“Adolph Reagan?

” Ronald Reagan, AIDS, and Lesbian/Gay Civil Rights

©2009 by William B. Turner

William B. Turner, Ph.D.

drturner@mindspring.com

Visiting Assistant Professor

Emory School of Law
1301 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30322
404.727.6334 (o)
404.695.6081 (c)

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1433567

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“Adolph Reagan?” Ronald Reagan, AIDS, and Lesbian/Gay Civil Rights

The burgeoning literature about President Ronald Reagan is mostly celebratory. His

former associates and admirers have consistently turned out book after book, beginning with his

election in 1980, that characterize him as having changed the United States wholesale for the

better, and in a distinctly conservative direction. This article offers a scholarly corrective in the

form of a largely overlooked perspective on Reagan and his presidency. It examines Reagan’s

personal attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, placing him not only relative to lesbian/gay civil

rights activists, but also – and perhaps more revealingly -- relative to conservative activists.

Insofar as conservatives made opposition to lesbian/gay civil rights demands and political

visibility a prominent goal, they found no particular help in Ronald Reagan, whose profound

silence on these issues contributed to the advances of lesbian/gay activists both during his

presidency and after.

As Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision striking down sodomy laws, and

the battles over same-sex marriage indicate, lesbian/gay civil rights issues are important in their

own right for their impact on a significant segment of the population, and their effect on

surrounding political contests. But this article is not about lesbian/gay activists. It is about

conservatives’ desire to contain those activists and Ronald Reagan’s nearly wholesale failure to

contribute to their crusade. It reveals much about Reagan the President and his relationship to

American conservatism. Reagan occupies a unique position at the intersection of the

conservative and lesbian/gay rights movements. To ignore the interplay between Reagan’s

conservative movement and the lesbian/gay1 politics of the late twentieth century is to lack a

complete understanding of the myriad points of the American political universe and the

complicated relationships among them, and to the larger culture.2 Reagan is the leading avatar

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1433567

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of a supposedly transcendent American conservatism whose presidency coincided with the

emergence of a deadly disease initially associated almost exclusively with gay men.

But if, as many of Reagan’s supporters insist, he ushered in a period of increasing

conservatism, how has the lesbian/gay movement achieved major political gains over the same

period?3 The predominant story of growing conservative success in the politics and policy of the

United States since the late 1970s obscures the significance of the lesbian/gay movement. That

movement is significant in at least two senses. First, its success points out clearly the fault lines

within the Republican electoral coalition of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Part of Reagan’s genius was his ability to appeal to both traditionalist conservatives and

libertarians, but those two groups disagree strongly on certain issues.4 Second, that the

lesbian/gay movement has enjoyed significant successes of its own during the same time that

both participants and observers have claimed success for conservatism demonstrates at once an

important limitation in the efficacy of the conservative movement, and the importance of the

lesbian/gay movement in its own right. As this article demonstrates, the world of American

politics is simply more complex than Reagan’s celebrants would have us believe.

At the time of Reagan’s death, AIDS activist Larry Kramer reiterated his long-standing

comparison of Reagan to Adolph Hitler, asserting that Reagan deliberately refused to exercise

leadership on AIDS because he hated gay men. 5 Kramer’s was only the latest in a long series of

vociferous denunciations aimed at Reagan by lesbian/gay civil rights activists, largely because of

his obdurate refusal to provide leadership in the battle against acquired immune deficiency

syndrome (AIDS). Even before the AIDS epidemic came to frame public debate over

lesbian/gay civil rights, however, Reagan’s White House staff had cut off access to lesbian/gay
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activists, the vast majority of whom accepted the common characterization of the new President

as a crusading conservative from whom they could expect only opposition to their demands. 6

Reagan was no friend of lesbian/gay civil rights. But archival evidence of his attitude

toward lesbians and gay men, and a comparison of his policy choices to the recommendations of

Christian conservative and allied activists, indicates that his silence on AIDS reflected his

libertarian instincts, not hatred of lesbians and gay men. Positions on AIDS and lesbian/gay civil

rights during the 1980s ranged across a spectrum, from the full-throated advocacy of activists

such as Kramer to the denunciations of conservatives like Patrick Buchanan and William

Dannemeyer. Kramer would place Reagan to the right even of the most conservative activists,

but the evidence suggests otherwise. Reagan clearly stood to the right of center, but he was more

libertarian than traditionalist, making him significantly more moderate than the most

conservative voices in the debates of the 1980s about lesbian/gay civil rights and AIDS.

The Christian right constituted a major component of the conservative electoral coalition

that claimed credit for electing Reagan to the presidency in 1980. Vigorous opposition to

lesbian/gay civil rights claims became a central organizing principle for a significant segment of

the Christian right beginning in the late 1970s. Concerns about apparent moral decay at home

and crusading communism abroad, interpreted in a framework of apocalyptic eschatology as

derived from the biblical revelations of Armageddon, informed the politics and policy

preferences of Christian right activists.7 Reagan shared this worldview in important respects.8

Yet for Christian right activists, one of the most obvious and threatening indications of moral

decay in the United States was the increasing visibility and militance of lesbian/gay civil rights

activists. For the Christian right, opposition to lesbian/gay civil rights was essential to the

perpetuation of the nation’s moral probity. Reagan was no supporter of lesbian/gay civil rights,
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but he consistently failed to make opposition to the lesbian/gay civil rights movement the top

priority that it was for Christian right activists. Reagan’s supporters often refer to his presidency

as a revolution, but for those who saw in lesbian/gay civil rights profoundly threatening change,

it was more a pause than a reversal. 9

Homos are Pinkos

Opposition to communism was the defining characteristic of the newly militant

conservative movement of the post World War II era. Ronald Reagan’s supporters routinely

identify the apparent American triumph in the Cold War against Soviet communism as Reagan’s

chief accomplishment.10 Coming out as a gay conservative, movement leader Marvin Liebman

stated that conservative activists in the United States began to demonize lesbians and gay men

only after the demise of the Soviet Union left them bereft of their favorite target.11 Liebman was

apparently unaware that political leaders of all stripes believed a close correlation existed

between communism and homosexuality as they enforced the loyalty and security programs of

the late 1940s and 1950s.12

For the Christian right, as legal scholar Didi Herman has demonstrated, the perception of

a connection between communism and homosexuality, and the dual threat they pose to American

society, persisted well into the 1990s. Christian right activists first focused on the lesbian/gay

civil rights movement during the late 1970s, once a major upsurge in lesbian/gay organizing that

followed the 1969 Stonewall riots had begun to produce significant policy victories at the state

and local level. If, as Kevin Tebedo of Colorado for Family Values has stated, “The politics of

homosexuality is Marxism-Leninism,” then Liebman’s chronology is correct only if we see in

the Christian right a change of emphasis, from anticommunism to antigay activism, rather than a
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completely different choice of enemy, with the end of the Cold War.13 By 1989, Sara Diamond

asserted that “The enmity of the Christian Right toward gay people is potentially the most

dangerous element of its ideology and political game plan. It is safe to say that the leadership of

the Christian Right will not be satisfied until homosexuality is banned in the United States.”14

Too often overlooked as a major event in the emergence of the Christian right as a

political force is Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” drive in 1977. Leading a referendum

campaign to repeal a recently enacted ordinance that provided civil rights protections on the

basis of sexual orientation, Bryant articulated themes that would continue to define the struggle

between lesbian/gay civil rights activists and Christian conservatives for the remainder of the

century. Her success in Dade County, Florida set off similar efforts to repeal lesbian/gay civil

rights ordinances in several other cities15 and helped persuade John Briggs, a California

assemblyman, to propose an eponymous initiative there in 1978 that would have required all

school districts in the state to fire any lesbian/gay employees from positions involving contact

with children. But Bryant’s success also contributed substantially to a sense of national

solidarity among lesbian/gay civil rights activists as lesbians and gay men from around the

country raised money for the Dade County fight.16

The same year, Norman Podhoretz, a Jewish cultural conservative with significant

sympathies for the Christian right, articulated the suspicion of gay men as helpers of communism

in a Harper’s magazine article. Americans were excessively timid about defending their nation

and culture, on Podhoretz’s view. In general, according to Podhoretz, the United States in the

late 1970s looked dismayingly like Great Britain during the interwar period. One of many

similarities was the presence of a coterie of gay male writers who sapped the national will to

fight with their vicious, irresponsible critiques of the culture they lived in. Podhoretz asserted
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that gay male authors were willing to disparage the bourgeois culture of England and America

because, having no children of their own, they had no commitment to the long-term health of that

culture. In short, gay men were a threat to the health of a nation locked in a life or death struggle

against communism. 17 Note that Podhoretz articulated this position fully four years before the

identification of AIDS as a syndrome initially linked closely to gay men.

