Nancy Reagan Finally Started a Conversation About AIDS -- 35 Years Too Late

With her death Nancy Reagan belatedly began a serious conversation about HIV/AIDS.  Sadly, the conversation has begun 35 years too late to help the tens of thousands who dies of AIDS during her husband's presidency, a presidency that marked the beginning of the Republican Party's selling of its soul to the Christofascists who have played a major role years later in the rise of Donald Trump and what I can only hope will be a catastrophic loss for the GOP in November.  True, Hillary Clinton unwittingly provoked even more conversation with her totally false initial remarks about the Reagan's foul legacy of turning a blind eye and cozying up to hate-filled modern day Pharisees (Clinton has twice apologized for her untrue remarks).  The good news is that at least in some circles, the much needed conversation about HIV/AIDS has been reignited.  Michelangelo Signorile has a piece in Huffington Post looks at the positive aspects of the aftermath of Nancy Reagan's death and Hillary's major case of foot in mouth.  Here are highlights:

Suddenly, Bernie Sanders has an AIDS/HIV policy paper.  It went up on his campaign website over the weekend, shortly after he attacked Hillary Clinton for her bewildering comments on Friday about Nancy Reagan in which Clinton claimed the now-deceased former first lady was a "low-key advocate" for people with AIDS during the Reagan administration, who, along with her husband, "started a national conversation" about AIDS.

Sanders now calls for establishing "a multibillion-dollar Prize Fund to incentivize drug development" that would "provide virtually universal access to lower-cost life-saving medicines for HIV/AIDS as soon as they are approved for sale." He doesn't address expanding access to PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), the drug combination approved to prevent HIV infection among HIV-negative people at risk, nor many other issues, but his "Prize Fund" is a start.

On CNN on Sunday morning, Sanders said, "I just don't know what she was talking about," regarding Clinton, though he was "glad she apologized." Clinton in fact apologized twice. The Clinton campaign had tweeted a statement from Clinton, a terse apology --"I misspoke...I'm sorry" -- sent on her feed on the day of Reagan's funeral, within hours of Clinton's comments, after a quick backlash had ensued.

Then on Saturday Clinton posted a fuller response online that lauded AIDS activists as those who truly started the conversation, talked about what she'd done as first lady on AIDS (and it should be noted that it was Bill Clinton's administration that turned things around after the horrific Reagan/Bush years), as a U.S. senator and as secretary of state. In her online post, Clinton took on the harsh HIV criminalization laws that stigmatize and criminalize people with HIV, and she discussed some plans if elected president, including making sure there's access to drug treatments, including PrEP for HIV negative people at risk.

It was a terrific statement, got a lot of media attention, and had the Sunday talk shows discussing the terrible, callous record of the Reagan administration on AIDS, when, during a period of years, thousands died as the president stayed silent, bowing to religious zealots while Nancy wouldn't even help her dying friend Rock Hudson when he reached out.

All of this, honestly, is a great thing to see. But there needs to be much more. Whatever caused Clinton to make such a strange gaffe, is, at this point, less important than the discussion itself: It got her to put out some details reminding us of her commitment in the past and offering some ideas moving forward, and it moved Sanders to rush out a policy statement with ideas as well.

But statements aren't enough. We want to hear from the candidates directly and in more detail. Clinton spoke in a live broadcast (on MSNBC) about Nancy Reagan when she made the regrettable comments. Judging from social media, many believe she should now speak directly about her plans and engage in dialogue. I've invited her to come on my radio program on SiriusXM Progress to discuss the issue, and to talk about many other issues affecting LGBT people, and I've invited Senator Sanders on as well. And I'll continue to do so.

We've seen no discussion of LGBT issues in the Democratic debates at a time when a furious backlash against LGBT equality has erupted across the country, as states push forward with "religious freedom" bills meant to enshrine discrimination in law after last year's marriage equality ruling from the Supreme Court. Both candidates have tweeted condemnation of these laws, but there's been little to no discussion among them in the media.

While that ignorance during the debates could be laid at the feet of the media and moderators, it's also true that neither candidate has spoken with a gay journalist or interviewer specifically about issues LGBT voters care about. 

This election cycle, it took Nancy Reagan 's death, ironically, to get a discussion going among the candidates about an issue important to LGBT people. But there's more to talk about on that issue -- actually talk, beyond the position papers -- and there are more issues affecting LGBT people to have a dialogue about.

