Adolf Reagan

http://www.hivplusmag.com/NewsStory.asp?id=22117&sd=02/07/2011 July 6th, 2004.

The article I have chosen to look at was written two days after Ronald Reagan's death.

"Our murderer is dead. The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the
entire history of the world, is dead. More people than Hitler even."

This quote is the opening of the article and as you can see the writer (who has not been identified) has some very strong and hate-filled feelings about Reagan. Calling someone a murderer is a very bold comment.

The writer of article describes how they were writing a long peice of work The American People. They describe how he thinks Ronald Reagan was not for the people especially gays and therefore all he did was murder the American people and gays and has been compared to Adolf Hitler. The writer goes on to say the Gays were as hated under Reagan as Jews were under Hitler.

A theory given for this gay hatred was that Ronald Reagan Jr. was suspected of being gay. In his freshman year at Yale there were rumours that he had numerous gay experiences. And just as damning of the son’s reputation, of course, because it could not be hidden, was that Ron Reagan, Jr. was a ballet dancer. This did not look good and was obviously exceedingly embarrassing to a father who rode so many horses. So off with the tutu and on with a wedding ring. Junior was married off and sent to far-off places in positions of low visibility.

Before reading this article I knew very little about Reagan's personal life and had not come across this so-called "hatred for gays". The writer says that Reagan did not even say the word "AIDS" until seven years into his reign. The writer says " Because of this, some 70 million people, so far, have become infected with HIV/AIDS. I wonder what it feels like to be the son and the wife of a man responsible for over 70 million people so far becoming infected with a virus that has killed over half of us so far. I wonder what it felt like while he was alive to ponder this."
This shows that the writer blames Ronald Reagan for the death of gays and in many senses were not seen as first class citizens. It is interesting that this article is written in 2004, years after he was president and yet the writer still has the same opinion. It is notable however, that personally I have never seen any other similar points of view and no other articles written about the same issue.