Writing shortly after Dade County voters repealed their lesbian/gay civil rights law in

June 1977, columnist William Safire offered a statement of the libertarian position on the

subject. Comparing lesbians and gay men to adulterers, Safire made a distinction between the

choices that adults may legitimately make in private and the moral standards that the society as a

whole should uphold even while recognizing that many persons will fall short. “In the eyes of

the vast majority,” wrote Safire, “homosexuality is an abnormality, a mental illness, even – to

use an old fashioned word – a sin.”

While he shared Bryant’s basic language, and her concern for the possibility of openly

lesbian/gay teachers encouraging students to be gay, he warned her that voters had given her “a

vote of confidence, not a flaming sword.” According to Safire, “No bluenose moralizer should

have the power to tell consenting adults of the same sex that they cannot live together in public

housing. Gays pay taxes; if they want to love each other, society should get away from the

keyhole; if they want to profess their love, that’s their free speech. As long as ‘straights’ are not

forced to underwrite a homosexual sales message in the classroom, the straights have no right to

penalize private citizens for their personal behavior.”18 After the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas

decision, Safire would go so far as to endorse, not only striking down state sodomy laws, but

recognition of same-sex marriages – a bright line between traditionalist conservatives and

libertarians.19
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Safire agreed in 1977 with Bryant on the basic point that same-sex sexual activity was

inherently undesirable and that lesbian/gay identity indicated at least psychological failure, at

most moral failure. Most notably, he anticipated Reagan’s position in a 1986 interview by

choosing the possibility of “a homosexual sales message in the classroom” as his litmus test in

determining the limits of his respect for lesbian/gay civil rights. But Safire disagreed with

Bryant about the vigor with which government and ordinary citizens should condemn lesbians

and gay men for their alleged immorality.

In 1979, supporting Reagan’s candidacy as Reagan had done for him in 1964, Barry

Goldwater echoed Podhoretz’s claims about communists, and the inadequate American response

to them: "The Russians are determined to conquer the world…. Their artful use of propaganda

has anesthetized the free world. Our will to resist is being steadily eroded, and this is a contest

of will."20 Marking the bright line between neoconservatives such as Podhoretz and Christian

right organizers, on one hand, and libertarian Republicans on the other, however, Goldwater

subsequently emerged as a significant supporter of lesbian/gay civil rights.

As early as 1981, Goldwater’s criticisms of the leading Christian right organization at the

time, the Moral Majority, and its leader, Jerry Falwell, attracted approving comments from

prominent Washington, D.C. gay activist Frank Kameny. 21 In 1993, Goldwater dismayed many

conservatives by speaking vigorously against the military's ban on openly lesbian/gay soldiers.

"You don't have to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot

straight." This statement was only one of many in which he disagreed publicly with local

Christian conservatives, who briefly took over the Arizona Republican Party, and their national

counterparts. Goldwater's biographer makes clear that his support for lesbian/gay civil rights

stemmed partly from his discovery that one of his grandsons was gay and one of his grandnieces
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was a lesbian, but also from the simple fact that he no longer had to worry about winning

elections.22 As a matter of principle, however, Goldwater’s differences with Christian

conservatives on lesbian/gay civil rights and abortion reflect the differences between libertarians

and traditionalists.

Reagan’s Views

Lesbian/gay civil rights issues had not yet broken onto the national political scene in

1964, when Goldwater ran for president. They undoubtedly had done so by 1980, but not so

vigorously as to ensure a response from presidential candidates. Whereas Jimmy Carter

addressed lesbian/gay civil rights directly – even campaigning for lesbian/gay votes -- in both the

1976 and 1980 campaigns, determining Reagan’s views on the subject is an exercise in the

drawing of historical inference.23 The newness of the lesbian/gay civil rights movement in 1980

meant that silence indicated little about the candidate’s position. Reagan showed no sign of

anticipating Goldwater’s subsequent strong support for lesbian/gay civil rights, but insofar as he

revealed any position, he remained significantly more libertarian than Christian conservatives,

including the Christian conservatives who worked for him in the White House.

Ronald Reagan’s near total lack of action on lesbian/gay civil rights issues and AIDS was

consistent with his general failure to address social issues in favor of economic issues, and his

propensity to ignore almost entirely all topics except the core items on his agenda – containing

Soviet communism and ensuring economic growth.24 But, as many observers have noted,

Reagan’s policy priorities reflected his strong personal beliefs and preferences, raising the

inference that he lacked strong opinions about lesbian/gay civil rights issues.25 Certainly he must
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not have shared the Christian conservative view that lesbians and gay men were a type of, or

characteristically sympathetic to, communists.

Reagan’s inaction on AIDS, along with his widely publicized connections to the New

Right, led many lesbian/gay rights activists to attribute to Reagan outright hostility to lesbians

and gay men, but the available evidence indicates otherwise. 26 Lesbian activist Urvashi Vaid

quotes Reagan during the 1980 campaign as saying that neither he nor society could condone “an

alternative lifestyle,” citing the Bible to support his position; however, presidential scholar Erwin

Hargrove is only one of many to note that Reagan was perfectly comfortable allowing significant

distance between his public statements on many issues and the actual policies that his

administrations pursued. 27

But one perspective on lesbians and gay men existed from which Reagan’s position –

Biblical condemnation in word combined with indifference in deed – was no contradiction at all.

Lyn Nofziger asserted that Nancy’s decorator and his partner spent the night at the White House

during the Reagan presidency. 28 Especially before 1969, when militant lesbian/gay rights

activism attracted significant public attention, urbane conservatives knew perfectly well that

lesbians and gay men existed, but harbored no particular desire to eradicate them, believing that

such persons deserved a certain sort of pitying tolerance, accompanied by the recognition that

they served useful purposes in the arts and entertainment. Only when lesbians and gay men had

the temerity to claim discrimination did conservatives feel compelled to offer detailed rebuttals. 29

But even then, Reagan’s position – opposition both to civil rights laws protecting lesbians and

gay men, and to antigay laws requiring discrimination against them – was distinctively

libertarian.
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In 1967, Reagan repeated the standard psychiatric dogma of the day that lesbian/gay

identity indicated a neurosis. 30 Both Marvin Liebman and Lou Cannon describe Reagan’s

concern that his son, Ron, Jr., might be gay – he used the term, “funny,” in Liebman’s account --

when Jr. expressed the desire to become a ballet dancer. 31 Also in 1967, Reagan faced repeated

questions for several weeks in early November over the handling of a suspected “homosexual

ring” in his gubernatorial administration. Although he asked for the chief suspect’s resignation

immediately on learning of the allegations, he adamantly refused to release any of the suspected

“homosexuals’” names. In part, as Cannon explains, this was a prudential move – his staff had

conducted an entirely extra-legal investigation (which Nofziger compared unfavorably to the

Keystone Kops), meaning that public disclosure of the suspects’ identities might have left the

administration open to defamation claims. Yet Reagan also seemed genuinely concerned not to

cause unnecessary harm to the suspects or their families.

While Cannon probably understands Reagan better than anyone, his claim on this

particular issue is overblown. In Reagan, he wrote that “Reagan’s political record on civil

liberties of homosexuals is much better than that of many liberal politicians. He was repelled by

the aggressive public crusades against homosexual life styles which became a staple of the right-

wing politics of the late 1970s.”32 On one hand, it is quite possible that Reagan was ahead of

many liberal politicians on some lesbian/gay civil rights issues, such as sodomy law repeal,

during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when his libertarian instincts would have militated in

favor of respect for privacy but the lesbian/gay rights movement had yet to secure widespread

support within the Democratic Party. 33 On the other hand, Cannon was apparently unaware of

Reagan’s support for the original “crusade against homosexual life styles,” Anita Bryant’s “Save
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Our Children” campaign: Reagan appeared publicly with Bryant to support the Dade County

repeal effort.34

The “homosexual ring” episode alone offers an excellent indicator of the political miles

lesbian/gay activists traveled between 1967 and 1981. Staff members in the Reagan White

House received occasional warnings about the influence of lesbian/gay activists on the

administration. Rather than precipitating immediate investigations, as in California, these reports

got filed with the polite responses that lower-level staffers confer on suspected crackpots.35

Charles Brydon, Co-Executive Director of the National Gay Task Force when Reagan took

office, claimed that the executive branch harbored more gay men under Reagan than under

Carter; Brydon, for one, looked forward to working with them on lesbian/gay civil rights issues

and found frustrating a knee-jerk liberal suspicion of Reagan among other NGTF staff. 36

But the best evidence for Reagan’s own views comes from a somewhat cryptic, hand-

written note in Doug Bandow’s files in a folder labeled, “Homosexuals/Gay Rights.” Bandow

worked on the Reagan campaign in 1980 and served as the director for legal policy in the Office

of Policy Development during the first two years of the Reagan administration. The note

contains no indications of its significance on its face – no date, no author, no recipient.

