In the wake of Nancy Reagan's death, I previously posted a piece on her heartless refusal to help her supposed friend, Rock Hudson, as he desperately sought medical help as he died of AIDS. Her apparent concerns? Appearances and not upsetting the Christian Taliban that was almost jubilant over the "gay plague" that was said to be God's punishment for homosexuals. Contrast Nancy Reagan's behavior with that of Elizabeth Taylor who did the right thing and had the view that her critics could be damned. In this atmosphere, Hillary Clinton committed a major blunder - for which she has quickly apologized - by making the false statements that Nancy Reagan had helped ignite a needed conversation about HIV/AIDS. Clinton's motivation, no doubt, was a desire to say something nice about a fellow former First Lady. Yet, sadly whitewashing the failings of the departed does no good for anyone. A opened eyed view of accurate history should always be the goal, not creating false fairy tales. The Nation looks at Hillary's blunder and quick apology. Here are highlights:
Many gay men of
a certain age—let’s say in their late 30s and up—love Hillary Clinton. I have
no evidence to prove this, but just trust me that it is true. . . . . I
think the root of this adoration lies in her earned status as a survivor. In a
remarkably long and tumultuous public life, Hillary Clinton has been
denigrated, lied about, mansplained to, and grossly caricatured. She was
publicly betrayed by her husband in a humiliating fashion, and her greatest
ambition was thwarted in a protracted and ugly primary battle. Throughout it
all, she has endured—and come November, she could quite possibly triumph. She
grew strong, and she learned how to get along. For better or worse, I think gay
men of my generation and older see in Hillary a kindred spirit—one tough woman
who has taken more than her fair share of knocks and come out the better for
it. We see her pain, and her resilience, and we identify with it. The question
after today is—does she see ours?
In an interview
with MSNBC at Nancy Reagan’s funeral, Clinton praised both Ronald Reagan
and his wife for their work on AIDS. “It may be hard for your viewers to
remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the
1980s,” Clinton said, but “because of both president and Mrs. Reagan, in
particular Mrs. Reagan, we started a national conversation when before nobody
would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that, too, is
something that I really appreciate.”
This is a
bizarre and historically
inaccurate statement, to say the least. It’s the equivalent of lauding
George Wallace for starting a national conversation on segregation. Reagan gave
his first speech devoted to AIDS in 1987, years after the epidemic first
struck. In
that speech, he emphasized HIV testing before issuing marriage licenses,
for which exactly zero gay men could apply. By the end of that year, over
40,000 Americans, mostly gay men and IV drug users, had died of AIDS. Many,
many thousands more died later, deaths that could have been prevented had the
Reagan administration simply followed the advice of the medical establishment
and thrown more resources into prevention and treatment. In a nutshell, the
Reagan administration chose to ignore AIDS, until it couldn’t, at which point
its strategy was to protect straight America from the disease while throwing
vulnerable populations to the wolves.
During this
period, Hillary Clinton was an adult person—10 years plus out of Yale Law
School and the first lady of Arkansas. Since then, she has spent 30 years in
public service, helping run a foundation that is significantly devoted to
addressing HIV/AIDS and serving as Secretary of State during the peak of the
global AIDS epidemic. Given this record, her statement today is baffling,
infuriating, and hurtful.
Clinton has
since apologized
for her remarks, saying that she misspoke. The swiftness of her apology is
appreciated, and to be clear, I don’t think her statement today was calculated
to pander to the right. I also don’t think it signals some grand reversal of
her position on gay rights or HIV/AIDS. Like most Democrats, including
President Obama, Clinton was lousy on gay rights until very recently (notable
exception: Bernie Sanders), and there’s every reason to expect she’d support
pro-gay legislation like ENDA
That said, her
statement today revealed a disturbing lack of empathy to and awareness about
HIV positive people and the gay community. And her apology, which doesn’t
acknowledge the righteous pain caused by her remarks, indicates a social
distance that gay men might want to take a closer look at. My hope is that she
issues a new statement, one that really understands the gay community’s
struggle with HIV/AIDS
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