Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General "Reagan Principles"

So if the GOP wishes to embrace the "principles" of Ronald Reagan, so be it - I wish the GOP well.

I take umbridge in your characterization that I 'hated' Ronald Reagan. I can tell you one thing Senator, I felt nothing but hate coming from President Reagan as a gay man in the 1980s. I can never, ever forget how a President of the United States of America turned his back on thousands and thousands of sick and dying Americans simply for the fact that they had contracted AIDS - the "gay disease." Mr. Reagan wouldn't even utter words "AIDS" until halfway through his eight year term.

The homosexual community has decided in retrospect that Pres. Reagan hated them because he did not do much for those who had the disease of AIDS. Why did Reagan not do much about the disease? Could it be because not much was known about the disease and therefore not much could be done about the disease? Or is it easier to blame the spread of the disease on Reagan because he did little to help when no one knew what to do? What the Center for Disease Control doing about AIDS back then? How much research was being done? When it was learned that the AIDS was and is spread primarily through sexual contact did the homosexual community urge people to abstain from sex? Or did the homosexual community prefer to continue to have multiple sexual partners? The spread of AIDS was something the homosexual community could have done a lot to prevent its spread but they have passed the blame to Pres. Reagan so that they don't have to take responsibility for their own behavior. The hatred they say they got from Pres. Reagan is actually the self hatred that due to a number of factors is more dangerous to the homosexual community then the disease of AIDS. Whenever one is angry with someone it is because they see something in others that they do not like in themselves.

No you didn't. Revisionism is fine, but what you say is absolutely irrefutably false and malicious. You are not going to blame the victim like that and get away with it Senator.

Reagan refused to even utter the word AIDS nor did he ever once acknowledge those who suffered from it. Plenty was know at the time he was President, even the CDC was speaking about it and reassuring people that it was not transmissible by casual contact.

Pres. Reagan refused to do anything to comfort those afflicted or reassure those not so of their fears. His silence undoubtedly caused great suffering and death.

He should have been impeached for his criminal neglect, but at the very least I will not stand by and let you blame the victims for this.

I am frankly shocked that anyone at this time would even attempt to justify the silence of that horrible man.

my blood is boiling.

As of January 2006, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized on June 5, 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4–3.3 million lives, of which more than 570,000 were children.[5]

The AIDS epidemic officially began on June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report newsletter reported unusual clusters of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) caused by a form of Pneumocystis carinii (now recognized as a distinct species Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.[40]

Over the next 18 months, more PCP clusters were discovered among otherwise healthy men in cities throughout the country, along with other opportunistic diseases (such as Kaposi's sarcoma[41] and persistent, generalized lymphadenopathy [42]), common in immunosuppressed patients.

In June 1982, a report of a group of cases amongst gay men in Southern California suggested that a sexually transmitted infectious agent might be the etiological agent,[43] and the syndrome was initially termed "GRID", or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.[44]

Health authorities soon realized that nearly half of the people identified with the syndrome were not homosexual men. The same opportunistic infections were also reported among hemophiliacs,[45] heterosexual intravenous drug users, and Haitian immigrants.[46]

By August 1982, the disease was being referred to by its new CDC-coined name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Although AIDS was first reported in the medical and popular press in 1981, it was only in October 1987 that President Reagan publicly spoke about the epidemic. By the end of that year 59,572 AIDS cases had been reported and 27,909 of those women and men had died. How could this happen? How could Reagan not say anything? Do anything?

The Reagan administration’s reaction to AIDS is complex and goes far beyond Reagan’s refusal to speak out about the epidemic. A great deal of his power base was born-again Christian Republican conservatives who embraced a reactionary social agenda that included a virulent, demonizing homophobia. In the media, people like Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell portrayed gay people as diseased sinners and promoted the idea that AIDS was a punishment from God and that the gay rights movement had to be stopped. In the Republican Party, zealous right-wingers, such as Representative William Dannenmeyer (CA) and Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), hammered home this same message. In the Reagan White House, people such as Secretary of Education William Bennett and Gary Bauer, his chief domestic advisor, worked to enact it in the Administration’s policies.

In practical terms this meant AIDS research was chronically underfunded. When doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute for Health asked for more funding for their work on AIDS, they were routinely denied it. Between June 1981 and May 1982, the CDC spent less than $1 million on AIDS, but $9 million on Legionnaire’s Disease. At that point over 1,000 of the 2,000 AIDS cases reported resulted in death; there were fewer than 50 deaths from Legionnaire’s Disease. This drastic lack of funding would continue through the Reagan years.

When health and support groups in the gay community instigated education and prevention programs, they were denied federal funding. In October 1987 Jesse Helms amended a federal appropriation bill that prohibited AIDS education efforts that “encourage or promoted homosexual activity”(that is, tell gay men how to have safe sex).

. . .

Throughout all of this Ronald Reagan did nothing. When Rock Hudson, a friend and colleague of the Reagan’s, was diagnosed and died in 1985 (one of the 20,740 cases reported that year), Reagan still did not speak out.