However, its contents and its placement among material dealing with lesbian/gay civil rights

issues in the 1980 presidential campaign suggest that someone decided to find out what Ronald

Reagan thought about lesbians and gay men just in case. The note reads, “1) Gays don’t bother

him; 2) But doesn’t want to encourage it and say it’s fine.”37

This description nicely encapsulates both the difference between the libertarian and

traditionalist perspectives, and the campaign’s lack of response to queries that they received from

representatives of the National Gay Task Force, the Gay Rights National Lobby, the Lesbian
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Caucus of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the National Coalition of Black Gays, all

of which cooperated to sponsor Gay Vote 1980. Tim Drake and Chuck Thompson, openly gay

delegates to the Republican National Convention that year, wrote to Governor Reagan enclosing

position papers on the Republican platform, and on federal employment, immigration and

naturalization, and non-governmental discrimination as lesbian/gay civil rights issues. There is

no indication that anyone from the campaign responded to the letter or to the enclosed material at

all. 38

Even so, Reagan’s willingness to oppose the Briggs Initiative in 1978, combined with the

perceived need to encourage political participation generally, caused The Advocate, a nationally

distributed lesbian/gay publication, to encourage Reagan’s lesbian/gay supporters to work

actively on behalf of his candidacy. 39 But Reagan’s position on the Briggs Initiative, properly

understood, indicated more his distance from lesbian/gay civil rights activists than his sympathy

for them, which was minimal. In 1979, Bandow, then a law student at Stanford and later a senior

fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote an editorial titled, “The Gay Issue: Double-Edged Rights” in

the Washington Post.

Bandow distinguished between state-sponsored discrimination and “private”

discrimination. The Briggs Initiative, requiring as it would dismissal of lesbians and gay men

from jobs in public schools as a matter of policy, constituted illegitimate discrimination by the

state. Yet Bandow found the operative principle, not in nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual

orientation, as lesbian/gay civil rights activists proposed, but in noncoercion by the state around

issues of sexuality. Just as the state could not legitimately require condemnation of lesbians and

gay men by practicing discrimination, so it could not legitimately require “acceptance” of

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lesbians and gay men by private citizens via a generalized prohibition on discrimination in

housing, employment, and public accommodations.

In his editorial, Bandow elaborated on a basic distinction that Reagan himself had made

in his statement the previous year opposing the Briggs initiative. There Reagan argued that

“This measure [the Briggs initiative] has nothing to do with those special so-called gay rights

issues in Dade County, Florida and elsewhere. Instead, it has the potential of infringing on basic

rights of privacy and perhaps even constitutional rights.”40 In 1986, a reporter asked Reagan

about a recent New York City ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual

orientation in housing and employment. Even though neither the ordinance nor the question

broached the issue in such terms, Reagan immediately seized on the potential of lesbian/gay

teachers discussing their private lives with school children. He finished his answer thus: “I don’t

want to see them discriminated against simply on that basis as to housing and jobs and so forth.

I, on the other hand, don’t want to give them privileges beyond what the rest of us have.” 41

In both of these statements, what is most striking is Reagan’s apparent anticipation of the

“special rights” argument that Christian conservatives would use to good advantage in 1992,

when they persuaded voters in Colorado to amend the state constitution to repeal all existing

lesbian/gay civil rights ordinances at the local level and prohibit any law or policy granting

protections based on “homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation” in the future.42 Reagan took

no position on the New York City ordinance, pointing out that he had not seen it. However, his

response does not suggest the same automatic opposition to nondiscrimination ordinances that

Colorado’s constitutional amendment would have enacted.

Lesbian/gay civil rights activists were right about one thing: neither Reagan himself nor

anyone in the White House paid much attention at all to AIDS throughout Reagan’s first term. 43
 Page 15

With the reorganization that accompanied the beginning of his second term, and perhaps because

of the death of Reagan’s friend, Rock Hudson, from AIDS in 1985, activity in the White House

increased significantly. 44 But that activity still bespoke Reagan’s libertarian attitude toward the

epidemic – that it did not require a significant federal response – and his distance from the

Christian right. The person in charge of AIDS policy in the White House during 1987 and 1988

was a major Christian right activist, Gary Bauer, who would go on to run the antigay Family

Research Council. 45

But Bauer’s ideas about AIDS policy rarely attracted the President’s attention. Bauer

was a major advocate of mandatory testing for HIV, for example, which lesbian/gay activists

consistently opposed.46 While support for mandatory HIV testing became administration policy

because of Bauer and other White House activists, the very failure by Reagan himself to mention

AIDS deprived the issue of the traction it might otherwise have had. On the symbolically crucial

question of whether to appoint an openly gay person to the Presidential Commission on the HIV

Epidemic, Reagan ultimately did what Democrats and lesbian/gay activists, not Bauer, wanted –

he appointed the openly gay Frank Lilly, an expert on retroviruses in animals and a former board

member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a leading AIDS organization in New York City that gay

men created early in the epidemic.47

Most tellingly, one of the voices that emerged most consistently on health issues from the

Reagan administration was Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s. It seems unremarkable that a

Surgeon General would articulate a president’s policy on health, but it is not clear that Koop did

so. He scandalized conservatives with his 1987 Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune

Deficiency Syndrome by advocating use of condoms as the best way to minimize spread of the

human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which most authorities considered to be the cause of the
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disease. Known when Reagan appointed him as a staunch opponent of abortion, he also puzzled

everyone near the end of his term by asserting that scientific evidence did not support the

proposition that abortions typically caused physical and/or psychological harm to women who

had them.

That is, Koop’s public positions on issues within his purview differed from the positions

of conservatives, and even from the official positions of the Reagan administration. He lasted

longer, however, as a Reagan administration official, than several others who appeared to toe the

administration’s line more carefully. 48 In January 1987, Koop and Secretary of Education

William Bennett chose to issue a joint statement on their agreement that abstinence was the best

way to combat the spread of HIV. They felt compelled to do so precisely because of the

widespread public perception that they were fundamentally at odds in their positions on AIDS. 49

A president who was genuinely concerned about policy coherence on the issue would have

spoken clearly to resolve any disagreement, firing someone if necessary. Reagan and his core of

White House advisors simply did not care enough about AIDS to enforce a consistent message. 50

Given the available options, it seems likely that lesbian/gay activists benefited from

Reagan’s libertarian stance on AIDS issues. Had the White House taken the lead on AIDS

policy between 1985 and 1989, the results would likely have satisfied the Christian right much

more than the lesbian/gay civil rights movement. Instead, Reagan’s inaction allowed members

of Congress, especially in the Democratically controlled House of Representatives, to take the

lead in formulating AIDS policy. Certainly lesbian/gay activists did not get exactly what they

wanted from Congress either, but there at least they had significant input.51

Elsewhere on the New Right

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None of this would have mattered much for purposes of federal policy had not Acquired

Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) appeared as a fatal disease initially associated almost

exclusively with gay men in 1981. Before AIDS, lesbian/gay political and policy priorities were

mostly at the state and local levels: repeal of sodomy statutes and enactment of

antidiscrimination laws. AIDS changed everything. The widespread association between gay

men and AIDS rested for most persons on the empirical observation that the vast majority of the

early cases in the United States came in gay men. For Christian conservatives, however, the

conjunction between gay men and AIDS had not only an empirical base, but a theological one as

well. Christian conservatives had long believed that lesbian or gay identity itself reflected moral

and psychological failure – even Safire’s choice of terms, “abnormality,” “mental illness,” and

“sin,” reflected the conviction that moral and psychological failings were closely related.

