selected because he was an anti-abortion Christian fundamentalist) away from Reagan
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Reagan finally mentioned the word “AIDS” in October 1986 and was virtually forced to deliver his first major speech on AIDS on May 31, 1987 on the eve of the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington. He was the invited by Elizabeth Taylor to speak at a fundraiser for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, which Hudson helped start with a $250,000 grant given to Taylor.
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The terrible irony for LGBT people is that in the very beginning of the epidemic there was hope that Ronald Reagan would DO something. . . . But once in office, Reagan turned his back on the gay friends and staff he and his wife Nancy had known for years.
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We need to remember ALL aspects of history if we are to learn from it. Sadly, the GOP frenzy over Reagan is most selective in what is recalled while dark chapters are made to disappear.