A Little Piece of History. A Long Rant

My Philosophy class has me thinking about morality and what is and isn't moral and what God may or may not have to do with any of it.

And of course, today we are, as a nation, mourning the death of President Reagan.

To be clear, I am a practicing Buddhist. I was raised in the Christian faith and attended a Catholic Jr High and High School. There is no doubt that my cultural socialization is steeped in Christian ethos. That's not altogether bad, mind you, Christ taught some very moral lessons and strove to better humanity. As a Buddhist, I hold a rather scientific view of morality - that is to say that just the same as an object put into motion continues in motion until acted upon by another force, then so does an action/thought taken/held by an individual produce a unique consequence of that action/thought. This, to me, is undeniable and the force that spins all life on this planet. To put it more succinctly, if you help the suffering, this kind deed will be returned to you and if you harm another this unkind deed will equally be returned to you. Karma. Christ more or less states the same principle but couches it in terms of a heavenly Father doing the returning favors. In Buddhism, as in Christianity, there is a teaching that some lessons are time-appropriate - that is to say that until humanity reaches a certain level of consciousness, a teaching has to be dumbed down to get it across. This teaching is why I don't fault people for what their beliefs are - I have mine and whatever works for you works for you - great.

And now back to Reagan. In 1980 I was in my Junior year of High School and living in Southern California. That was the year that Reagan took office. That also happened to be the year that I came out as a dyke, although back then I called myself bi-sexual, which is probably still closer to the truth. In 1982 AIDs hit the news. No one knew what the fuck it was. All of a sudden a few gay men started dying horrible deaths of rare diseases such as Kaposi's Sarcoma. the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) was stumped, medical professionals were stumped, people in general were stumped. Then the vitriolic hate started. It was labeled the "gay disease" and fed the bigotry of "Christians" who declared that this was God's wrath for queers leading a life of sin.

President Reagan and his Administration did nothing. He treated it as something akin to measles, something that would just go away on its own somehow. He gave no Federal funding to what was clearly a national epidemic. He left it to States and Counties to figure out how to fund research and how to treat the inflicted. Between 1982 and 1987 he never mentioned AIDs publicly. Not Once. Those were my college years. I moved to San Francisco in 1985. I was very active socially and politically and made a number of friends quickly. By 1990, 20+ of those friends I had made, some as close to me as any close friend I've ever had, were dead. When my friend, Malone, died I was held and comforted by Neil. A year later, when Neil died, I was held and comforted by Devon. Devon died the next year and I stopped going to funerals.

It took actor Rock Hudson's death to shake actor/President Reagan out of his denial as to the epidemic happening on his watch. In 1987 he spoke at the 3rd (THIRD) International AIDs Conference. His thoughts were more toward testing than curing or preventing. That was a start, at least.

It took radical tactics by the radical left to keep AIDs in the headlines and to keep pressure on politicians. ActUp, with their extremist tactics of disrupting the normal workday by shutting down streets and bridges, had more to do with educating the public as to the nature than AIDs than Reagan had done for years.

Today in the United States alone, according to the CDC, there are 800,000-900,000 people living with HIV and 40,000 new cases a year reported. Between 1982 and 2001, 21.8 million people had died of AIDs/HIV. 3 million people a year die. A half million of those yearly deaths are children under the age of 15.

And today we are mourning Reagan's death and the tragedy of his ten year long battle with Alzheimer's.

Not in my name. I am still mourning for Malone, Neil, Devon, John, Tanya, and all the other dozens of people that I used to know who are dead of HIV and who died in their 20s and 30s. Reagan's suffering, as far as I care, is simply cause/effect in action and none of my business. I feel for Nancy and his kids for he was a human, after all. However, he could have acted according to his Christian principles. He chose, for years, not to do so. Further proof of the attitude of Reagan's Administration as of 1982 can be found in this October 15, 1982 White House press corps transcript :

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?

Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

Q: No, I don't.

MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.

Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ...

MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.

Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any ...

Q: Nobody knows?

MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ...

MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no - (laughter) - no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.

Q: Didn't say that?

MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)

Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)

MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

Q: Oh, I retract that.

MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.

Q: It's too late.

Only 600 cases in 1982. A laughing Administration.
Nothing done on a Federal level for 5 years. No research funding. No national policy. Nothing. 600 cases. We could have changed the face of this global epidemic. We chose to not do so. Now we have 900,000 cases in the US and have suffered millions of deaths.

Today we face a similar challenge: Stem cell research. This research could allow us to find a way around Alzheimer’s' - a disease rapidly growing proportionally. I know three men who currently have this disease. My best friend's father died of it. And President Bush won't budge on it.

Don't talk to me about Compassionate Conservatism. These people are acting immorally, against the tenets of their very own faith.

The Reagan message: If you are queer it's Ok to suffer. [and I must point out that AIDs/HIV is not a queer thang].

If you were a leper in Biblical times, you were forbidden by law to be touched.

That is, unless you had the compassion of Christ and listened to a higher moral authority than the law.

---