But attitudes toward AIDS marked the bright line distinguishing libertarians from

traditionalist conservatives. Libertarians could, and did, point to the connection between the

sexual excess of some gay men and the transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus

(HIV), which most researchers accepted as the cause of AIDS by 1986. In a 1985 discussion of

AIDS at the White House, Reagan himself emphasized individual responsibility in making

decisions about sexual conduct as the only way to avoid contracting HIV.52 Here, however, the

emphasis was on personal responsibility and the predictable outcomes of human choices that

anyone might make.

For Christian conservatives, by contrast, just as gay identity necessarily indicated a

willful departure from the divine telos of the universe, so AIDS was the predictable

manifestation of God’s wrath against those who persisted in such departure. Here the split

between Christian conservatives and libertarians, but also between Christian conservatives and
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the general public, became crucial. For conservatives who prided themselves on their adherence

to biblical principles of morality, the belief in AIDS as God's punishment for gay male

immorality was not negotiable. For most of the public, such a position seemed gratuitously

mean-spirited, as Reagan's advisors recognized. 53

In May 1983, Pat Buchanan, conservative columnist and White House Communications

Director from 1985 to 1987, articulated the Christian conservative position, writing, “The poor

homosexuals: they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful

retribution.”54 Just over one year later, in August, 1984, Buchanan explicitly linked his claim

about “homosexuals” and their alleged war on nature to Republican electoral strategy. The title

of the article was “Gay Times and Diseases: Whom the Democrats would embrace, they may be

infected by,” and it began with an epigraph from Ann Lewis, Political Director of the

Democratic National Committee, who stated that “Gay Rights is no longer a debatable issue

within the Democratic Party.” According to Buchanan, “Gay Rights promises to become for the

eighties what busing and abortion were to the seventies, the social issue that sunders the

Democratic coalition.”55

In both articles, Buchanan wished to establish a direct connection between the sexual

excess of gay men in urban areas, especially New York and San Francisco, and an epidemic of

venereal diseases, including AIDS. On Buchanan’s view, these diseases were the inevitable

result of gay men’s practice of having multiple anonymous sex partners. He cited authorities

claiming that the average gay man had 1,000 to 1,600 sex partners in a lifetime, and that 10,000

“would not be extraordinary.” Because of the potential danger to public health from AIDS, but

also from other diseases such as amebiasis and shigellosis, Buchanan argued that all gay men
 Page 19

should be prohibited from donating blood, but also from working as food handlers or medical

attendants, or in any capacity around young children. 56

In these two brief articles, we may discern an entire political philosophy, from first

principles through to concrete tactics for the next election, all revolving around a conception of

gay identity. For Buchanan, AIDS was both the logical outcome of gay identity and an

enormous threat to the surrounding society, none of which should surprise anyone who read the

Bible regularly. The surrounding society, on this view, had not only the right but the moral

obligation to restrict the activities of this dangerous group of deviants. If the Democrats wished

to defend those deviants, so much the better for Republicans in the next election. Buchanan’s

position was at once decidedly conservative and decidedly un-libertarian. Yet even while he

worked in the White House, Buchanan’s positions on lesbian/gay civil rights and AIDS did not

become administration policy.

For William Dannemeyer, Republican member of the House of Representatives (CA)

from 1979 to 1993, the connection between gay identity and AIDS was even more insidious. As

major AIDS legislation began to come up in Congress during the second half of the 1980s,

Dannemeyer repeatedly insisted that provisions for protecting persons with AIDS or HIV from

discrimination were really covert efforts to enact gay rights legislation. He wrote to “Christian

Friend[s]” on his House letterhead in October 1987 to drum up opposition to HR 3071, the AIDS

Federal Policy Act of 1987. He stated that HR 3071 “is a terrifying Federal Bill which, if

passed, would be a monumental catastrophe creating a broad range of new homosexual/AIDS

carrier ‘rights’.”57 Assuming a one-to-one correlation between gay men and persons with AIDS,

Dannemeyer continued to make such claims in opposing inclusion of HIV/AIDS as a protected

category under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, stating that to do so was to
 Page 20

“surreptitiously extend civil rights protections to homosexuals.” Openly gay Representative

Barney Frank (D-MA) offered Dannemeyer his personal assurances that lesbians and gay men

would not regard the Americans with Disabilities Act as a “homosexual bill of rights.”58

But Buchanan, Dannemeyer, and other Christian conservatives apparently overestimated

the divisiveness of lesbian/gay civil rights issues – or they miscalculated in predicting who

would benefit from conservative efforts to exploit those issues. Whether because of his general

suspicion of federal power, or because of his keen political instincts, or simply because he did

not see the issue as a priority, Ronald Reagan failed to take the actions that Buchanan,

Dannemeyer, Bauer, and other Christian conservatives urged during the 1980s.

At various points Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus, Jerry Falwell, and

Norman Podhoretz would accuse Reagan of disregarding a major threat to the nation out of

deference to lesbian/gay civil rights activists.59 But in the end, Reagan’s inaction makes sense as

a useful political compromise between the traditionalist conservative activists in the Republican

Party and the more moderate voters who had abandoned Jimmy Carter to vote for him in 1980.

He seems to have gauged the public mood of the late 1970s and 1980s quite accurately,

supporting Bryant’s successful bid to repeal a lesbian/gay civil rights ordinance, opposing the

discriminatory Briggs Initiative, which failed, and generally giving scant attention to the issue as

President.

In 1992 many observers agreed that Buchanan’s speech declaring culture war in the

United States, and giving lesbian/gay civil rights as an example of the battles he wished to fight,

played a role in Republican candidate George Bush’s defeat in that year’s presidential election.

Political scientists Douglas Strand and Kenneth Sherrill have demonstrated that the prominence

of social conservative activists in the party, especially on the platform committee, as symbolized
 Page 21

by Buchanan’s highly visible role in the 1992 Republican National Convention, cost Bush more

socially liberal Republican votes than it gained socially conservative Democratic votes, thus

contributing to the Democratic candidate’s success.60 In 1996, the flap over a donation from the

lesbian/gay Log Cabin Republicans to Bob Dole’s presidential campaign was a revealing

indicator of the divisions between conservatives and libertarians within the Party. 61 By this

point, the Log Cabin Republicans, a lesbian/gay group, had begun a deliberate effort to reassert

libertarian traditions in the Republican Party that, in their view, Christian conservatives had

squelched with their effort to take over the Party during the 1980s.62 Buchanan, it turns out, got

it just backward: “culture war” issues generally, and lesbian/gay civil rights specifically, caused

more harm to the Republicans than to the Democrats, at least in Presidential races, during the

1990s.

Christian conservatives such as Buchanan, Dannemeyer, and Helms, and their

neoconservative supporters such as Podhoretz, were undoubtedly right about one thing. In the

absence of vigorous restrictions at all levels of government, lesbian/gay civil rights activists used

their rights under the Constitution to good advantage throughout the 1980s and 1990s. 63 Their

policy victories specifically on lesbian/gay civil rights issues – employment nondiscrimination,

military policy, marriage, child custody and adoption – were precious few. 64 They played a

major role in shaping AIDS policy, however, and in the process built up increasingly effective

advocacy institutions, such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights

Campaign Fund, and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which have significantly

changed public attitudes on lesbian and gay, and increasingly bisexual and transgender, issues. 65

Since Reagan left office, lesbian/gay civil rights activists have only become more

successful at putting their issues onto the national agenda, if not always winning specific
 Page 22

political and policy battles. The connection to Reagan is quite direct for two major legal

victories the lesbian/gay civil rights movement claimed after his presidency ended. Reagan

Supreme Court appointees Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy voted with the

majorities in the 1996 Romer v. Evans decision, which struck down Colorado’s antigay

Amendment 2, and the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which struck down Texas’ sodomy

law, and by implication all state sodomy laws, overturning the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick

decision in the process. Indeed, Kennedy wrote the majority opinions in both cases.66 These

decisions illustrate not only Reagan’s inadvertent contribution to the lesbian/gay civil rights

movement via two of his Supreme Court appointees, but the decidedly mixed character of his

legacy insofar as Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia provided scathing dissents from both Romer

and Lawrence, in both cases using the populist language and logic of the new right.

