LGBT News Was Reagan as anti-gay as people portray him?

I don't think he was antigay for a multitude of reasons and I think you proved your point pretty well. I'm not to familiar with the AIDS Crisis, so I'm not going to comment on that because I pretty much have no idea.

 

I think things are very rarely as black and white as people remember them but for me he will always be the figure-head of a generation of Americans who stood by and watched because all the right people were dying. The notion that he did all that without even believing it personally if anything lowers my opinion of him. I may just be bitter but I watched too many people die and I know too many people who watched almost everyone they know die. If on this particular topic I am bitter at least I feel like I came to it honestly.

 

1) Is it true that he stalled repeal of antisodomy laws?
2) If so, what criminal penalty did those laws provide?
3) To what extent were those laws unjust in an extremely violent way?
4) At what point are we allowed to call "stalling repeal" extremely violent?
5) How does this sort of behavior merit the distinction "far from perfect" more than "violent criminal"?

 

Missing the point here people.
Bottom line, it doesn't matter.
What matters is that too many republicans, especially republicans with power and in power, march to the beat of the same drum and march in line with their party agenda.

It doesn't matter if or might Reagan had felt this way or that way about gays.
We would have never known because the republican party is in itself extremely anti-Gay.
Then and still today.
Reagan was owned by that party hook line and stinker.

What matters is that republicans seldom if ever break away independently from party lines. Party beliefs. Party agenda.
If one should, they would be ran out of town on a rail.
And never again elected into public office.
With no republican money to fund the republican candidate, the republican candidate would never win.
And remember... they eat their own.
And to get the GOP funding, you must walk the walk and talk the talk.

The republican party hates gays as a whole.
They are allied to the extreme far religious right.
And we all know exactly how the far religious right feels about homosexuality.
No need for reminder of that.
And the sad thing, Republicans still are moving more and more far religious right every day. Every election cycle.
The republican party is in fact 100% owned and operated.

Just read the republican party platform election after election. Extremely anti-Gay.
So if the party says hate gays, they hate gays.
They will hate gays thru their policies.
They will hate gays thru their governing.
They will hate gays thru their ideology.

It doesn't matter if Reagan was this or was that, or supported anything anyone gay.
Or if Reagan had close gay hollywood friends, or not.
It doesn't matter.
As long as the party believes gays are evil and to be suppressed, the republican in power will comply with party.
And that fully included Ronald Reagan.

Reagan did not utter the word HIV, not because he did not have symphaty for his gay hollywood friends dying of aids. Reagan would not utter the word HIV because in the 1980's it suggested sympathy towards gays and suggested concern with what was happening in the gay community.
Still the republican party ideology both then, and today. To be anti-gay in every way.

So it doesn't matter with Reagan.
His lips were sealed.

 

Reagan did absolutely nothing about the AIDS crisis while in office. Zip, zero, zilch, nada, nothing, as at that time, conservatives/Republicans were all but applauding the deaths of millions of LGBT Americans. Though if it weren't for Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, things would have been even worse. The religious right pleaded with Koop to do nothing about AIDS, because at that time it was "god's punishment for the homosexuals, they got what they deserved so let them die." Koop later said "As a doctor who's sworn the Hippocratic Oath, you can't do that."

Reagan tried to shy away from the topic of gay rights while in office, however on July 12, 1984, he was quoted as saying:

"Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. In part the erosion of these values has given way to a celebration of forms of expression most reject. We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."

Reagan had to pander to the Religious Right to get elected in 1980, as most of those people had voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. He knew that if he was going to be re-elected in 1984 that he needed the support of the far right, and since the popular conservative opinion at that time was that AIDS was a punishment, he had to stand idly by as 21,000 people died over 8 years.

On a side note, one of the things that I've noticed is that quite a few of the people that worship Ronald Reagan were either not alive or not old enough to understand politics while he was President.

 

Good thing C. Everett Coop was the Surgeon General, if he wasn't, there may not have been a response to AIDS until the mid-1990s with Clinton.

 

His press flacks sure thought it was a source for amusement.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/times-the-reagan-white-house-press-briefing-erupted-with