Today In History, 1987: Reagan Names Gay Man To AIDS Commission

Jim Burroway

July 23rd, 2016

On June 24, President Ronald Reagan announced the creation of the President’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic, and two days later he appointed Dr. W. Eugene Mayberry, CEO of the Mayo Clinic, to head the commission, despite Mayberry having no experience with the disease. Gay activists and people with AIDS were alarmed by the appointment, and demanded that the rest of the panel be made up of more qualified people, including representatives from the gay community. Anti-gay White House staff opposed that last demand, with Gary Bauer, Reagan’s chief domestic policy advisor, leading the resistance (Jun 30). In the end, Reagan apparently ignored Bauer’s advice. When Reagan announced the rest of the commission’s members on July 23, the list included Dr. Frank Lilly, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Lilly was also on the board of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis from 1984 to 1986, and he was openly gay.

Lilly’s appointment to a part time, purely advisory commission which did not require Senate confirmation appears to be the first Presidential appointment of an openly gay person, and his presence on the panel upset conservatives. Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-NH) said that Reagan had caved in to demands by the gay community that “society accept their sexual practices as normal.” He warned that Reagan “should strive at all costs to avoid sending the message to society — especially to impressionable youth — that homosexuality is simply an alternative lifestyle. It is not. Homosexual practices are unnatural. The practice of homosexuality is immoral. The consequences of that immoral behavior is AIDS, and not only AIDS for homosexuals, but AIDS for many innocent victims, including children.”

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) lashed out by distributing pages from a comic book published by GMHC (“Lilly’s homosexual organization,” Helms called it) which included graphic depictions of safe-sex practices. Helms distributed those pages as part of a letter addressed “for senators’ eyes only” because “I think senators ought to know what the taxpayers’ money is being spent for, but I don’t want to help Lilly distribute this mess.” GMHC and the federal Public Health Service responded that the money used for Safer Sex Comix came from private donations, not government funds.

If conservatives were upset over Lilly’s appointment, other panelists named to the commission seemed to mollify those concerns. The most surprising nomination was New York Cardinal John, J. O’Connor, who had drawn the wrath of Act UP for publicly repudiating a National Conference of Catholic Bishops policy paper calling for AIDS educational programs even when they included information about condoms. Another conservative on the panel was Penny Pullen, Republican leader of the Illinois House of Representatives who sponsored legislation that would require a names-based HIV testing regime for marriage licenses, hospital admissions, and for all sex offenders and intravenous drug users, with additional tracing of sexual contacts for those who tested positive. Also named to the panel was Theresa Crenshaw, a controversial California sex therapist with a questionable resume who proposed barring students with AIDS from attend schools in San Diego. She also said that AIDS could be spread by insects, advised against “casual (dry) kissing” because AIDS patients “often carry other diseases,” and warned that AIDS “threatens our extinction.”

Reagan defended his more conservative choices: “When it comes to stopping the spread of AIDS, medicine and morality teach the same lessons.” The Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly also praised those selections saying she hoped the panel would “make recommendations to protect the uninfected from the infected.” But Jeff Levi, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said he did “not have high hopes for this commission.” Those fears appeared to be well-founded when Chairman Mayberry, the vice chairman and its only medical staff officer quit in October over turmoil within the commission.

The commission was quickly re-organized under the leadership of retired Admiral James Watkins. When the commission issued its report in 1988, it endorsed 580 specific recommendations including a call for state and federal anti-discrimination laws to protect people with AIDS. Another section harshly criticized funding cuts to public health services and the resulting impacts to the poor. It also recognized the work of gay community organizations which rose up to try to fill the gaps left by government inaction. “Semen, blood and ignorance surround this epidemic,” Watkins said at a press conference, “and we were in that last category.” He added, “The foremost obstacle to progress raised was the discrimination faced by those with HIV.” Such discrimination, he said, “is the rule, not the exception.”

Tim Sweeney, deputy executive director of GHMC, called the report “courageous, aggressive and compassionate. We challenge the President, Congress and presidential candidates to respond to this report by implementing its recommendations.” But the response to the report was muted. After all, it was a presidential election year with a lame-duck president waiting out the end of his term and a Congress whose attention focused solely on re-election.

Frank DeFrancesco

July 23rd, 2016

Thanks for this history lesson. I remember the Reagan era – and those years of ignoring AIDS because, well, it was a gay problem and they brought it on themselves. What is it with this country? And the republicans are even worse now it seems.

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