Hating Reagan

Patricia Nell Warren’s Left Field

Months after Reagan’s death, the liberal/leftist “hate Reagan” hate-fest is still reverberating around the country. I agree that Reagan did put an ugly ultraconservative spin on his AIDS policies. But...there’s a difference between legitimate criticism of Reagan AIDS policy, that sticks to facts, and some of the extreme diatribes we’re seeing.

For starters, many in the gay press are stuck in the belief that Reagan didn’t say the word “AIDS” till 1986 or 1987. Actually it happened in 1985, the same year the FDA approved the first HIV test for market. Reagan said the “A” word at a press conference in September that year, a month before Rock Hudson died of AIDS. For the record, a reporter asked: “Mr. President…would you support a massive government research program against AIDS like the one that President Nixon launched against cancer?”

Reagan replied: “I have been supporting it for more than four years now….Including what we have in the budget for ’86 it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS....Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this, and the need to find an answer.”

In spite of the government spending enough in those four years to co-discover HIV with French researchers, and to get a test to market, some Reagan-haters state that Reagan “did nothing”—that he failed to speak out, that he caused the deaths of millions around the world.

They even rush to compare him to Hitler. But Hitler didn’t kill over thirteen million people—Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Serbs, handicapped and mentally challenged people, Soviet prisoners of war, German political prisoners—all by himself. He had help from a lot of other people, including ultraconservative Protestant and Catholic clergy and voters who saw nothing wrong with exterminating whole groups of people.

So it’s true that Reagan did obstructionist things like delaying the Surgeon General’s report recommending AIDS education in schools. But how about all the help he got? For instance, how about the massive obstructionism from ultraconservative U.S. church people? Not only did they “do nothing” themselves, but they pressured Reagan politically into obstructiveness because they believe that AIDS is a “gay disease caused by immoral behavior.” Don’t the Reagan-haters know that Presidents typically dance to string-pulling by the powers who put them in office?

And what about the gay people who “did nothing” through the mid-eighties? The ones who showed you the door, socially, if you mentioned the “A” word at a party? Gay businessmen who wanted bathhouses to stay open so they could make money? Gay leaders who were afraid to speak out because of a powerful backlash from sex-loving gay liberationists? One gay man posted this comment on-line: “Reagan should have been more outspoken on AIDS, but exactly what was he supposed to say? Stop having anal sex and don’t share needles? Would gays and drug users have even listened to him? Homosexuals knew that they were at high risk in the 1980s, yet many still continued to have anal sex.”

Finally, why have so many liberals and Democrats “done nothing” about AIDS corruption as it spread through the nineties? Today, there’s still so little accountability on how funding is spent that untold amounts are siphoned away from AIDS research and services. Indeed, AIDS funding has become a way of inflating top non-profit salaries and keeping non-profits afloat. For this sorry state of affairs we can blame not only the Republican administrations of Reagan and Bush, Sr., but the Democratic administration of Clinton, all of whom ignored the signs that corruption was rampant. Indeed, many Democrats in public office and many liberal leaders and commentators have fought every whistleblower effort to expose AIDS corruption. The total squandered over twenty-five years must run into the billions. No wonder there is no cure, no vaccine.

It’s time to stop beating the Reagan dead horse, and put that energy into positive action for the present. Yes, let’s get Democrats back in the White House, back in control of Congress. But let’s make sure they’re Democrats who really care about human beings. And if it’s valuable to lay any blame for the past, let’s lay it on the doorsteps of the living, so they can be held accountable.

Further views on Reagan:
Intellectual Conservative:
www.intellectualconservative.com/article2805.html

Michael Bronski in The Advocate:
www.advocate.com/html/stories/917/917_reagan_bronski.asp

Patricia Nell Warren, author of fiction bestsellers like The Front Runner, also writes provocative commentary. Her writings are archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by

e-mail at patriciawarren@aol.com.

August 2004