Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbySeptember 15th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus Launches: Washington, D.C. Administration officials, experts and advocates will join Reps. Jim McDermott (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Trent Franks (R-AZ), co-chairs of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, to announce the launch of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus at a press conference on this morning 10:30 a.m. at the House Triangle, on the East Front of the U.S. Capital. The purpose of the caucus is “to examine methods by which the United States can maintain global leadership in the response to the epidemic in the U.S. and around the world. The Caucus will also provide opportunities to galvanize new leadership in preparation for the International AIDS Conference to be held in Washington, D.C. in July 2012.” At least fifty house members have signed on to the caucus.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Cranbrook, BC; Detroit, MI; Edmunton, AB; Hamilton, ON; Hazelton, BC; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; London, ON; Nelson, BC; Niagara, ON; North Bay, ON; Prince George, BC; Rochester, NY; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sydney, NS; and Vancouver, BC.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Dallas, TX; eKurhuleni, South Africa; Hartford, CT; Honolulu, HI; Las Vegas, NV; Modesto, CA; Rehoboth Beach, DE; Roanoke, VA; Sapporo, Japan; Stratford, ON; and Valdosta, GA.
Also This Weekend: North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
President Reagan Mentions AIDS For The First Time: 1985. There is something of an urban legend out there that holds that President Ronald Reagan never mentioned AIDS during his presidency. Another version has it that he did mention it, but not until 1987. The truth is that Reagan didn’t talk much about AIDS during his administration even after many thousands had died, in sharp contrast to the government’s vigorous and immediate response when 34 military veterans (and presumably not homosexual ones) came down with what would be known as Legionellosis — Legionaries Disease — at an American Legion convention in 1975. It was on this date in 1985 when Reagan finaly mentioned AIDS, briefly, during a news conference when he was asked about budget allocation for research:
Q: Mr. President, the Nation’s best-known AIDS scientist says the time has come now to boost existing research into what he called a minor moonshot program to attack this AIDS epidemic that has struck fear into the Nation’s health workers and even its schoolchildren. Would you support a massive government research program against AIDS like the one that President Nixon launched against cancer?
President Reagan: I have been supporting it for more than 4 years now. It’s been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and 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 in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.
The mother of Ryan White, the 13-year-old teen with AIDS who was forced to attend classes via telephone because his Kokomo, Indiana school district prohibited him from attending, was disappointed that Reagan take the opportunity to tell parents they shouldn’t fear that their children could catch AIDS through casual contact. And Rep. Gary Studds (D-MA) disputed Reagan’s statement that AIDS research was a top priority:
“… The president said last night it is one of the top priorities of the last four years,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview Wednesday. “Under those circumstances, it is more than a little difficult to imagine why he has never mentioned it once before in public.”
…At his news conference Tuesday night, Reagan, responding to reporters’ questions, said more than $500 million had been spent to try to find ways of combatting AIDS, a fatal virus which attacks the body’s ability to fight disease. But Studds said Reagan’s requests to Congress for fiscal years 1982 through 1986 were far less than that amount, and the money was appropriated only because Congress went beyond administration requests. “The administration’s request for the five fiscal years in question, ’82, ’83, ’84, ’85 and ’86, adds up to $213.5 million,” Studds said. “The way I read that, it’s less than ‘over half a billion’ by a substantial amount.”
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Charles
September 15th, 2011
I think that Reagan has gotten a bum rap about the beginning of the AIDS era. Medical experts didn’t know what the heck they were facing at the time. CDC was was doing all it could do. And, people have to remember that back then doctors were worried, even told my their colleagues, that they would lose patients if they even treated people with AIDS. If you think being homosexual today carries a stigma today. It carried a huge stigma back then. And, we must all remember that Reagan stepped up to the plate in the late 1970s and encouraged conservative voters not to vote for the proposition that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from public schools in California or teacher who supported gay rights.
Andrew
September 15th, 2011
THANK YOU for putting this up. I did not realize that the “urban legend” was untrue. As much as I’m an advocate for holding politicians accountable, we critics (I mean me) must be first accurate. Reagan may not have spoken out *much* about AIDS, but at least the words passed his lips.
I have to wonder if Reagan’s age was a factor – not with respect to cogency, but simply coming from a generation that had a very different sensibility about how to speak about personal (especially sexual) matters.
Lastly, Reagan remains a polarizing subject – especially in my own household. My partner is pretty far to the left on a lot of issues, and he lived in CA during Reagan’s terms as governor. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing he did right. This is one more place where it becomes very easy to allow partisan ideology to blind us to fair thinking. If we release Reagan from his shackles as the conservative darling / liberal demon, it becomes possible to appreciate the good and the bad that he did in separate measure. And if we release ourselves from blind adherence to partisanship, that gets a little bit easier.
And for the record, that’s a p.s. to my comments last week about gays and partisan identity and my way of saying “kudo’s” and “good job”. See I can be supportive, too :)
Timothy Kincaid
September 15th, 2011
I am glad that the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus is bipartisan.
There is little positive to say about G. W. Bush and his interaction with our community. But his commitment to AIDs research and funding (truly shocking when first proposed) did finally break the last of the partisanship associated with governmental response to the virus.
As for Reagan, Andrew is correct. Letting go of the conservative/liberal divide and viewing Reagan solely on his approach to gay issues, his record tells a tale that is quite different from our shared myth.
His intimate personal circle included gay people – and not in the Sarah Palin “some of my best friends” way. It is believed that the first gay couple to spend the night in the White House (together as a couple) were friends of President and Mrs. Reagan (I am not certain whether that has occurred since).
As for his policies, they didn’t much address us positively or negatively. He presented himself as the savior of the church and family bunch, but never really seemed to actually support any of their agenda items. To the best of my (limited) knowledge, his actual efforts either for or against gay people and their rights may be limited to his opposition to the Briggs Initiative.
He was less responsive on AIDS than he should have been – but not nearly as much as the social myth insists. The legend starts with the premise that Reagan was homophobic and then works its way to what he “must have” believed or done. (If you ever have a LOT of free time and an ironic sense of amusement, google Reagan and AIDS. It’s pages and pages and pages of “too late” and “not enough”, but little objective analysis. It seems Reagan generates a visceral rather than intellectual response). And that whole “God’s punishment” thing from the biopic was a complete fabrication – he didn’t say it, he didn’t believe it, and those who knew him laugh at the idea.
I do have to marvel at the man’s brilliance when it came to image. Somehow socially conservative Christians have created a hero out of a man who never attended church, was divorced, hung out with the Hollywood crowd, had close gay friends and a wife that consulted with psychics, and never actually pushed an anti-gay or anti-abortion bill.
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