During the week following Reagan's death, I found the the tributes and near sainthood status lavished by the media an appalling example of historical revisionism. One shameful failure that your piece neglected is how Reagan ignored the bourgeoning AIDS crisis. The disease was well known by 1983, over 1000 gay and bisexual men had already been infected. Prompted by friend Jerry Falwell: "AIDS is the wrath of God" and speechwriter Pat buchanan: AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men," Reagan ignored this medical crisis until 1987. By this time it was scourging the world, over 20,000 had died in the U.S. and there were 50,000 cases world-wide.

I walk in the AIDS walk in San Diego each year to raise money to replace support services threatened because of Bush administration cut-backs. This year I dedicated my fundraising to Mauricio, a wonderful man, community organizer (and dedicated salsa dancer). Mauricio was one of the first people to die in Boston from AIDS. Whenever the subject of Ronald Reagan comes up, I can't help remembering Mauricio and many more good people who might still be alive if St. Ronald had not abdicated his responsibility to protect all of us, even gay and bisexual men.

I can't help thinking that each and every pandering allusion to Ronald Reagan salted through the Republican debates lose McCain and Romney more LGBT votes, or at least they should.

yeah reagan ignored AIDS. he didn't station himself outside the bath houses and make sure the sodomites weren't take it up the poop chute from more than 10 persons per night.

he was mean.

Irving, if you are able to get beyond your homophobia, consider this: AIDS is a world-wide scourge. It will kill a predicted 30-50 million people, most of them heterosexual-apparently that matters to you. It would not have been such a massive problem had the Reagan administration taken action when the disease was first identified.

If irving is, indeed, a real person and not just some caricature dreamed up for his own amusement; then we should all feel sorry for his poor dumb ass and pray for him to be healed from his sociopathic mental illness.

NightSwimmer, I will always believe in any person's capacity

for enlightenment. I assume, perhaps incorrectly at times, a

capacity for rational thought. Thank you for the post.

I can't envision that McCain or Romney would get any LGBT votes. Certainly they're good Republican candidates as far as that sort of thing goes, but I generally equate homosexuals for Republicans with slaves for the Confederacy. Clearly neither insitution has that individual's best interest at heart.

There is a group called Log Cabin Republicans. My take on them and those of similar ilk is that for them money trumps civil rights as an issue, that plus wealth insulating one somewhat from prejudice. And perhaps outsider status impelling them to conservative conformity (identification with the agressor?) I generally think of them in terms of a chorus from a Randy Newman song that goes: "I'm all right and I don't care."