The campaigns surely know that the LGBT electorate plays an outsized role in elections, raising money, working in the campaigns, getting the vote out, inspiring younger voters around issues of equality. In the past few days, gay voters -- and their allies -- were jarred by Clinton's Reagan comments, which have them asking questions and wanting to hear more from her on issues concerning them, even after her sincere apology. And they want to hear from Sanders, too, on the whole range of issues, not just a mention of "gay rights" from a podium or a position paper on a website.

With the brutal campaign of Donald Trump unleashed and barreling forward, it's important to get every group, every Democratic voter, energized. We've seen an entire Democratic debate rightly focused on concerns of Latino voters, and an important one which took place in racially-polarized Flint, Michigan. Both debates were meant to discuss issues vital to constituencies in the party's base. But again, there's been no focus in the campaigns on issues important to LGBT voters.

Given the reality that some studies indicate that the LGBT vote is what flipped Ohio and Virginia to Barack Obama in 2012.  Any sane candidate on the Democrat side of the aisle ought to be courting the LGBT vote even as the GOP seems to be doing all that it can to totally alienate LGBT voters.  

Hillary Clinton "Steps in It" With Nancy Reagan Remarks

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

Nancy Reagan Turned Her Back on Rock Hudson

I know that some see it as bad form to criticize the dead, but, in my view, it is also bad form to allow one's death to magically sweep away the misdeeds that one committed while living.  With the death of former First Lady Nancy Reagan today at age 94, one is already seeing the magic erasure beginning that omits the woman's failings while over stating her accomplishments.  As a former Republican, if I am honest, I never truly liked the woman.  She always struck me as overly concerned with appearances - artificial, if  you will - and her "Just Say No" program was always more PR than substance (I have children that suffered through the program which never addressed the underlying causes of why one would use drugs for an escape, and hence may be a bit peevish).  Perhaps the most unforgivable thing to me, however, was he betrayal of her supposed friend Rock Hudson in his final days as he was dying of AIDS related complications.  Her concern? Appearances, of course, not what was right or what a true friend would do.  A piece from Buzzfeed last year looks at this ugly aspect of Mrs. Reagan which must not be lost in all the fluff pieces that are now forthcoming.  Here are highlights:

Although only a handful of people knew it, Hudson was in Paris desperately seeking treatment for AIDS — treatment that even a prominent, wealthy actor could not get in the United States in 1985.

Although more than 5,500 people had died from the disease by the start of 1985, the government had taken few significant steps toward addressing the disease — with the Reagan administration recommending a $10 million cut in AIDS spending down to $86 million in its federal budget proposal released in February 1985.

And so, Hudson traveled to France, hoping to see Dr. Dominique Dormant, a French army doctor who had secretly treated him for AIDS the past fall. Dormant, though, was unable to get the actor transferred to the military hospital. Initially, the doctor wasn’t even able to get permission to see Hudson at the American Hospital.

Hudson’s longtime assistant, Mark Miller, flew to Paris immediately. There, he met with the French publicist, Yanou Collart. Over the following days, the pair, along with Hudson’s American publicist, Dale Olson, tried everything in a desperate attempt to get the dying actor moved to the military hospital for treatment.

These 10 days changed the course of history, as the world learned that Hudson was gay — and why he was dying.

“AIDS was on the front page of virtually every Sunday morning paper in the United States,” Randy Shilts wrote of the Sunday that followed Hudson’s collapse and revelations in his epic coverage of the epidemic, And the Band Played On. The revelations changed the course of AIDS coverage — and the broader attention paid to the disease. Hudson’s death a few months later, on Oct. 2, 1985, made him the first high-profile celebrity death from AIDS that was openly acknowledged as such.

The story was covered extensively at the time. By 1987, Shilts wrote that “[i]t was commonly accepted” that there were two phases of AIDS in the United States: “There was AIDS before Rock Hudson and AIDS after.”

One key part of this story, though, has never been told until now — not discussed at the time and lost in piles of paperwork from the Reagan administration. As Hudson lay deathly ill in the hospital, his publicist, Olson, sent a desperate telegram to the Reagan White House pleading for help with the transfer.

