Op-ed: The Gay Tth About Ronald Reagan

Contents:

• OP-ED: THE GAY TTH ABOUT RONALD REAGAN
• 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.
• THE REAL RERD OF THE REAGANS ON GAYS AND AIDS
• RON JR. ON THE RERD: THE SON OF RONALD REAGAN BREAKS HIS SILENCE REGARDG THE WHISPER MPAIGN THAT HE IS GAY.
• HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS
• A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.
• WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY
• REGAN ALIYAH IS GAY: THE 'XO, KTY' STAR HAS AN MMA FIGHTER GIRLIEND
• THIS IS WHY GAYS BLAME RONALD REAGAN FOR AIDS
• RONALD REAGAN FEARED SON WAS GAY WHEN HE BEME BALLET DANCER

OP-ED: THE GAY TTH ABOUT RONALD REAGAN

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. I know I'm gog to be torn apart by many of the rears of this article, nsirg that I am a young gay progrsive Democrat who wouldn't ordarily e to the fense of a nservative Republin, but ultimately the ntext matters.

Ed Mee, Reagan's attorney general, has said that pictns of Reagan as antigay are "totally unfair and totally unreprentative of his views or anythg he ever said. " Reagan speechwrer Peter Robson said that "the notn that he was somehow llo or had a cel or cynil attu towards homosexuals or AIDS victims is jt ridiculo. Jt a year before he announced his ndidacy for print, he me out forcefully agast Proposn 6 California, which would've barred gay people om teachg public schools.

Before that statement, The Advote had lled out Reagan for referrg to gay people as "sick unfortunat" and for stallg repeal of antisodomy laws the state the early '70s. 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.

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. While public attus have bee far more open, the suatn that someone is gay — whether te or not — remas a potent weapon (as elements of the mpaign agast North Carola Republin Rep.

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.

THE REAL RERD OF THE REAGANS ON GAYS AND AIDS

“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. Behd those closed doors, McCloskey suggted strongly that the possibily of Kemp as a nng mate was proof that the “homosexual rg” around Reagan, long dismissed as mor, might be somethg all too real.

RON JR. ON THE RERD: THE SON OF RONALD REAGAN BREAKS HIS SILENCE REGARDG THE WHISPER MPAIGN THAT HE IS GAY.

Bt began llg him antilly to report that “homosexual people were very close to Reagan’s mpaign learship, ” that they were “nng” Reagan’s mpaign, and that “the suatn is absolutely out of ntrol. ” It was not until a boozy lunch wh a man claimg to have been a “long time Reagan associate, ” however, that Bt found what he believed to be the “smokg gun” provg that Reagan was ntrolled by homosexuals.

” After hearg om Bt, McCloskey agreed that a Kemp nomatn would revive the 1967 “Sndal Sacramento, ” possibly leadg to revelatns about the other homosexuals Reagan’s orb and thereby imperilg the GOP ticket.

HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS

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). Over dner at The Palm, some five weeks after the exchange McCloskey’s office, Livgston apparently uld not get the salac stori volvg Kemp and the homosexual Reagan ais out of his md. 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.

” He “has the pacy to ‘h’ people both Lat Ameri and here” the Uned Stat, and he “dited to me durg the eveng that Kemp was certaly a participant homosexual nduct and that he thought possible Reagan was also. Apprised of a clanste homosexual bal reachg all the way om Washgton to Sacramento, and om San Salvador to Santiago, Livgston had balked at s iatn r and th put himself grave danger. When Bill Bt first told McCloskey back 1976 about the homosexual advanc ma to him by the two Reagan ais, he had given McCloskey and four other people sealed envelop ntag a statement about one of those enunters.

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

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. As to the story’s newsworths, “the foc was that there uld be a circle of people tryg to ntrol Reagan and there may be a monaly of gay-ns, ” Tyler relled. The sence of Bt’s allegatns, Armstrong wrote a memo to his lleagu, was that submissn to the sexual mands of an fluential circle of gay men was “the se qua non of succs the Reagan anizatn.

WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY

“Count me out until someone on this list [of alleged homosexuals] is actually servg a printial admistratn wh accs to natnal secury rmatn or until a more current pattern of some group is evint, ” Armstrong nclud. 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.

REGAN ALIYAH IS GAY: THE 'XO, KTY' STAR HAS AN MMA FIGHTER GIRLIEND

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. “Uned Stat cryptographers and Brish scientists have fected to the Soviet Unn, reportedly part bee of the threat of exposure of homosexual nduct, ” McCloskey wrote Mee. “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.

McCloskey suggted that Mee ask “any persons agast whom reputable cizens have raised ntentns of homosexual nduct to step asi om posns of rponsibily the Reagan team at the earlit possible date.

THIS IS WHY GAYS BLAME RONALD REAGAN FOR AIDS

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. Had the whole farrago of mor and nuendo about the gay Reagane nspiracy e to light durg the mpaign, ’s difficult to say what effect would have had on the electn.

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. Those close to Reagan claim that he didn’t share the strong homophobia of his social nservative alli — the Reagans, after all, weled the first gay uple to their private rince and as ernor, Reagan opposed a California iative to prohib gays and lbians om teachg public schools — but his refal to speak out about the HIV/AIDS epimic ntributed to the aths of thoands of Amerins and vastated the gay and lbian muny.

Ined, Reagan — who durg his 1980 mpaign said that society nnot “ndone” the “alternative” gay “liftyle” — uld have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed om his admistratn and most arnt supporters. Jerry Falwell claimed that “AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals, ” and Reagan’s munitns director Pat Buchanan said AIDS is “nature’s revenge on gay men. ” “The poor homosexuals — they have clared war upon nature, and now nature is exactg an awful retributn, ” Buchanan wrote a 1983 op-ed for the New York Post, ncludg that homosexuals should not be permted to handle food and that the Democratic party’s cisn to hold their next nventn San Francis would leave legat’ spo and children at the mercy of “homosexuals who belong to a muny that is a mon rrier of dangero, munible and sometim fatal diseas.