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.
• SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS
• RONALD REAGAN FEARED SON WAS GAY WHEN HE BEME BALLET DANCER
• HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS
• WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY

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. 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. 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. ” 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.

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.

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

” 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. 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. 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.

SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS

“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. 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.

“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.

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.

HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS

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. ” “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. Everett Koop, Reagan’s surgeon general, later explaed that “trapartmental polics” kept Reagan out of all AIDS discsns for the first five years of the admistratn “bee transmissn of AIDS was unrstood to be primarily the homosexual populatn and those who abed traveno dgs.

Twelve days before Reagan was elected print November, 1980, Christians for Reagan, a supposedly pennt lobby anized to pture the fundamentalist vote for the Republin nomee, announced that would pay for a barrage of advertisements throughout the South, which attacked Print Carter for “terg” to homosexuals. By far the most fluential gay man the Reagan ner circle was Robert Gray, an extremely succsful Washgton public relatns man who had been a closeted pal player ever sce he had served as Dwight Eisenhower’s appotments secretary. Homophobia led many cisn makers to disunt the AIDS epimic, partly bee they didn’t re much about those who were sick, and partly bee they believed that as long as they were straight, they themselv would never have to worry about .

The only real hero were a few scientists si the CDC, who lobbied early and often for more money to fight the epimic, and a very small group of ngrsmen om California and New York, cludg Philip Burton, Henry Waxman, and Ted Weiss, whose openly gay staff members nvced them to take the epimic serly. In April 1982, Wtmoreland wrote a statement for Waxman to read which clared, “There is no doubt my md that if the same disease had appeared among Amerins of Norwegian scent, or among tennis players, rather than gay mal, the rpons of both the ernment and the medil tablishment would have been different.

WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY

Insi the Reagan admistratn—at the Whe Hoe, at the Office of Management and Budget, and wh the Department of Health and Human man Servic—there were no openly gay staffers, and therefore, very ltle will to attack the problem forcefully. This attu was another ditn of the persistence of the myth that homosexualy was ntag—even though Reagan himself had publicly rejected that ia durg the battle over the Briggs amendment that would have banned gay teachers om California’s public schools. “Many people, pecially our youth, are not receivg rmatn that is val to their future health and well-beg bee of our reticence alg wh the subjects of sex, sexual practic and homosexualy, ” the surgeon general wrote.

It follows him still, even though he and his longtime wife, clil psychologist Dorta Reagan, appear to be happily married, ensnced Seattle wh their three typed as gay "has never bothered me, " says Reagan, 46, a polil mentator for MSNBC and dog show host for Animal Pla. Wns how some praised Clton to the hilt, yet he was the Print who signed “the Defense of Marriage” act to feral law, which banned the feral ernment om regnizg gay relatnships any remds me of when Frankl Roosevelt was nductg his shameful attack on Japane-Amerins.