“Only one hospital in the world can offer necessary medical treatment to save life of Rock Hudson or at least alleviate his illness,” Olson wrote. Although the commanding officer had denied Hudson admission to the French military hospital initially, Olson wrote that they believed “a request from the White House … would change his mind.”  First Lady Nancy Reagan turned down the request.

Hudson was a supporter of the president, attending a state dinner in May 1984, as he and Davidson wrote, seated at the first lady’s table. There, she asked him about his health. Shilts reported that Hudson told her he had caught a “flu bug” when filming in Israel. “I’m feeling fine now,” he said.

For Hudson, his longtime desire for secrecy about the fact that he was gay likely was only reinforced by the anti-gay sentiments that the advent of AIDS raised.

In a desperate telegram sent at 12:22 p.m. ET on July 24, 1985, Olson made his case directly to the White House in a message addressed to Mark Weinberg — a special assistant to the president and deputy press secretary in the White House.

“Doctor Dominique Dormant specialist treating Rock Hudson in Paris, reports only one hospital in the world can offer necessary medical treatment to save life of Rock Hudson or at least alleviate his illness. This hospital is Ministere du la Defence Centre d’Researches du Service de Sante des Armees Percy Hospital in the city of Clamart,” the telegram read, with Olson going on to give the phone number to the hospital.

“Commanding general of Percy Hospital has turned down Rock Hudson as a patient because he is not French. Doctor Dormant in Paris believes a request from the White House or a high American official would change his mind. Can you help by having someone call the commanding general’s office at the Percy Hospital at the above number,” the telegram stated.

After Weinberg received the telegram, he shortly thereafter spoke with the first lady.  “I knew the Reagans knew Rock Hudson, obviously from their years in Hollywood, and for that reason I decided to call her,” Weinberg told BuzzFeed News in a recent interview about the 1985 request.

Would the White House intervene on Hudson’s behalf? That was what the publicist was asking for — help getting the actor, lying in the hospital in a dire condition, transferred from hospital to hospital.

Weinberg recommended to Nancy Reagan that the White House refer the matter to the U.S. Embassy in France, because, as he told BuzzFeed News, “This is probably not the [last] time we’re going to get a request like this and we want to be fair and not do anything that would appear to favor personal friends.”

Told of the communications and Weinberg’s explanation, Peter Staley — an early member of ACT UP and founder of the Treatment Action Group who was prominently featured in the Oscar-nominated AIDS documentary How to Survive a Plague — was incredulous.

“Seems strange that the Reagans used that excuse, since they often did favors for their Hollywood friends during their White House years,” Staley told BuzzFeed News, pointing out a time when President Reagan personally intervened to assist a fundraising effort led by Bob Hope, as detailed in a biography of the entertainer. “I’m sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him. There’s no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson out to dry. As soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”

The White House did not decide that AIDS would be an issue to “get into” until nearly two years after Hudson’s death.

The actor and friend of the Reagans — struggling to receive treatment in a foreign country — had been regarded, at least by the White House, just the same as everyone else with AIDS at the time.

Despite Hudson’s revelation and death in October, it wasn’t until the next year, and as the story of another person with AIDS — Ryan White, a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS through a blood treatment — entered the public spotlight, that the national policy movement began in earnest.

Even then, it took the administration’s own surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, issuing his groundbreaking Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — without giving advance notice to the White House — and the Senate pressing for a presidential commission on AIDS for the White House to take steps toward action.

When President Reagan finally decided that he would not ignore the disease, he gave his first major public address on the issue on May 31, 1987 — at the request of another Hollywood star, and longtime friend of Hudson’s, Elizabeth Taylor.

When Koop drafted Reagan’s remarks for the dinner, he wrote, in part, “It’s also important that America not judge those who have the disease but care for them with dignity and kindness. Passing moral judgments is up to God; our part is to ease the suffering and to find a cure.”

Within the White House and throughout the administration, though, many conservatives vigorously disagreed with Koop’s report and recommendations. Regularly, those with anti-gay opinions ruled the day. For Carl Anderson — then a special assistant to Reagan who worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison and now the current supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus — such language was completely unacceptable.

In a two-sentence memo he sent to Mari Maseng, then the director of the Office of Public Liaison, on May 28, 1987, Anderson wrote bluntly, “Failure to make moral judgments on this behavior is why we have this epidemic. To my knowledge, the President has never said that we are to abandon moral judgment on these types of matters.”

