Some of our famous presidents have turned a blind eye to the rights of American citizens, including, for example, FDR & the internment of Japanese-Americans and Andrew Jackson's confiscation of American-Indian lands and the forced resettlement of these people. In my lifetime, I watched in horror, as newly "out" gay man in my twenties, as Ronald Reagan did nothing to help my community while it was being ravaged by this dreadful disease. I realized then that the Republican party did not care about my life or rights one iota -- and their tradition of extreme homophobia continues today.
While it has taken me over 20 years to do so, I have finally forgiven Ronald Reagan for his intentional ignorance on AIDS...even as I remember my dead friends. It is time to let go and move on. As the Course in Miracles teaches, "free to forgive and free to save the world."
And I am completely clear-sighted on the fact that the Republican party has never once taken the lead on legislation to safeguard the health or the Constitutional rights of LGBT Americans.
San Francisco newsman Hank Plante writes about Reagan's silence:
Ronald Reagan & AIDS: a legacy of silence
This weekend's national remembrance of Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday is focusing largely on his accomplishments. But no look back at the nation's 40th president would be complete without remembering his inattention to the AIDS epidemic, which arose on his watch.
Consider that Mayor Dianne Feinstein's AIDS budget for the City of San Francisco was bigger than President Reagan's AIDS budget was for the entire nation. That was true for two years in-a-row in the mid-1980's. In fact, Reagan's proposed federal budget for 1986 actually called for an 11 percent reduction in AIDS spending: from $95 million in 1985, down to $85.5 million in 1986.
No wonder it was left to San Francisco gay leaders, politicians and medical professionals to forge their own way through the early days of the disease, forming what became known as "The San Francisco Model" for effectively dealing with it, a model which would be replicated world-wide.
The disease that we now call AIDS was first identified 30 years ago in medical journals in 1981 -- President Reagan's first year in office. It quickly took hold in the media and in the national consciousness. Yet it wasn't until May 31, 1987 that President Reagan would give his first major address on AIDS. It was at an outdoor speech in Washington organized by AMFAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Elizabeth Taylor, a lifelong friend of Ron and Nancy Reagan, persuaded the President to be there. On the exact night that he gave that speech, saying the word "AIDS" for the first time in public, 21,000 Americans had already died from the disease.
The Reagans' close friend Rock Hudson was one of them, having died from AIDS almost two years before Reagan's speech. Hudson had been a frequent guest in the Reagan White House, even during the time that he appeared gaunt and frail. Nancy Reagan later recalled one such occasion, in which Hudson told her he had picked up a bug in Israel. But even Hudson's ordeal didn't seem to shake Reagan out of his lethargy.
President Reagan did have people around him who were more engaged in dealing with AIDS, notably his surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, and Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health. But in the office where Harry Truman said the buck stops, the silence on AIDS continues to be a baffling part of the Reagan legacy.
via Examiner.com
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