Accountability and the Employee of the People

by Nomad

An event some 35 years ago underscores a vital question that presidents and their staff too often ignore. The question of accountability.

Press Conference

On Oct. 15, 1982, at a White House press briefing, journalist Lester Kinsolving asked Reagan's Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes a simple question.
Had he heard the news about a new disease that doctors had detected among the gay community?

In fact, the initial detection of some kind of lethal pathogen was not a secret. On 5 June 1981, more than a year before that press conference, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's newsletter Morbidity and Mortality Weekly (MMWR) made a reference to five cases of an unusual form pneumonia in Los Angeles.

Even as late and October 1982, there still might have been means to control the spread. Warnings might have been issued. Medical experts could have been mobilized to determine how to prevent the spread or offer theories at the very least.
However, as we all know, that is not what happened.

The video below records that historic moment when a health crisis first emerged as a political issue.

Unable to Forward: The Tragic Story of a Gay Son's Letter Lost for 26 Years

by Nomad

A local news affiliate in Virginia, WSET recently reported how a local man received a long lost letter from his now-deceased gay son. While reading the story I was struck by the fact that the father was- even now- unable to fully understand the tragedy of the situation.

For Father's Day, 1989, Duane Schrock Jr wrote to let his father know that despite their differences, he was very happy with his life and that the estrangement between them could be patched up:

"Dear Dad, we haven't been in touch for quite a while. I'm doing fine and am very happy in Richmond. I'd like to hear from you. Have a happy Father's Day. Love, Duane."

That letter, a tentative reaching out to a disapproving father on Father's Day, somehow never arrived. Six years later, in 1995, at the age of 45, Duane died of AIDS without ever re-establishing contact with his father. 

People who knew Duane considered him "a very kind and gentle person."

OSHA, Condoms and The Porn Industry: A Matter of Worker Safety?

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A Nemesis in Washington: How The Evangelists in Reagan’s Administration Undermined the War on AIDS 2/2

by Nomad

Link to Part One
Part of Reagan's problem in dealing with the AIDS crisis was his insistence on blaming the victims. It was not until the death of one of Reagan's friends, Rock Hudson, did Reagan wake up to true nature of the disease. Unfortunately for the victims, Reagan had surrounded himself with the very people who would encourage this backward thinking. 

Not of Facts, But of Values

Elizabeth Taylor thanking Reagan 
for his speech

It was not until May 31, 1987, that Ronald Reagan made his first major speech on AIDS and even then he did not mention the word “gay.” 

It was on eve of the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington. He was the invited by Elizabeth Taylor to speak at a fundraiser for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. It was a carefully-worded script in other ways too, aimed at pleasing both his immediate audience as well as his conservative base. 

Corporations can help get the information out, so can community and religious groups, and of course so can the schools, with guidance from the parents and with the commitment, I hope, that AIDS education or any aspect of sex education will not be value-neutral. A dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London once said: "The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts, but of values."

As Surgeon General Koop has pointed out, if children are taught their own worth, we can expect them to treat themselves and others with greater respect. And wherever you have self-respect and mutual respect, you don't have drug abuse and sexual promiscuity, which of course are the two major causes of AIDS. Nancy, too, has found from her work that self-esteem is the best defense against drug abuse.

Had they been consulted, scientists would have told Reagan that the major cause of AIDS was a virus, not a lack of self-esteem.

A Nemesis in Washington: How The Evangelists in Reagan’s Administration Undermined the War on AIDS 1/2

by Nomad

Ronald Reagan's legacy has taken a lot of criticism over the years about his lame response to the AIDS crisis. How much of that criticism is based on fact and how much on perception? Reagan himself might not have been the real problem, but the company he kept most certainly had an impact on his way of dealing with the emerging epidemic.

Association and Contact

On July 5, 1981, less than six months after Ronald Reagan took office, an article appeared in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The newsletter is a weekly report distributed by the CDC written by University of California-Los Angeles Dr. Michael Gottlieb and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Dr. Wayne Shandera. In it, an article detailed the unusual cases of a new type of pneumonia which specifically seemed to target gay males. 

According to the report, the cases suggested “some association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact.” The article was to mark the first public announcement of the disease which became known as AIDS and later HIV infection.