Perhaps more importantly, a growing body of evidence indicates that over the past thirty

years lesbian/gay activists have gradually brought about a sea change in the general public's

attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons, if not yet transgender persons. Reviewing

public opinion polls, political scientists Ken Sherrill and Alan Yang concluded that “Americans’

changing attitudes toward homosexuals and homosexuality indicate. . .systematic victories for

the movement for lesbian and gay rights.” Those victories, according to Sherrill and Yang,

resulted from an organized, grassroots effort by lesbian/gay civil rights activists to demonstrate

that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation involves a collective national failure to live

up to the stated norms of our democracy. 67 More recently, sociologist Jeni Loftus has reviewed

public polling data indicating that Americans' attitudes toward lesbians and gay men have

become significantly more liberal during the period from 1973 to 1998.68
 Page 23

Conservatives concede the point. Norman Podhoretz has written that the "gay rights

movement won."69 Steven A. Schwalm of the Family Research Council (FRC), a leading

opponent of lesbian/gay civil rights that hearkens back to Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children”

Campaign with its emphasis on a Christian conservative definition of “the family,”

acknowledged in a 1999 interview with the National Journal that lesbian/gay civil rights

activists have had a dramatic impact on public opinion. “[T]hey are winning the PR war,” he

stated.70 Few incidents illustrated the impact that lesbian/gay civil rights activists have had on

national attitudes better than the death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in

October 1998. The attack alone received coverage in the New York Times before Shepard died.

The resulting funeral and trials garnered huge press coverage, with the most visible Christian

conservative, however unrepresentative, being Fred Phelps of “God hates fags” fame. 71

The conflict continues in the present, with the FRC repeatedly denouncing the younger

Bush for appointing openly gay men to posts such as the ambassadorship of Romania and

Director of the White House Office of AIDS Policy. The FRC even opposed the nomination of

Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci as ambassador to Canada, not because Cellucci himself is

gay, but because as governor he engaged in “pro-homosexual activism.”72 With respect to

lesbian/gay civil rights, if not AIDS, the historical evidence suggests that Ronald Reagan was

wise to remain silent. As the President who brought about conservative triumph by reconciling

libertarians and traditionalists, he had no room to maneuver on lesbian/gay civil rights even had

he wished to address the issue. A statement supporting the position of either major constituency

would anger the other.

And, while lesbian/gay activists had made great strides since the founding of the

Mattachine Society in 1952, they remained a group that Reagan could easily ignore during the
 Page 24

1980s in a way that neither of the Bush presidents, nor candidate Dole, could do in the 1990s and

after – a point that illustrates their success. With his silence, however, Reagan contributed to the

dilemma that his Republican successors would face. By taking the libertarian position, he left

lesbian/gay civil rights activists free to press on with their organizing, to demand recognition

from national political leaders regardless of party, and to redefine the meaning of American

identity.
 Page 25

1
It is absolutely essential for the “gay rights” movement, which added “lesbian” somewhat begrudgingly, to

include as well bisexual, transgendered, and intersexed persons. My usage in this article will not reflect such

inclusion, however, in the interest of historical accuracy.

2
For example, I agree with Gregory L. Schneider in terms of the overall assessment of the Reagan

presidency, and the distinctions among types of American conservatives, he offers, but I insist that a complete

understanding of Reagan’s relationships to various types of conservatives, and of American political history in the

post World War II period generally, must incorporate an account of the lesbian/gay civil rights movement, which

Schneider ignores almost completely. Gregory L. Schneider, “Conservatives and the Reagan Presidency,”

Reassessing the Reagan Presidency (Lanham: University Press of America, 2003): 68-93.
3
See Kenneth Sherrill, “The Youth of the Movement: Gay Activists in 1972-1973,” in Ellen D.B. Riggle

and Barry Tadlock, eds., Gays and Lesbians in the Democratic Process: Public Policy, Public Opinion, and Political

Representation (New York: Columbia University Press): 269-95.

4
The composition of the Reagan electoral coalition remains a topic of considerable interest and debate

during the 2008 presidential election season. Journalists’ efforts to account for that coalition tend toward the

simplistic, and they tend to ignore lesbian/gay civil rights as a factor in motivating Christian conservatives. See

David D. Kirkpatrick, “Shake, Rattle and Roil the Grand Ol’ Coalition,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 2007: “Reagan

finally captured [southern white] voters for the Republican Party by rallying them against abortion and the

Communist threat at a time when the Democrats had shifted to the left on cultural and defense issues.” This is not

inaccurate, but it is stunted to the extent that it fails to account for the emergence of lesbian/gay civil rights issues at

the national level during the late 1970s. See also, Adam Nagourney and Jo Becker, “For Thompson, Goal is to Don

Reagan Mantle,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 2007.

5
Larry Kramer, “Adolph Reagan,” The Advocate, July 6, 2004, 33. See also Randy Shilts, And the Band

Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, updated ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1988); widely

distributed piece by Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force at the time, “A

Letter to My Best Friend, Steve Powsner, on the Death of Former President Ronald Reagan,” describing the Reagan

Administration’s failings on AIDS policy as the work of Christian conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and Gary
 Page 26

Bauer in the White House, Houston Voice, June 11, 2004, p. 11. I explain later in this article why this claim is

incorrect. Compare Chris Crane, “A Papal Smear,” New York Blade, April 15, 2005, p. 18. Crane contrasts

Reagan’s “irresponsibly slow” response to AIDS with Pope John Paul II, who “actively blocked HIV prevention in

an unconscionable fashion.” Crane offers a very balanced assessment of Reagan in “Adolph Reagan?” New York

Blade, June 11, 2004, p. 25. Lesbians and gay men were by no means the only critics of the Reagan

administration’s response to AIDS, as even members of the administration were well aware. In the wake of the

report by the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic in February 1988, a White

House staffer compiled various editorials denouncing Reagan’s failure to act on the Commission’s

recommendations. “Editorials/Columnists: AIDS Commission/President,” undated compilation in “AIDS #2 (8),”

OA 16603, Hanns Kuttner files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (hereafter, RRL), Simi Valley, CA.
6
William B. Turner, “Mirror Images: Lesbian/Gay Civil Rights in the Carter and Reagan Administrations,”

in John D’Emilio, William B. Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil

Rights (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000): 3-28.

7
No better evidence for this point could exist than Ron Hamman, “Will the Antichrist Be a Homosexual?”

The Frontiersman, July 13, 2009: “Sodomy is the only sin for which God came down from heaven to destroy.

Though God dealt with many other sins in various ways, there is no other for which he came down from heaven to

verify and destroy.” The answer to the titular question, of course, is “yes.” Didi Herman, The Antigay Agenda:

Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997): 19-24; Michael Lienesch,

Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

1993): 84-5, 182-83; Don Feder, Who’s Afraid of the Religious Right? (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing,

1996): 4, 79-97. The question of the Christian right’s actual, as opposed to claimed, impact on electoral politics and

the basis for their political motivation has been a matter of debate from the beginning: Bill Keller, “’New Right’

Wants Credit for Democrats’ Nov. 4 Losses But GOP, Others Don’t Agree,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly

Report, November 15, 1980: 3372-73; Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, “The Election and the Evangelicals,”

Commentary 71 (1981): 25-31; Pamela Johnston Conover, “The Mobilization of the New Right: A Test of Various

Explanations,” Western Political Quarterly 36 (1983): 632-49; Donald Heinz, “Clashing Symbols: The New

Christian Right as Countermythology,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 59 (1985): 153-73; Bradley R.

Hertel and Michael Hughes, “Religious Affiliation, Attendance, and Support for ‘Pro-Family’ Issues in the United
 Page 27

States,” Social Forces 65 (1987): 858-882; Clyde Wilcox, “Religious Orientations and Political Attitudes:

Variations within the New Christian Right,” American Politics Quarterly 15 (1987): 274-96; Clyde Wilcox, “Seeing

the Connection: Religion and Politics in the Ohio Moral Majority,” Review of Religious Research 30 (1988): 47-58;

James L. Gibson and Kent L. Tedin, “The Etiology of Intolerance of Homosexual Politics,” Social Science

Quarterly 69 (1988): 587-604; Steve Bruce, “Modernity and Fundamentalism: The New Christian Right in

America,” British Journal of Sociology 41 (1990): 477-96.

8
Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, rev. ed. (New York: Public Affairs, 2000): 247-

50; Erwin C. Hargrove, The President as Leader: Appealing to the Better Angels of our Nature (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 1998): 148.

