Homosexualy and Gay Rights | Ronald Reagan

Contents:

• ADAPTED OM SECRET CITY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON BY JAM KIRCHICK. PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY. COPYRIGHT © 2022 BY JAM KIRCHICK. ALL RIGHTS RERVED.
• OP-ED: THE GAY TTH ABOUT RONALD REAGAN
• WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY
• RONALD REAGAN FEARED SON WAS GAY WHEN HE BEME BALLET DANCER
• THE REAL RERD OF THE REAGANS ON GAYS AND AIDS
• HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS
• THE ULTRANSERVATIVE BROTHERS PULLED STRGS REAGAN’S WASHGTON. THEN ONE OF THEM WAS OUTED AS GAY
• REAGAN’S DGHTER SAYS HE’D HAVE BACKED GAY MARRIAGE
• WHEN RONALD REAGAN (SORT OF) FOUGHT FOR THE DIGNY OF GAYS

ADAPTED OM SECRET CITY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON BY JAM KIRCHICK. PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY. COPYRIGHT © 2022 BY JAM KIRCHICK. ALL RIGHTS RERVED.

It was 3:15 on the morng of June 26, 1980, and Congrsman Bob Livgston was extraordarily dnk, hidg the ngrsnal gym beneath the Rayburn Hoe Office Buildg, petrified that a team of highly traed right-wg homosexual assasss workg on behalf of Ronald Reagan was about to kill him. This acunt of the alleged “homosexual rg” that ntrolled Ronald Reagan, and the efforts to expose on the eve of the 1980 Republin Natnal Conventn that nomated him for the princy, is piled om terviews wh several of the survivg participants and documents unvered the papers of former Washgton Post Executive Edor Ben Bradlee.

“That stuff, ” or what Kemp adviser Ju Wanniski termed “the homosexual thg, ” had dogged the upstate New York ngrsman and former profsnal football player sce the fall of 1967, when the syndited newspaper lumnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anrson published a piece lkg Kemp to a “homosexual rg” operatg wh Reagan’s gubernatorial office. ” The “slanr” and “old lumny” that the virile ex-football pro and father of four might be gay, journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak wrote at the time, was a “vic nard, ” the sort of “poisono” “garbage” one found “submerged the polil sewers” and other “gutter munitns” that “not only do gross jtice to their victims but also mean and pollute mocratic ernment. An Eisenhower-era executive orr barrg gay people om holdg feral ernment jobs (on the grounds that they were supposedly more sceptible to blackmail) had led to a purge of thoands of workers, and while the civil service lifted s ban 1975, gays were still prohibed om holdg secury clearanc (a rtrictn that would not be lifted until 1995).

Livgston’s md began to procs the jumble of thgs he had seen and heard over the past few weeks: the long-standg mors about Kemp; the supposed gay work encirclg Reagan; McCloskey’s ntact who claimed that he, too, had been h on by gay Reagan; Bouchey’s ti to var Lat Amerin juntas and paraari.

OP-ED: THE GAY TTH ABOUT RONALD REAGAN

Over the urse of the followg week, McCloskey typed up everythg he knew about the trigu ncerng the prumptive Republin printial nomee — the 1967 “homosexual rg” sndal Sacramento, the repeated sexual importung of Bill Bt by var Reagan ais, Bob Livgston’s dramatic pe om a dread homosexual h squad — to a two-part, 13-page, 33-pot nfintial memorandum. While gay sex might still have been illegal most Amerin stat at the time, and gay people officially remaed “secury risks, ” was hard to see how any of the alleged activy volvg the Reagan ais threatened the public tst. The prence of a closeted homosexual, Peter Hannaford, a potential Reagan admistratn uld pose a threat to natnal secury, McCloskey believed, and so he took his ncerns directly to Reagan’s longtime adviser and mpaign chief of staff, Ed Mee.

WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY

“Wh the growg numbers and polil volvement of the homosexual muni across the natn, ” a velopment McCloskey weled, “ would be my judgment that there will be very few secrets about who has and who has not engaged homosexual nduct. While he did not “specifilly” rell the meetg wh McCloskey, “the implitn that Pete [Hannaford] had anythg to do wh homosexualy is absolutely false, and the reason, if I said [he was not jog the admistratn] at the time was that there was no pot gog to bee Pete wasn’t gog to the admistratn anyway. In light of this rerd, his last-dch effort to torpedo Ronald Reagan wh a tale portrayg him as the dupe of a right-wg homosexual nspiracy looks like jt another episo a reer spent tiltg at wdls — his unlikely iend John Ehrlichman scribed him as “a latter-day Don Quixote” — though one much ls honorable than challengg Richard Nixon for the princy.