The official, if unstated, White House position was that those with AIDS should not be rejected — but could still be judged. Final judgment comes from God, but Americans could pass moral judgments in the meantime.

“Drenched in animus, stigmatization, and an inexplicable nonchalance, the notes and memoranda provide a window into federal discrimination against a despised group, even in the midst of a raging epidemic,” Charles Francis, the president of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., told BuzzFeed News about the documents.

By the time Reagan spoke, Shilts reported, it was known that more than 36,000 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS — more than 20,000 of whom, including Rock Hudson, had died. Later data would show the numbers were significantly higher, with more than 41,000 dead by the end of 1987.

Perhaps I am overly sensitive when it comes to betrayal by supposed friends. When I came out some 14 years ago, I found out very painfully how few friends I actually had.  Suddenly being gay made me radioactive and shunned.  I still clearly remember being at a swim meet for one of my children's high school team and having three of my supposed friends and surf buddies walk by me as if I were invisible.   I would also note that Carl Anderson who was noted in the article and who is now Supreme Knight of the Knight of Columbus has never ever condemned the Catholic Church hierarchy for the sex abuse scandal or demanded that the Church cease protecting and covering up for child rapists. It is the Reagans and their god fearing advisers who are the ones who were/are morally bankrupt.  If there is a god, I suspect Nancy Reagan is now receiving judgment herself. 

Reagan's Daughter: Dad Would Be Appalled By GOP Presidential Candidates

I often complain about the foul insane asylum the Republican Party has become and the deranged clown car line up that the party has offered up in the way of would be 2016 presidential nominees.  I know that others share this lament - a number of LGBT bloggers friends where once Republicans years ago and have fled the GOP like me - but is really special when the daughter of Ronald Reagan, claimed icon of the GOP base makes it clear that she shares this view.  Sweeter yet, she says that her mother, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, supports marriage equality.  Take that Tony Perkins!  But I digress. Michelangelo Signorile has a piece at Huffington Post that dicusses a recent interview with Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan's daughter.  Here are highlights:

Patti Davis, daughter of former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, blasted the current GOP's field of 2016 presidential candidates, and claimed her father would be similarly "appalled."

In an interview with me on SiriusXM Progress, Davis said her father, who was shot in an attempted assassination by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981, would not be able to imagine today’s gun violence. Davis also noted that in stark contrast to current GOP presidential candidates and most Republican leaders, her mother, Nancy Reagan, was “very happy” about the Supreme Court’s historic decision on marriage equality.

A long-time liberal who disagreed with her father’s views during his presidency, Davis became estranged from the former president, but the two reconciled in later years, an experience she recounted in her 2004 memoir, The Long Goodbye.

Responding to a question about Sen. Ted Cruz often positively invoking her father’s name on the campaign trail and during debates, Davis said, “It may be this week he’s doing it more than the others. But they all kind of do it. But yet, they are so not like him. My father would be so appalled at what’s going on. He would be so appalled at these candidates. I don’t think he would be a Republican. And if another Ronald Reagan came along right now, I don’t think the Republican Party would accept him.”

Her mother, Davis said, responded favorably to the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling and also appears to have a dim view of the current presidential candidates.  “She was very happy about that decision,” Davis said of Nancy Reagan.

Davis also imagined her father’s views about the GOP resistance to gun legislation today and the current climate of gun violence, given Reagan's support of laws restricting guns. . . . . Reagan also supported the ban on assault weapons, passed in 1994, and which Congress and President George W. Bush allowed to expire in 2004. “I don’t think he’d ever be able to conceive what’s going on now,” Davis observed, “the amount of gun violence or weaponry.”

Many have said - and I agree - that Reagan could not secure the GOP nomination today if he were living for the simple fact that he was not sufficiently extreme or deranged. I disagreed with some of his positions (many, in fact), but compared to Ted Cruz, Reagan was a near liberal.  The GOP has become something truly ugly and as regular readers know, I believe the descent into insanity began when the Christofascist were welcomed into the party.

Nancy Reagan: I Want Hillary to Win.

