| Subject: Reagan, AIDS and expressing opinions as queer officer |
Author:
Perry
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Date Posted: Friday, June 11, 04:12:57am
In reply to:
Dave McDonald
's message, "Reagan and AIDS?" on Wednesday, June 09, 06:26:41pm
QUEER OFFICER EXPRESSING OPINIONS
At no time did I say that David should refrain from writing in public newspapers as the student union queer officer. What I did say is that when doing so he speaks with the authority of that office and is therefore in a position to influence people. I therefore feel that if David wishes to do so he cannot blatantly ignore facts. By all means he should argue about their significance and present alternative facts in rebuttal. However, he should not simply spew out rhetorical bile clothed in the authority of elected office.
I am glad that by my challenging of David's views the debate about Reagan and AIDS has been moved beyond the hysteria of "tens of thousands of Americans who died of AIDS-related illnesses as a result of Reagan's atrocious inaction" to a proper analysis based on facts.
SPENDING ON RESEARCH
The Reagan administration spent $5.727 billion on AIDS research: Judith Johnson, Congressional Research Service study, "AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999". That spending was focussed primarily on finding a cure and vaccine for AIDS. Quite rightly the government increased spending as it became clear that the whole population was threatened by the disease. I don't see anything indictable about that.
Would greater spending by Reagan have helped? Bob Roehr, a gay political activist and journalist since the 1970s who writes regularly for the "Journal of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care", writes:
"From the perspective of time, and with different leadership and the expenditure of vast sums of money, it has become clear, at least to me, that the crucial issues with regard to a cure and an all-important vaccine are scientific ones that still have not been resolved despite applying all of that time, effort, and resources to them. I have little reason to believe that a different course of action by Reagan would have significantly altered the scientific state of knowledge."
(See "The Daily Dish" (9 June 2004) at www.andrewsullivan.com.)
PUBLIC STATEMENTS ON AIDS
David is quite right: Reagan did not mention AIDS in his 1986 State of the Union Address. It was in a message to Congress two days later that Reagan said:
"We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS."
I am sorry for my mistake. I was drawing on Murdock's article and did not independently check its accuracy. (For Murdock's explanation for the error see www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200406101057.asp.)
In any case, the point I made still stands: Reagan mentioned AIDS publicly before 1987, contrary to the assertion in David's letter in the Age. He did so in that message to Congress in 1986 and earlier in 1985, as I noted on this message board, when he noted the "half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS ... So, this is a top priority with us." In 1988, Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed every American household the pamphlet "Understanding AIDS".
I accept that Reagan could have shown greater leadership earlier in the 1980s and done more to warn people of the dangers of infection. Would that have helped? Andrew Sullivan, an HIV positive gay American political commentator, writes:
"But the truth is that it was pretty obvious very early on that something dangerous was afoot as AIDS first surfaced. Many people most at risk were aware -- mostly too late, alas -- that unprotected sex had become fatal in the late 1970s and still was. You can read Randy Shilts' bracing "And The Band Played On," to see how some of the resistance to those warnings came from within the gay movement itself. In the polarized atmosphere of the beleaguered gay ghettoes of the 1980s, one also wonders what an instruction from Ronald Reagan to wear condoms would have accomplished."
HOMOPHOBIA
I don't believe that Reagan was homophobic. In 1977, as former governor of California, he met with gay and lesbian Republicans who opposed the Briggs initiative, a voters' initiative attempting to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in schools. He then strongly opposed the initiative, which failed in 1978.
And then there is this, from a story by Robert Kaiser in the Washington Post (18 March 1984):
"The Reagans are also tolerant about homosexual men. Their interior decorator, Ted Graber, who oversaw the redecoration of the White House, spent a night in the Reagans' private White House quarters with his male lover, Archie Case, when they came to Washington for Nancy Reagan's 60th birthday party -- a fact confirmed for the press by Mrs. Reagan's press secretary. Indeed, all the available evidence suggests that Ronald Reagan is a closet tolerant."
Moreover, as noted in the Kmiec articled posted on the forum by Tim, in 1988 after taking legal advice, Reagan concluded that those with AIDS were handicapped for the purposes of federal anti-discrimination law. As Reagan said, the government "fairly interpreted the statute" irrespective of the damage it might to do the presidential campaign of George Bush Snr among conservative voters.
I therefore think the title "closet tolerant" is probably right. Would I have liked it if Reagan had been "openly accepting"? Absolutely. But I don't think that Reagan was personally homophobic.
That being said, David is right in pointing out the statement in Edmund Morris' biography of Reagan that in 1989, when he was no longer President, he said of AIDS: "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague [because] illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments." There is no independent verification that Reagan ever said this. But even if he did, it doesn't change my view that he was not homophobic.
The illicit sex forbidden by the Ten Commandments is adultery. Taken literally, Reagan's statement suggests that AIDS is a punishment for promiscuity. Given that Reagan did not object to having a gay couple sleep over at the White House, my view is that Reagan disapproved not of homosexuality per se but of the promiscuity which was common in both gay and straight society in the 1960s and 70s. I disagree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. But it is not a homophobic view.
CONCLUSION
I don't believe Reagan was homophobic and I don't believe that the deaths of tens of thousands can be laid at his feet. He could have done more, particularly as regards his public statements about AIDS. However, I doubt that would have made a difference. Tragically I suspect his warnings would have been ignored and people would still have become infected. As Roehr says:
"[K]nowledge of HIV and how to avoid contracting it has been widespread within American society for a very long time, dating at least from the mass mailing by Reagan Surgeon General C. Everett Koop [in 1988], yet people still continue to become infected. We all know that there is a very large element of personal responsibility in the transmission of new infections, a fact that too many activists continue to downplay."
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