[Rummyfan]

Why does Reagan get blamed for the spread of AIDS? Is this not essentially an STD? Were the bathhouses in San Francsico closed in the early eighties? Would gay activists let the bathhouses be closed? Were all in the gay community practicing safe sex? Why is it Reagan's fault that you contract a deadly disease through risky personal behaviour (excepting those who got it through transfusions, or from their birth mother)?

[sweetliberty]

"Why is it Reagan's fault that you contract a deadly disease through risky personal behaviour"

Don't you know that AIDS is caused by a lack of government funding? < /sarcasm >

[traditionalist]

Were the bathhouses in San Francsico closed in the early eighties? Would gay activists let the bathhouses be closed?

Reagan could have ordered the CDC to close them if he were willing to take the inevitable political fallout, ironically from the very people who would benefit most from the policy. He was not willing to take this fallout, and given who it was coming from, it is hard to blame him.

Were all in the gay community practicing safe sex?

No. However, if the CDC and Surgeon General had focused their education campaigns on gays and IV users, instead of perpetuating the myth that heterosexuals were at risk, it is likely that the sexual practices of gays would have changed earlier on (as they did eventually) and the spread of the disease would have been curtailed.

[Rubber Duck]

It's Reagan's fault because he didn't gut our national defense to concentrate on AIDS funding. It is not sonny-boy's fault for doing the bone dance with Mr. Spinchter because that's the way God created him he evolved.