9
Examples of the “revolution” claim include Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, The Reagan Revolution

(New York: Dutton, 1981); Martin Anderson, Revolution (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988); Peggy

Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York: Random House, 1990); and

Lee Edwards, The Conservative Revolution: The Movement That Remade America (New York: The Free Press,

1999). Introducing the collection of essays he edited on the Reagan administration, libertarian David Boaz asked,

“was there a Reagan Revolution?” David Boaz, “Introduction,” in David Boaz, ed., Assessing the Reagan Years

(Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1988): 2. Other useful titles on Reagan and the conservative movement that

claimed him include William J. Gill and Clifton White, Why Reagan Won: A Narrative History of the Conservative

Movement, 1964-1981 (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1981); William A. Rusher, The Rise of the Right (New York:

William A. Morrow and Co., 1984). To state what may be obvious, except perhaps for Boaz’s collection, these

books also belong to the category of celebrations of Reagan by colleagues and admirers. Scholarly and journalistic

studies include John Kenneth White, The New Politics of Old Values, 2nd ed. (Hanover: University Press of New

England, 1990); Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in

America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996); J. David Hoeveler, Jr., Watch on the Right: Conservative

Intellectuals in the Reagan Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); William C. Berman, America's

Right Turn: From Nixon to Bush (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); and Rebecca E. Klatch,

Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).

10
A few of the many examples include Edwin Meese, III, With Reagan: The Inside Story (Washington, D.C.:

Regnery Gateway, 1992): xiv; Dinesh D’Souza, Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary
 Page 28

Leader (New York: The Free Press, 1997): 13-14, 131, 173-197; Andrew E. Busch, Ronald Reagan and the Politics

of Freedom (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001): 185-223; Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of

His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism (New York: Doubleday, 2002); Peter J. Wallison,

Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency (Boulder: Westview Press, 2003): 65-

71. A particularly relevant example is Domenick J. Maglio, Invasion Within: Overcoming the Elitists’ Attack on

Moral Values and the American Way (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2005): xx, 13. Maglio’s call to arms

regarding domestic policy and politics appeals to Reagan’s supposed triumph over the Soviet Union as a major

reference point. For Maglio’s opposition to lesbian/gay civil rights, see 86ff. Again, these books are all celebrations

by colleagues and admirers.

11
Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992): 12-13.
12
John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United

States, 1945-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Franklin Kameny, “Government v. Gays: Two Sad

Stories with Two Happy Endings, Civil Service Employment and Security Clearances,” in D’Emilio, Turner, and

Vaid, eds., Creating Change, 188-207.

13
Herman, The Antigay Agenda, 17, 25-91; quotation, 87. On conflict between the Christian right and the

lesbian/gay civil rights movement generally, see Perry Deane Young, God’s Bullies: Power, Politics, and Religious

Tyranny, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1982), and John Gallagher and Chris Bull, Perfect Enemies: The

Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement, updated ed. (Lanham: Madison Books, 2001); Peter

Sprigg, Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage

(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2004); James Dobson, Marriage Under Fire: Why We Must Win This War

(Sisters, Or: Multnomah Publishers, 2004). For an overview of state and local policy changes on lesbian/gay civil

rights issues, see William N. Eskridge, Jr., Appendix B, “Modern State and Municipal Regulation,” Gaylaw:

Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999): 354-71
14
Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (Boston: South End Press, 1989):

101. See also, Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (New York:

Guilford Press, 1998). In Not by Politics Alone, p. 157, Diamond perpetuates the representation of Reagan as a

reliable agent of the Christian Right, but her example is the appointment of C. Everett Koop. See below for

discussion of Koop as an example of ambiguity within the Reagan administration.

 Page 29

15
Fred Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate over Homosexuality (New

York: Macmillan, 2008), only scholarly account of both Bryant’s crusade and subsequent repeal efforts in other

cities.
16
Substantial evidence for this point appears in the papers of Jim Foster, an openly gay Democratic Party

activist based in San Francisco with strong ties to Dianne Feinstein, Art Agnos, and virtually every other major

figure in the California Democratic Party during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Foster helped David Goodstein,

then publisher of the national lesbian/gay newsmagazine, The Advocate, raise money for the Dade County fight, and

to defeat the Briggs Initiative, then went on to provide the practical expertise to initiate the annual fundraising

dinners that are still a staple of the Human Rights Campaign (then Human Rights Campaign Fund), now the nation’s

largest lesbian/gay civil rights group. See Jim Foster Papers, Human Sexuality Collection, Rare and Manuscript

Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY. For an overview of Bryant’s campaign, see Young, God’s

Bullies, 36-54; Gallagher and Bull, Perfect Enemies, 16-20; Dudley Clendinnen and Adam Nagourney, Out For

Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999): 291-311.
17
Norman Podhoretz, “The Culture of Appeasement,” Harper’s Magazine, October 1977, 25-32; “The

Christian Right and its Demonizers,” National Review, April 3, 2000, 52/6. Gregory Schneider discusses

Podhoretz’s neoconservative criticism of Reagan’s foreign policy, especially after 1985 and the rapprochement with

Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, but overlooks the connection that Podhoretz made between generalized

American softness in foreign policy and the pink fifth column. Schneider, “Conservatives and the Reagan

Presidency,” 71.
18
William Safire, “Now Ease Up, Anita,” New York Times, June 9, 1977, A21.
19
William Safire, “The Bedroom Door,” New York Times, June 30, 2003.
20
Barry Goldwater, With No Apologies (New York: William A. Morrow and Co., 1979): 299.
21
Letter, Frank Kameny to Lucia Valeska, Executive Director of the National Gay Task Force (NGTF), July

18, 1981, in Valeska, Lucia correspondence, Box 2, Folder 22, NGTF Papers, Human Sexuality Collection, Cornell.
22
Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995): 330ff. See also Lee

Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publications, 1995): 423-25;

and Bill Rentschler, Goldwater: A Tribute to a Twentieth-Century Political Icon (Chicago: Contemporary Books,

2000): 49-50.
 Page 30

23
For Carter’s position, see Turner, “Mirror Images,” in D’Emilio, Turner, and Vaid, eds., Creating Change,

3-18.
24
Cannon, President Reagan, 86-7, 107; Boaz, Assessing the Reagan Years, 1-5; Schneider, “Conservatives

and the Reagan Presidency,” 71; Fred I. Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to

Clinton (New York: The Free Press, 2000): 151.

25
For a book-length articulation of the argument that Reagan based his decisions on principle and philosophy

rather than politics, see Wallison, Ronald Reagan.

26
Urvashi Vaid, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (New York: Anchor

Books, 1995): 98-99, 114-15.

27
Vaid, Virtual Equality, 115; Hargrove, The President as Leader, 136-37.
28
Lyn Nofziger, Nofziger (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1992): 74.
29
Midge Decter, “The Boys on the Beach,” Commentary, September 1980, 35-48; William Dannemeyer,

Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989) [Dannemeyer represented

Orange County, CA as a Republican in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1993]; Carl F. Horowitz,

“Homosexuality’s Legal Revolution,” The Freeman, May 1991, 173-181; D’Souza, Ronald Reagan, 211-12.
30
For footage of Reagan using the term “neurosis,” see see Arthur Dong, producer, “Out Rage 69,” The

Question of Equality (Testing the Limits production for the Independent Television Service), videocassette, 1995.
31
Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, 16; Cannon, Reagan, 132-33. AIDS activist Larry Kramer identifies

doubts about Ron, Jr.’s sexuality as a major reason why President Reagan was “just dreadful” on lesbian/gay civil

rights issues. I think Kramer exaggerates the point. See Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, Reagan: The

Man and His Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998): 136-37.

32
The account of the “homosexual ring” in Cannon’s Reagan (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1982): 132-38,

comes almost verbatim from his earlier book, Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey (Garden City: Doubleday,

1969): 182-88. Quotation is from Reagan, 133. Lyn Nofziger, coincidentally the gubernatorial aide who was most

widely identified with that administration’s handling of the “homosexual ring” and one of the Californians who

followed Reagan to the White House, gives an extensive account of these events that differs only in details from

Cannon’s; Nofziger, 74-82. The Ronald Reagan Library has Reagan’s gubernatorial files, but they are a private

collection subject to a deed of gift, not the Freedom of Information Act or the Presidential Records Act, and the deed
 Page 31

precludes release of information about the “homosexual ring” scandal in deference to the subjects’ privacy. E-mail,

Archivist Shelly Jacobs to author, June 23, 2003.

33
On the changing status of lesbian/gay civil rights claims within the Democratic Party, see Jean O’Leary,

“From Agitator to Insider: Fighting for Inclusion in the Democratic Party,” in D’Emilio, Turner, and Vaid, eds.,

Creating Change, 81-114.

34
For footage of Reagan appearing with Bryant, see Dong, “Out Rage 69.” For his personal connections to

lesbians and gay men, see Cannon, President Reagan, 735-36.