I came across this link to the Drudge Report which was just to good to pass up given the shrieks and tsunamis of spittle that must be overtaking the lunatic elements of the Republican Party base.  While the Christofascists and other elements of the GOP have made Ronald Reagan a virtual demigod, they regularly ignore the reality that he could not win the GOP presidential nomination today.  Despite his faults, which were numerous, Ronald Reagan (i) wasn't insane, (ii) wasn't consumed by anti-gay animus, and (iii) wasn't a white supremacists, all of which are requirements to be a member of today's GOP.  Underscoring this fact is the fact that when interviewed  for The History Channel’s upcoming series “First Ladies in Their Own Words,” Nancy Reagan stated that she wants Hillary Clinton to win in 2016.  Better yet, apparently Barbara and Laura Bush reportedly encouraged Hillary to run for the presidency.  I can only imagine the convulsions taking place in right wing households. Here are article highlights:

Last week, during a promotional press conference for The History Channel’s upcoming series “First Ladies in Their Own Words,” series’ host Ron Reagan shared clips of his interviews with all living former First Ladies of the United States. In a brief video clip with his mother Nancy Reagan, she offered her endorsement of Hillary Clinton as President saying, “The time for a woman to serve as our President has come – really, now is the time – and I think the idea of having a former First Lady as the leader of the free world is really quite a marvelous notion. I want Hillary to win. Even though I admire two of the current potential Republican nominees, I have no interest in seeing either of them lead this country.”

“First Ladies in Their Own Words” is the brainchild of Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and Ron Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan. Broadcast in chronological order of their husbands’ terms in office, Goodwin and Reagan hope the series will show the importance of our First Ladies as a reflection of the culture of the nation during their years in the White House.

“First Ladies in Their Own Words” will focus on four particular issues and how each has evolved over the last 40 years. Those issues – Women’s Rights, Healthcare, Education and LGBT Rights – reveal a dynamic shift in what Americans think about what means to be “American.”

Asked about his mother’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, Reagan thought it showed how little America actually knew about the woman behind the Republican icon. “She wants people to know that the First Ladies are tight. They get together once a year to support each other. In fact, Hillary had no interest in running until both Laura and Barbara Bush cornered her at their get-together in May 2013 and talked her into at least thinking about it! So, in a sense, if Mrs. Clinton does run and win, you can blame the Bush family.”

“First Ladies in Their Own Words” is not yet scheduled on The History Channel, but is expected to begin during the fall television season.

 Jeb Bush will obviously have to be doing damage control on this last element.

Nancy Reagan Turned Down Rock Hudson’s Plea For Help

Anti-gay bigotry isn't anything new with the Republican Party.  Sadly, it has been the party norm for decades and as a well documented new story at BuzzFeed illustrates, even prominent Republicans are only too willing to throw friends who are gays under the bus rather than offend the sensibilities of the foul Christofascists within the ranks of the party base.  A case in point? Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan who refused to take any action to help actor friend Rock Hudson to secure an experimental treatment as he was dying.  With "friends" like the Reagans, one seemingly doesn't need enemies.  Here are some article excerpts (read the entire piece):

On a Sunday evening in July 1985, just hours after arriving in Paris from Los Angeles, Rock Hudson collapsed shortly after checking into the famed Ritz hotel.

The 59-year-old actor was once one of Hollywood’s hottest stars throughout the 1950s and ’60s, seen as the embodiment of “the American man” — tall, dark, and handsome. A constant fixture on the big screen, he starred alongside leading actresses like Elizabeth Taylor in Giant — netting an Oscar nomination for the role — and Doris Day in a series of popular romantic comedies.

By the mid-1980s, though, while still close with many from Hollywood’s golden era like Day and friendly with Ronald Reagan, another actor of the era and now the president of the United States, and his wife, Nancy Reagan, Hudson was no longer the broad-shouldered icon. He was frail, ill — the airline almost refused to let him board the nonstop flight to France.

Hudson was dying from complications related to AIDS.   Although only a handful of people knew it, Hudson was in Paris desperately seeking treatment for AIDS — treatment that even a prominent, wealthy actor could not get in the United States in 1985.

Although more than 5,500 people had died from the disease by the start of 1985, the government had taken few significant steps toward addressing the disease — with the Reagan administration recommending a $10 million cut in AIDS spending down to $86 million in its federal budget proposal released in February 1985.