RONALD REAGAN FEARED SON WAS GAY WHEN HE BEME BALLET DANCER

For as difficult as might be to image today, when an openly gay man n mount a ser mpaign for the princy and gay people have never been more visible Amerin public life, there was only one offense that rivaled murrg a member of the oppose sex, and that was lovg a member of the same one. This narrative was further rerced recently the HBO film The Normal Heart, which Reagan is basilly held personally acuntable for the lack of progrs fightg the disease durg his picture that people like to pat of Reagan the LGBT muny is that he was a ferocly antigay zealot who believed that AIDS was a punishment brought down by God upon the gay muny. Whatever his mistak were when me to HIV and AIDS, she suggts that the former print kept a live-and-let-live attu when me to gay people, le wh the broar pro-eedom prcipl he poed for father once said that Reagan was "the most thentic man" he'd ever met and that "he didn't have a mean-spired bone his body.

THE REAL RERD OF THE REAGANS ON GAYS AND AIDS

Dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by crics, the legislatn would mandate that “classroom stctn by school personnel or third parti on sexual orientatn or genr inty may not occur krgarten through gra 3 or a manner that is not age appropriate or velopmentally appropriate for stunts acrdance wh state standards.

”By permtg parents to sue school districts that fail to enforce s vague provisns, the act would effectively bar classroom discsn and dividual exprsn on a wi range of subjects not necsarily limed to homosexualy and genr inty. Gay stunts and the children of same-sex upl, for stance, would likely be hibed om talkg about their liv, and teachers uld face the wrath of angry parents simply for discsg historil events volvg gay people, such as the adly 2016 attack on a gay nightclub bill’s proponents sist that the measure has nothg to do wh harmg the digny of gay dividuals but rather is aimed at ensurg age-appropriate sexual tn. Ten years later, the Rsian Duma unanimoly passed legislatn “for the purpose of protectg children om rmatn advotg for a nial of tradnal fay valu” prohibg the dissematn of “propaganda” of nontradnal sexual Asenc-Rhe/Tampa Bay Tim, via Associated PrsWhile brandg gay people as child molters has been a staple of right-wg rhetoric around the world, there has long existed a stra of Amerin libertarian nservatism that ems the legal enshrement of such prejudic as an vasn of privacy and a dangero enhancement of state power.

HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS

The measure was part of a natnal backlash agast the advancement of gay rights that began the prev year wh a mpaign by the Florida Cs Commissn spokwoman and gospel sger Ana Bryant to repeal an ordance Miami’s Da County that prohibed discrimatn on the basis of sexual orientatn.

THE ULTRANSERVATIVE BROTHERS PULLED STRGS REAGAN’S WASHGTON. THEN ONE OF THEM WAS OUTED AS GAY

A Field poll published September 1978 found 61 percent of California voters supported banng gay teachers, a figure nsistent wh natnal proponents of Proposn 6 lookg at what seemed like an unobstcted path to victory, those opposn wonred what one of the state’s most popular Republins, s former ernor Ronald Reagan, thought about the measure. Reagan’s own language: “Anarchy, ” he told the former ernor, who had ed that word to scribe mp unrt at Berkeley, would be unleashed classrooms statewi as stunts lodged spur charg of homosexualy agast their teachers.

REAGAN’S DGHTER SAYS HE’D HAVE BACKED GAY MARRIAGE

” He ma a more substantive se his syndited lumn published a week before the electn, refutg the claim that gays had a greater propensy to be child molters and the nard that they joed the teachg profsn to rec imprsnable Electn Day, voters rejected Proposn 6, 58 percent to 42 percent, a nearly exact reversal of what the polls dited jt two months earlier. But moral panics, by fn, eventually lose their steam, and Republins of nscience should not let the passns of the moment overwhelm their stated mments to dividual rights, personal privacy and limed Kirchick is the thor of the forthg book “Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton.

WHEN RONALD REAGAN (SORT OF) FOUGHT FOR THE DIGNY OF GAYS

HIV had been spreadg, untected, through Ameri’s gay populatn sce around the early 1970s, a rult of sexual transmissn among a mographic whose promiscuy was not only a nventn of queer sociabily but a revolutnary polil act the wake of the 1969 Stonewall rebelln. It was not until 24 September, 1982 that the CDC would e the acronym Aids; medil practners had up to that pot signated the novel vis Grid (Gay Related Immune Deficiency), or more lloquially ‘gay ncer’, or ‘gay plague’ – the implitn beg that this was an exclively gay disease.

Havg begun his reer as a Hollywood screenwrer before movg to wrg for the stage, Kramer, who died May aged 84, had never nceived of himself as a gay activist – fact his 1978 novel, Faggots, a sthg crique of the then norms of queer promiscuy, had ma him persona non grata New York’s gay muny the early 1980s. The play h me like a tsunami – Craig LusThe roman-à-clef rells the first years of the North Amerin Aids crisis om the perspectiv of a rag tag group of gay activists, together formg the Gay Men’s Health Crisis agast a backdrop of polil actn; the play’s protagonist, Ned Weeks, is a thly veiled analogue for Kramer himself.

Kramer’s portra of what a generatn of gay men suffered renrs Ameri ak to a warzone, where the rps of victims are refed ath certifit and left to llect dt oversized refe bags, and funerals bee so equent as to be social events. The central difference is that Aids was perceived to be a gay-only disease long to the 1980s by an unsympathetic public, so there was ltle-to-no prsure on Reagan to rpond, his polil pal unthreatened by his silence.