35
Letters, Kenneth Lisenbee to Faith Ryan Whittlesey, Assistant to the President for Public Liaison, 6/27/83,

and to James K. Hall, Chief, Freedom of Information – Privacy Acts Section, FBI, 6/26/83, both offering

information about receipt of donations from pornographers by the Human Rights Campaign Fund (later the Human

Rights Campaign), a federal lesbian/gay civil rights political action committee, in casefile 152901, WHORM

Subject File HU010, RRL. Lisenbee opened his letter to Whittelsey thus: “Recently Special Assistant Judi

Buckalew had a meeting with leaders of gay rights groups – the National Gay Task Force. I felt it imperative to

provide some information to her in advance of that meeting. I also asked permission to attend, however, no one

contacted me. (I need the tapes back).” For a fascinating contemporary account that gives anecdotal evidence of

how many closeted gay men worked in all branches of the federal government during this period, see Taylor Branch,

“Closets of Power,” Harper’s, October 1982, 34-50.

36
Interview with Charles Brydon in Eric Marcus, Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal

Rights, 1945-1990, An Oral History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992): 312. Brydon’s hopes for effective contact

with the Reagan administration proved misplaced regardless; see Turner, “Mirror Images,” 19-20.
37
Handwritten note, no author, no date, in folder, “Homosexuals/Gay Rights,” box 6, Doug Bandow files,

RRL.
38
Letter, Jim Drake and Chuck Thompson, July 17, 1980, to Ronald Reagan, with Gay Vote 1980 material

attached, in folder, “Homosexuals/Gay Rights,” box 6, Doug Bandow Files, RRL. See also letter, Richard R. Block

to Faith Ryan Whittlesey, Office of Public Liaison staffer, September 21, 1983, asking for White House liaison to

his friend, Mark Segal, President of the National Gay Press Association, so that Segal can report Reagan’s positions

“on issues of concern to the gay community.” In folder, “Gay Rights,” Whittelsey files, OA11286, RRL.
 Page 32

39
As late as 1983, Terry L. Harris, Executive Producer of the Houston Gay Political Caucus’ annual gay

pride rally, invited Reagan or a representative of the administration to speak at the rally. He wrote that “while the

Republican Party has not yet addressed gay rights in its national platform, there are a significant number of gay

Republicans who believe that the time is right for the Party to acknowledge that gay Americans are entitled to the

same ‘liberty and justice’ guaranteed all Americans.” See letter, Harris to Reagan, February 15, 1983, in folder,

“Gay Political Caucus,” WHORM Alpha File, RRL.

40
Doug Bandow, “The Gay Issue: Double-Edged Rights,” Washington Post, May 23, 1979, A23; statement

by Ronald Reagan in opposition to Briggs initiative, Proposition 6, Fall 1978. Copies of both appear in folder,

“Homosexuals/Gay Rights,” Douglas Bandow files, Box 6, RRL. Bandow contributed a chapter to Boaz, Assessing

the Reagan Years. The list of contributors describes him as a “senior fellow at the Cato Institute” (p. 429).
41
Transcript of Reagan interview with R. W. Apple, Jr., Gerald M. Boyd, and Bernard Weinraub, New York

Times, March 21, 1986, in Public Papers of the Presidents: Ronald Reagan, 1986, v. 1, 391-92.
42
Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 624 (1996). On the “special rights” argument in Colorado’s Amendment 2

debate, see Lisa Keen and Suzanne Goldberg, Strangers to the Law: Gay People on Trial (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 1998): 31, 107-11, 133-57, 218-19; Evan Gerstmann, The Constitutional Underclass: Gays,

Lesbians, and the Failure of Class Based Equal Protection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999): 13, 91-

114.
43
Assistant for Policy Development John Svahn announced the creation of the Health Policy Working Group

(HPWG) to address nine “Health Policy Issues and Studies” on January 31, 1984. AIDS was not on the list. Memo,

Svahn to Cabinet Council on Human Resources, in folder “Health Policy [folder one] (1),” William Roper files,

OA12725, RRL. The HPWG first discussed AIDS on September 11, 1985. “Suggested talking points for the

Attorney General [Meese], The Domestic Policy Council Meeting on AIDS Policy,” September 9, 1985, subject file

FG010-03, White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) subject files, OA316982; memo, HPWG to

Domestic Policy Council (DPC), December 16, 1985, in folder, “Working Group on Health Policy: AIDS [5 of 13],”

Robert Sweet files, OA16630; and HPWG to DPC, March 30, 1987, in folder, “HPWG: AIDS #2 [3 of 6],” Sweet

files, OA16629, all RRL. Several major figures, inside the Administration and out, give their perspectives on its

response to AIDS in Strober and Strober, Reagan: The Man and His Presidency, 135-43.
 Page 33

44
On the impact of Rock Hudson’s death, see Shilts, And the Band Played On, 476, 573, 574-82; Cannon,

President Reagan, 731; Strober and Strober, Reagan, 136.

45
The files of both Gary Bauer himself, and of James Warner, in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

contain numerous documents relating to AIDS policy. For information about Bauer, see “Reagan Aide Moves to

Family Ministry,” Christianity Today 32/17, November 18, 1988, p. 63; Michelle Cottle, “The Right-Winger to

Watch,” Washington Monthly 30/4, April 1998, p. 9. AIDS activist Larry Kramer expressed his opinion about

Bauer in Strober and Strober, Reagan, 135. Kramer viewed Reagan and Bauer as marching in lockstep on AIDS; I

believe the situation looked that way to Kramer at the time, but that the documentary evidence demonstrates

otherwise.
46
This was an ongoing debate. See folders, “AIDS Testing,” “AIDS [2 of 3],” Gary Bauer files, OA 19222,

RRL. Bauer corresponded frequently with another White House staffer, James Warner. See Warner files, esp. OA

18329, RRL.
47
Memo detailing reasons not to appoint openly gay member to Commission, Gary Bauer to President, June

30, 1987, in folder, “AIDS [1 of 3],” Gary Bauer files, OA19222, RRL. Letters to President urging that he appoint

an openly gay member: from Carol Schwartz, at-large member, District of Columbia city council, May 29, 1987,

OA493374; Barbara Boxer, member, House of Representatives (D-CA), June 2, 1987, OA494201; Jeff Levi,

Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, undated (response from William Tuttle dated July 10,

1987), OA495142; all subject file FG999, RRL. Robert Pear, “A Homosexual is Considered for AIDS Panel,” New

York Times, July 20, 1987, A12; “Gay Activist Named to AIDS Panel,” New York Times, July 21, 1987, A08. On

the creation of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, see Patrick Merla, “A Normal Heart: The Larry Kramer Story,” in

Lawrence D. Mass, ed., We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer (New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1997): 38-41.

48
C. Everett Koop, Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, 1987). In response to Koop’s report,

William Safire discussed the etymology of the word “condom” in his “On Language” column in order to help

desensitize a public unaccustomed to seeing the word in print. New York Times¸ December 14, 1986, sec. 6, p. 14.

See also, Philip M. Boffey, “Surgeon General Urges Frank Talk to Young on AIDS,” New York Times, Oct. 23,
 Page 34

1986; Peter Steinfels, “Baptist Agency Won’t Give Out Report on AIDS,” New York Times, Sept. 23, 1988; Martin

Tolchin, “Surgeon General Koop to Resign in July,” New York Times, May 5, 1989.
49
Leslie Maitland Werner, “2 Administration Leaders Agree on AIDS Education,” New York Times, January

31, 1987.
50
Compare David Boaz, “Educational Schizophrenia,” in Boaz, ed., Assessing the Reagan Years, 291-303,

esp. 293. Boaz notes that Reagan promised during the 1980 election to eliminate the recently created Department of

Education. He then quotes Reagan’s first Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell, as saying that Bell’s nomination

made conservatives angry, and that Bell was never sure why Reagan nominated him, not least because he had

testified in support of the Department of Education when Congress created it. This situation resembles

administration policy on HIV/AIDS in that the President simply did not care enough about the issue to ensure that

his subordinates would adhere to a consistent administration policy. Reagan’s second Secretary of Education,

William Bennett, became a spokesperson for conservative positions on both HIV/AIDS and education (not for the

abolition of the Department of Education), but again this only proves the point. He had to become the

administration’s spokesperson on behalf of mandatory HIV testing in part because Koop publicly opposed such

testing.
51
The story of creating AIDS policy, especially the complicated interactions among Congress, the White

House, and various federal agencies, is beyond the scope of this article. As one indication, however, Representative

Henry Waxman (D-CA) both represented a substantial gay constituency and had at least one openly gay staff

member, Tim Westemoreland, in his office. Westmoreland worked closely during the mid 1980s with Jeff Levi,

Executive Director of the National Gay Task Force, to develop gay-friendly language for the bills that Waxman

wrote, and to fend off the antigay language that other members of Congress often came up with. John D’Emilio,

interview with Tim Westmoreland and Jeff Levi, tape and transcript in my possession.
52
Minutes, Domestic and Economic Policy Council meeting, 12/19/85, in folder, “Working Group on Health

Policy, AIDS [5 of 13],” OA 16630, Robert Sweet files, RRL.

