When Ronald Reagan died on June 5, many gay Americans lost no
tears. The conventional view in gay political circles is that
Reagan, a strong conservative, was virulently anti-gay. In this
view, Reagan was propelled to office by the newly powerful
religious right, and repaid that support with socially conservative
administration appointments and policies. (Most unforgivably,
according to the conventional view, Reagan did nothing while
thousands of gay men died of AIDS. That's a charge I'll address in
my next column.) The truth about Reagan and gays, however, is more
complicated.
Start with the notion that Reagan himself was anti-gay. Like
most of us, Reagan reflected the prejudices of his times. Born in
1911, he grew up in a small-town world that misunderstood and
feared homosexuality. He was 62 by the time homosexuality was
removed from the official list of mental disorders. According to
biographer Lou Cannon, Reagan shared the common view of his time
that homosexuality was a sickness. He was not above telling jokes
about gays.
Still, perhaps because he worked with gay actors in Hollywood
and had gay friends, Reagan was relatively tolerant. Cannon notes
that Reagan was "respectful of the privacy of others" and was "not
the sort of person who bothers about what people do in their own
bedrooms." This attitude was consistent with Reagan's larger
philosophical commitment to individual liberty and limited
government.
Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis (the politically liberal one),
recounted on Time magazine's website that she and her
father once watched an awkward kiss between Doris Day and Rock
Hudson in a movie. Reagan explained to his daughter that the
closeted Hudson would have preferred to kiss a man. "This was said
in the same tone that would be used if he had been telling me about
people with different colored eyes," recalled Davis, "and I
accepted without question that this whole kissing thing wasn't
reserved just for men and women."
During Reagan's presidency the first openly gay couple spent a
night together in the White House. In a column for The
Washington Post on March 18, 1984, Robert Kaiser described the
sleep-over: "[The Reagans'] interior decorator, Ted Graber, who
oversaw the redecoration of the White House, spent a night in the
Reagans' private White House quarters with his male lover, Archie
Case, when they came to Washington for Nancy Reagan's 60th birthday
party. . . . Indeed, all the available evidence suggests that
Ronald Reagan is a closet tolerant."
Tolerance is not acceptance, however, and Reagan made it clear
in speeches that he would not cross the line to the latter. Said
Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign: "My criticism is that
[the gay movement] isn't just asking for civil rights; it's asking
for recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I
do not believe society can condone, nor can I."
Aside from his tolerant personal attitude, Reagan's actual
record on civil liberties for gays was surprisingly good. Cannon
reports that Reagan was "repelled by the aggressive public crusades
against homosexual life styles which became a staple of right wing
politics in the late 1970s."
In 1978, for example, Reagan vigorously opposed a California
ballot initiative sponsored by religious conservatives that would
have barred homosexuals from teaching in the public schools. The
timing is significant because he was then preparing to run for
president, a race in which he would need the support of
conservatives and moderates very uncomfortable with homosexual
teachers. As Cannon puts it, Reagan was "well aware that there were
those who wanted him to duck the issue" but nevertheless "chose to
state his convictions."
Reagan penned an op-ed against the so-called Briggs Initiative
in which he wrote, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a
contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion
is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age
and that a child's teachers do not really influence this." This was
a remarkably progressive thing for a politician, especially a
conservative one about to run for president, to say in 1978. The
Briggs Initiative was overwhelmingly defeated. Its sponsors blamed
Reagan for the defeat.
Nor does Reagan's record as president support the view that he
was strongly anti-gay. Reagan was not much worse on gay issues than
Jimmy Carter, his opponent in 1980, who avoided even meeting with
gay groups. Walter Mondale, Reagan's opponent in 1984, received
only tepid gay support, according to gay activist Urvashi Vaid in
her book Virtual Equality. Neither Carter nor Mondale made
support for any gay rights measure an issue in their respective
campaigns, though their party's platform included a gay rights
plank.
The military's ban on service by homosexuals was firmly in place
long before Reagan became president. It remained in force during
his tenure, of course, but discharges for homosexuality
declined every single year of Reagan's presidency,
suggesting the administration wasn't interested in anti-gay
witch-hunts.
It's true that no pro-gay legislation, like an employment
non-discrimination bill, made headway during the Reagan years. But
anti-gay legislation also made little progress. Reagan often talked
the talk of religious conservatism, but he did not often walk the
walk.
His priorities were elsewhere: reviving the country's morale,
strengthening national defense to defeat the Soviet Union in the
Cold War, limiting the growth of the federal government, and
boosting the economy. At each of these, Reagan succeeded
brilliantly. Gays, like all other Americans, continue to benefit
from his legacy.