30 J U S t O U t • june 112004
VIDEO STILL COURTESY Of WWW ACTUPNYOWG
Even in death,
Ronald Reagan
continues his reign
as the Teflon President.
Just Out presents the truth
* about his abysmal record
on AIDS.
by Rex Wockner and Meg Daly
hen Ronald Reagan breathed his last breath
June 5, he left behind a nation greatly affected
by the force of his words, deeds and nondeeds.
An outpouring of patriotic platitudes have
blanketed the land, with President Bush
leading the way by declaring June 11a National Day of
Mourning for the 40th commander in chief. Federal buildings
are to fly the U.S. flag at half-staff until July 4.
The sentiment quickly swept westward. Oregon Gov. Ted
Kulongoski declared June 11 as Ronald Reagan
Commemoration Day and encouraged “all Oregonians to join
in this observance” by remembering Reagan s “unparalleled
ability to reach out to the American people and [convey] his
unbounded optimism about the future of the United States to
the American people.”
Which American people, many queers would ask.
Meanwhile, another blanket continued to stretch across the
country. The AIDS Memorial Quilt— unruffled by the weepy
Reagan commemorations— will be displayed from June 25 to
27 in Washington, D.C., in observance of National HIV
Testing Day. More than 44,000 panels strong, the quilt pays
tribute to the tens of thousands of lives lost to AIDS in the
A C T U P New York
protests Reagan’s silence
on the A ID S crisis
in 1988
United States and serves as a powerful reminder that AIDS is
not over. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention estimates that, to date, 21.8 million people
worldwide have died of the pandemic.
It is no small irony that the U.S. flag will be flying at
half-staff during the quilt weekend. About 30,000 U.S.
citizens had died of the disease before Reagan publicly
addressed it in a 1987 speech. The lowered flag will look
mournfully down on the mourners, signifying quite a
different loss.
As Barbra Streisand put it in her 1992 address to an AIDS
Project Los Angeles fund-raiser: “I will never forgive my
fellow actor Ronald Reagan for his genocidal denial of the
illness’s existence, for his refusal to even utter the word AIDS
for seven years and for blocking adequate funding for research
and education which could have saved hundreds of thousands
of lives.”
Gay actor Harvey Fierstein was even more blunt in a
confrontation with radio talk show host Michael Reagan on
the May 20, 1997, episode of Politically Incorrect. When the *
topic turned to the former president’s handling of AIDS, he
shouted, “Fuck you and fuck your father.”