53
A column defending the claim that AIDS was God's punishment by Christian conservative John Lofton,

“On the Blind Side of Wrath?” Washington Times, appears, undated, in Richard Williams’ folder, “AIDS Reference

Fall ’88 3106,” OA 16995, RRL. Reagan's White House staff also commissioned a compilation of polls on AIDS

and related issues from 1983 through the date of the compilation in March 1987. Polls in July 1983, December
 Page 35

1985, and August 1986 asked respondents if they believed that AIDS was God's punishment for gay men. No more

than 28% ever expressed agreement. Decision Making Information Inc., “Public Attitudes Toward AIDS, Prepared

for The White House,” March 23, 1987, in folder “AIDS [Public Attitudes Toward AIDS],” Kenneth T. Cribb

papers, box 8, RRL.

54
Pat Buchanan, “Nature’s Retribution,” Washington Times, May 27, 1983. Herman, The Antigay Agenda,

explicitly excludes Buchanan from her definition of the Christian right, but she does so on the basis of positions that

he took during the 1990s. As Buchanan makes clear in Right from the Beginning (Boston: Little Brown, 1988), his

conservatism is deeply rooted in his Catholic upbringing and faith. Herman is undoubtedly correct that the vast

majority of the figures on the antigay Christian right are Protestants, many of whom regard the Catholic church with

profound suspicion, but the leadership of the Christian right made systematic efforts in the late 1980s and 1990s to

overcome such divisions in the interest of political solidarity. See Clyde Wilcox, Mark J. Rozell, and Roland Gunn,

“Religious Coalitions in the New Christian Right,” Social Science Quarterly 77 (1996): 543-58. Further, while

Buchanan may be peripheral to Herman’s overall account of Christian Right opposition to lesbian/gay civil rights,

for my argument about Reagan’s attitudes toward lesbian/gay civil rights and AIDS, the writings of a major

Christian conservative figure who also worked in the Reagan White House are crucial.
55
Pat Buchanan and J. Gordon Muir, “Gay Times and Diseases: Whom the Democrats would embrace, they

may be infected by,” The American Spectator, August 1984, 15-18, 15.
56
Ibid., 15, 16, 18.
57
Letter, William Dannemeyer to “Christian Friend,” October 1, 1987, in folder, “AIDS: AIDS Bills,” James

Warner files, OA18329, RRL. See also letter, William Dannemeyer to Republican Colleagues, May 20, 1987, in

folder, “AIDS Waxman,” Gary Bauer files, OA19222, RRL.

58
“Sweeping Law for Rights of Disabled: Private Discrimination Barred; Access Mandated,” Congressional

Quarterly Almanac 1990, pp. 450, 451.

59
Letter, Howard Phillips to Margaret Heckler, Secretary for Health and Human Services, August 22, 1983,

with salutation “Dear Peggy,” accusing her of “pandering to win votes from the homosexual community,” in folder,

“Gay Rights,” OA11286, RRL; and Falwell, Newsweek, July 18, 1983, p. 47, a photocopy of which appears in

folder, “AIDS,” OA 11288, both Faith Ryan Whittlesey files, RRL. Norman Podhoretz, “Who’s Really Causing

AIDS Epidemic?” Salt Lake Tribune, September 30, 1985, accusing Reagan of “rushing to accommodate”
 Page 36

unreasonable demands from lesbian/gay activists. Photocopy appears in folder, “AIDS (1),” William L. Roper files,

OA 12724, RRL.
60
Douglas Alan Strand and Kenneth Sherrill, “Electoral Bugaboos? The Impact of Attitudes Towards Gay

Rights and Feminism on the 1992 Presidential Vote,” paper delivered to the Annual Meeting of the American

Political Science Association, September, 1993. See also William Schneider, “The Fall of the House of Reagan,”

National Journal special issue on Republican National Convention, August 22, 1992, p. 1944.
61
Rich Tafel, “Caught Between Worlds: Gay Republicans Step Out, and into the Political Fray,” in

D’Emilio, Turner, and Vaid, eds., Creating Change, 126-29.

62
Ibid; Matthew Rees, “Homocons: The March of the Pink Elephant,” The New Republic June 8, 1992,

206/23, p. 30.
63
Given that the most draconian Christian right proposals rarely became law, they also never faced court

challenges, but there is good reason to doubt that those proposals would have passed Constitutional muster. While

the Supreme Court’s decisions on lesbian/gay civil rights as privacy and equal protection issues from 1986 to 2003

are confusing and complicated, one of the most important lesbian/gay civil rights victories came in 1958, when the

Court asserted the first amendment right of activists to distribute lesbian/gay publications in ONE Inc. v. Olesen,

indicating that lesbian/gay civil rights were more secure insofar as they involved the most well established

Constitutional principles. See Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. The

Supreme Court (New York: Basic Books, 2001): 27-50.

64
Both sides agree on this point. Norman Podhoretz distinguishes between the relative paucity of

lesbian/gay policy victories from what he sees as the near-total triumph of the lesbian/gay civil rights perspective in

cultural institutions in "How the Gay-Rights Movement Won"; see also Sherrill’s interesting combination of

academic and personal perspective on the endurance of key, unresolved policy issues in the lesbian/gay civil rights

movement in “The Youth of the Movement: Gay Activists in 1972-1973,” in Riggle and Tadlock, eds., Gays and

Lesbians in the Democratic Process, 269-295. For a different perspective, emphasizing legal rather than policy

changes, see Horowitz, “Homosexuality’s Legal Revolution.”

65
John-Manuel Andriote, Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1999); Shawn Zeller, “Marching On, but Apart,” National Journal, January 12, 2002, 98-103.
 Page 37

66
Romer v. Evans, 517 US 620 (1996); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); Bowers v. Hardwick, 478

US 186 (1986). It is worth noting here that, in some sense, Justice O’Connor had one foot on the boat and one foot

on the dock in Lawrence. She agreed with the Court’s decision to strike down the Texas statute, which applied only

to conduct between persons of the same sex, but she expressly did so on equal protection grounds, in contrast to the

Court majority, which based its opinion primarily on a right to privacy or liberty in the Due Process Clause. She did

so because she disagreed with the majority’s decision to overturn Bowers, which she considered good law.

Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 539-85 (O’Connor dissenting). Gregory Schneider’s one mention of a lesbian/gay civil rights

issue comes with his passing reference to Romer; “Conservatives and the Reagan Presidency,” 85.
67
Kenneth Sherrill and Alan S. Yang, “Public Opinion toward Lesbian and Gay Rights,” manuscript in my

possession. See Alan S. Yang, “Attitudes Towards Homosexuality,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (1997): 477-507.
68
Jeni Loftus, "America's Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 to 1998," American

Sociological Review 66 (2001): 762-82. See also Robin Toner, “Opposition to Gay Marriage is Declining, Study

Finds,” New York Times, July 25, 2003.

69
Podhoretz, “How the Gay Rights Movement Won.”
70
Zeller, “Some Rain on the Gay-Rights Parade,” National Journal, 625.
71
James Brooke, “Gay Man Beaten and Left for Dead; 2 Are Charged,” New York Times, October 10, 1998;

for an overview of these events, including description of Fred Phelps and his protests, see Beth Loffreda, Losing

Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder (New York: Columbia University Press,

2000): esp. 91-4. For a discussion from the gay press of how Shepard’s death affected Christian conservatives, see

Chris Bull, “The Wrong Year for the Right,” The Advocate, January 19, 1999, p. 66.
72
Various press releases on these topics are available from the Family Research Council’s web site,

www.frc.org. See also John Gizzi, “Meeting with Bush Encourages GOP Homosexuals,” Human Events, May 12,

2000, p. 5.