The Gay Truth About Ronald Reagan: 10 Years On
Reflecting on my article for The Advocate that still provokes controversy a decade later
5 days from today will be February 6th- the 113th birthday of the 40th President of the United States, the late Ronald Reagan. Around this time every single year there are always reflections in the media about President Reagan’s legacy and how it relates to the current political situation here in America. Conservatives will talk about Reagan’s virtues and the ways they believe he positively benefited this country while in office; liberals will talk about the ways they feel he ignored the problems of the nation and allowed many of them to fester into the stew of political messiness we face today.
I also contend with this subject, not just around February 6th but on a fairly regular basis. After all President Reagan played a large role in the history of my family; my father was a close friend of his and worked both on his 1980 campaign for the White House as well as in the administration. It also is personal for me because of my identity as a gay man and the unique, often contentious and bitter relationship my community has had with the late president. Most of the gay community has felt for a long time that Ronald Reagan was personally responsible for the tens of thousands of gay men who died from HIV and AIDS throughout his 2 terms in the 1980’s.
It also occurred to me in the process of my contemplation that this year- in June- will be the 20th anniversary of Reagan’s passing, as well as the 10th anniversary of my now infamous article that I wrote back in June 2014 called “The Gay Truth About Ronald Reagan.” It provoked a huge reaction at the time, to the point where I, no joke, had a stranger walk up to me one day and ask if I was “the guy who wrote the gay Ronald Reagan article”.
I wrote it for The Advocate, one of the leading publications in the world catering to the gay community. It was a deliberative piece that asked the question of how much Reagan individually was to blame for the HIV/AIDS epidemic and whether there was malicious intent in his neglect of the issue throughout the first 4 years of his presidency. Reagan didn’t publicly say the word “AIDS” until 1985, and didn’t deliver a major speech on the subject until 1987, 6 years after the first cases of the disease were reported.
I won’t regurgitate or re-litigate the details of the article here, but I encourage you to take a look at it. I recently re-read it myself, with the benefit of 10 years of hindsight and perspective, and thought it to be fairly objective. There were some changes made from my original draft by one of the editors that added in quotes from Reagan without context that made the piece seem a little shoddy and inconsistent in certain places, and that painted Reagan in a more negative light. I think the editor might’ve had his own views and agenda that he wanted to add into the mix. But overall I’m pretty proud of it and think it holds up all of these years later.
I, like most of the gay community, do hold Reagan responsible for his lack of action on the issue. But I also think nuance is important, especially in the days we live in which are more divided than ever. Reagan may have failed to combat HIV/AIDS sufficiently but that doesn’t mean we have to immediately jump to conclusions about his motivations. There were various moments throughout his career where he was actually supportive of gay rights. I think the blanket demonization of Reagan is just one example of the polarized times we live in, with shows like “The Reagans” on Showtime that only tell one side of the story. That’s not at all meant as an excuse for Reagan’s obvious failings but if we are to ever find the truth on this subject it would be helpful if our political discourse was more subtle and even handed. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, like with most things.
My involvement on the issue of Reagan and HIV/AIDS didn’t end in 2014. In 2016 I did an interview on YouTube with Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, where we discussed it. My father and I both had private conversations with Patti about working together to try to get HIV/AIDS acknowledged in some way by the Reagan Presidential Library here in California, as there was and is still no public display there relating to the epidemic. Patti was very much on board to make it happen. But when her mother, former First Lady Nancy Reagan died, the effort largely got sidetracked. I attended her funeral that year and wrote about it for the website Queerty.
As a gay activist and the son of a Reagan Administration official, I thought I could play a unique role and assist in bridging the divide, and even in a small way try to help right a historical wrong, even if we could never bring back the lives of those who were lost due to HIV/AIDS. My association has at times been weaponized against me, including in my 2019 run for West Hollywood City Council where some tried to paint me as some kind of Reagan apologist who was trying to white wash history. But the reality is that I simply wanted to help get to the cold hard facts and address some of the deep pain, anger and division that still exists on this matter.
The country and world have changed a lot since I wrote my Advocate piece in 2014. The election of Donald Trump has made people’s antipathy for the Republican Party and conservative politics much more intense, and rightfully so. I detest Trump and pretty much everything he stands for. And my passionate feelings on that front have undoubtedly made me view any Republican president, including Reagan in an even more suspect light than I did before.
But I still hope, despite the circumstances of our politics today, that we can try to drill down to the core reality of issues instead of being driven entirely by emotion and partisan leanings. I guess maybe part of my fascination and continued desire to speak out on Reagan and HIV/AIDS relates to the fact that we probably will never have the full answer and it will never entirely be resolved. But we can keep trying.