Over the following days, the pair, along with Hudson’s American publicist, Dale Olson, tried everything in a desperate attempt to get the dying actor moved to the military hospital for treatment.

These 10 days changed the course of history, as the world learned that Hudson was gay — and why he was dying.

“AIDS was on the front page of virtually every Sunday morning paper in the United States,” Randy Shilts wrote of the Sunday that followed Hudson’s collapse and revelations in his epic coverage of the epidemic, And the Band Played On. The revelations changed the course of AIDS coverage — and the broader attention paid to the disease. Hudson’s death a few months later, on Oct. 2, 1985, made him the first high-profile celebrity death from AIDS that was openly acknowledged as such.

One key part of this story, though, has never been told until now — not discussed at the time and lost in piles of paperwork from the Reagan administration. As Hudson lay deathly ill in the hospital, his publicist, Olson, sent a desperate telegram to the Reagan White House pleading for help with the transfer.

“Only one hospital in the world can offer necessary medical treatment to save life of Rock Hudson or at least alleviate his illness,” Olson wrote. Although the commanding officer had denied Hudson admission to the French military hospital initially, Olson wrote that they believed “a request from the White House … would change his mind.”

First Lady Nancy Reagan turned down the request.

The telegram, along with the documents detailing the White House’s response, were initially discovered by a new project focused on “archives activism” that is based out of D.C.

Charles Francis, the president of the newly reconstituted Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., provided the documents to BuzzFeed News after the group — with support from the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery — obtained them from the Reagan Presidential Library. BuzzFeed News confirmed the documents’ authenticity with archivists from the Reagan Presidential Library.

“The view was, ‘Well, we’re so sorry’ — and she was, they were both very sorry for Rock’s condition and felt for him and all the people — but it just wasn’t something that the White House felt that they could do something different for him than they would do for anybody else,” Weinberg said.

“Seems strange that the Reagans used that excuse, since they often did favors for their Hollywood friends during their White House years,” Staley told BuzzFeed News, pointing out a time when President Reagan personally intervened to assist a fundraising effort led by Bob Hope, as detailed in a biography of the entertainer. “I’m sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him. There’s no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson out to dry. As soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”

I have always viewed Nancy Reagan as a cold bitch.  It seems I war more correct than I knew. 

John McCain's Marital Infidelity and Untrue Statements About It

A while back I did a post of John McCain's - in my view - very shabby treatment of his first wife, Carol who lives in nearby Virginia Beach. I did so because I find it ironic that the so-called "family values" crowd that wants strict application of Biblical passages to denigrate gays is steadily coming to rally around McCain, the former adulterer as their standard bearer. Funny how gays never get any slack on Bible passages whereas McCain will be getting a free pass on the strictures against divorce and adultery. Now, the Los Angeles Times has a story on the McCain affair and divorce that is of interest in that it reveals that McCains public statements lo and behold do not agree with the court documents, including the fact that McCain and Cindy got their marriage license while McCain was still married to Carol. Thus, McCain has added lying to his Biblicaly condemned misdeeds. To be clear, I am not anti-divorce and believe there are times when it is the only solution to a marriage that is not working. What I am against is the hypocrisy of McCain and the Christianists who as is too often the case apply one set of rules for gays and a totally different one for themselves. Here are some story highlights:

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In a written statement, she [Nancy Reagan] described McCain as "a good friend for over 30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain's decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship. The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time. McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.

*

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980." An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

*

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

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But two years later, while on a trip as a Navy liaison with the Senate, McCain spied Hensley at the Honolulu reception. In a recent television interview with Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show," Cindy McCain joked about how the Navy captain had pursued her. "He kind of chased me around . . . the hors d'oeuvre table," she said. "I was trying to get something to eat and I thought, 'This guy's kind of weird.' I was kind of trying to get away from him."John McCain was 42; she was 24.

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Carol McCain was distraught at being blindsided by her husband's intention to end their marriage, said her friends in the Reagan circle."They [the Reagans] weren't happy with him," Fitzwater said. Carol McCain "was this little, frail person. . . . She was brokenhearted." By that time, Nancy Reagan had come to Carol McCain's aid, hiring her as a press assistant in the 1980 presidential campaign. When the Reagans moved to Washington, she was named director of the White House Visitors Office.