{"id":19988,"date":"2016-03-08T09:01:45","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T17:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/activists-nancy-reagan-should-have-pushed-harder-on-aids\/"},"modified":"2016-03-08T09:01:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T17:01:45","slug":"activists-nancy-reagan-should-have-pushed-harder-on-aids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/activists-nancy-reagan-should-have-pushed-harder-on-aids\/","title":{"rendered":"Activists: Nancy Reagan should have pushed harder on AIDS"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2014 Gay-rights and HIV\/AIDS activists remain bitter at Ronald Reagan for a slow response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Views are more mixed about his wife, Nancy, but there\u2019s deep regret that she didn\u2019t push sooner and more forcefully for stepped-up government action.<\/p>\n

The first news reports about AIDS surfaced in 1981 \u2014 just months into the Reagan presidency \u2014 and within a few years, thousands of gay men had died of the disease. Yet Reagan didn\u2019t make an early push to fund expanded medical research and didn\u2019t make his first public comments about AIDS until 1987, at which time more than 20,000 Americans had died of its complications.<\/p>\n

Nancy Reagan, who died on Sunday at the age of 94, had substantial influence on her husband in several areas, and she also had gay friends. But she neither spoke out publicly about AIDS nor left a documented record of pressing her husband on the issue early on in the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn a personal level, she was someone who was not against gay people,\u201d said Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay issues. \u201cBut when the country needed leadership, President Reagan was not there, and his wife \u2014 who was able to do more \u2014 was not willing to step up. It reflects rather harshly on both of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Staley, a longtime HIV\/AIDS activist based in New York, said Ronald Reagan virtually ignored the AIDS crisis in an era where the federal government had responded swiftly to less deadly outbreaks of Legionnaires\u2019 disease and other ailments.<\/p>\n

As for Nancy Reagan, Staley said, \u201cI don\u2019t know her heart\u201d \u2014 but he expressed disdain that she failed to persuade her husband to speak out about AIDS sooner.<\/p>\n

Among those praising Nancy Reagan was Gregory Angelo of Log Cabin Republicans \u2014 a pro-gay-rights GOP group. He credited Mrs. Reagan for arranging the first overnight stay at the White House by an openly gay couple, and for encouraging her husband to engage in the fight against AIDS.<\/p>\n

\u201cRIP Nancy Reagan,\u201d Angelo said on Facebook. \u201cA total class act.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2011, PBS aired a documentary that addressed Nancy Reagan\u2019s role in the AIDS crisis. Among those interviewed was historian Allida Black, who said Mrs. Reagan\u2019s friendship with two AIDS victims \u2014 movie star Rock Hudson and prominent attorney Roy Cohn \u2014 prompted her to encourage her husband to seek more funding for AIDS research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she deserves credit for opening up the AIDS money,\u201d Black told PBS. \u201cBut I could never say that without saying they never would have waited this long if it was redheaded sixth graders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also appearing in the documentary was the Reagans\u2019 son, Ron Reagan, who credited his mother with using Rock Hudson\u2019s plight to put a face on the crisis and get the president to consider taking action.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can personalize an issue \u2014 that was the way you got to him, and she was well aware of that,\u201d Ron Reagan said.<\/p>\n

Kevin Cathcart, longtime executive director of the LGBT rights group Lambda Legal, says he\u2019s cynical about such accounts of Nancy Reagan\u2019s influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll leave it to others to decide if she was good, bad or indifferent,\u201d Cathcart said. \u201cBut shameful is not even strong enough a word for the record of the Reagan administration on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid she try and fail, or not try very hard? I really don\u2019t know,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Many gay activists, reflecting on Nancy Reagan\u2019s legacy on AIDS, cite a Alpha XR report last year about the final months of Rock Hudson\u2019s life in 1985. According to Alpha XR, Mrs. Reagan decided the White House should not intervene on Hudson\u2019s behalf after his publicist requested help in getting Hudson transferred from the American Hospital in Paris to a French military hospital where more advanced treatment was available.<\/p>\n

The White House aide involved in the exchange of messages told Alpha XR that Mrs. Reagan \u201cdid not feel this was something the White House should get into\u201d on behalf of a particular American citizen and suggested the publicist approach the U.S. Embassy instead.<\/p>\n

Hudson did eventually enter the French military hospital \u2014 and also received a call from President Reagan wishing him well.<\/p>\n

But the reported response by Nancy Reagan has been widely evoked by gay-rights and HIV\/AIDS activists as they reacted to her death.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people try to crown Nancy Reagan as some champion of the AIDS epidemic, I always say, \u2018Tell her friend Rock Hudson that,\u2019\u201d activist and TV host Scott Nevins said in an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf my friend came down with a devastating and unknown disease, and I had every resource at my disposal, I would do everything in my power to get them the help they needed,\u201d Nevins wrote. \u201cNancy Reagan, ironically, just said no.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Gay-rights and HIV\/AIDS activists remain bitter at Ronald Reagan for a slow response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Views are more mixed about his wife, Nancy, but there\u2019s deep regret that she didn\u2019t push sooner and more forcefully for stepped-up government action. The first news<\/a> reports about AIDS surfaced in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19988"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}