As if the AIDS epidemic weren’t devastating enough, the Reagan administration famously refused to publicly acknowledge the disease until 1987, and some officials, as unearthed in recent audio footage, horrifically mocked those who were dying.
The first cases of AIDs were revealed in 1981. By 1983, 1,025 cases were reported and 394 had died; by 1984, 4,177 had been infected and 1,807 died. Reagan said nothing, a fact that is not altogether surprising given the fact that he and the Republicans curried favor among extremely conservative evangelical Christians whose leaders declared things such as AIDs being God’s wrath on homosexuals (Jerry Falwell) or being nature’s revenge on gay men (Pat Buchanan).
The White House’s silence on the disease prompted activists to increase their visibility to garner funding for AIDS research. Over 100,000 people marched in San Francisco during the 1984 Democratic National Convention. The news of actor Rock Hudson’s infection came out in 1985, but even though Hudson was a friend of Reagan’s and had visited the White House numerous times, nothing changed. That same year, Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman wrote in the Washington Post, “It is surprising that the president could remain silent as 6,000 Americans died, that he could fail to acknowledge the epidemic's existence. Perhaps his staff felt he had to, since many of his New Right supporters have raised money by campaigning against homosexuals." The surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, explained later that he was left out of discussions regarding AIDS and that the administration took the stance that since it was mostly gay men contracting the disease, they were getting what they deserved.
By the time Reagan spoke publicly of AIDS, at the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington DC, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed and 20,849 had died. Just because he discussed the disease, however, did not mean he was committed to research, understanding, or even compassion. He was quoted as saying, “But let's be honest with ourselves. 'AIDS information cannot be what some call 'value neutral'. After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don't medicine and morality teach the same lessons?” He believed the best course for the government was to “give educators accurate information about the disease. How that information is used must be up to schools and parents, not Government.”
Andy Humm, an activist who started one of the first AIDS education programs in New York City at the Hetrick-Martin Institute for Gay Youth, explained how he was initially pleased to hear Reagan finally say something, but then that quickly faded: “We’re hopeful that he’s going to come up with something that the world is going to get moving on this and he started lapsing into this right wing stuff about we need to mandatorily test people in prison. This kind of stuff. We started booing, and it was a great release. We realized that he wasn’t going to change anything or address it. This — guys just standing there befuddled, why am I here. Why am I being booed. I’m a good man. He’s completely out of it. I don’t remember another instance as president where he was put in the position where he was booed.”
While some Americans choose to remember Reagan for his charisma, “Star Wars” defense program, stern words to Mikhail Gorbachev, or survival of an assassin’s bullet, many others justifiably remember him for something he didn’t do: demonstrate any semblance of care or consideration for American citizens dying from a monstrous disease.
