ABOVE: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden. Screenshot via CSPAN.
A White House ceremony on Monday hosted by first lady Dr. Jill Biden that unveiled a new U.S. postage stamp honoring former first lady Nancy Reagan drew criticism from LGBTQ and AIDS activists.
In postings on social media and in a statement by the D.C.-based LGBTQ group Mattachine Society of Washington, the activists said they believe the Reagan administration failed to adequately address the AIDS epidemic and LGBTQ rights issues and a postage stamp honoring Nancy Reagan was unwarranted.
Some of the activists, including Charles Francis, co-founder of the reconstituted Mattachine Society of Washington, said the White House decision to unveil the new Nancy Reagan stamp during LGBTQ Pride Week showed an insensitivity to the LGBTQ community.
According to the Associated Press, Biden praised Nancy Reagan at the June 6 White House ceremony as a first lady who “made such a difference” and who “served the American people with grace.”
The AP reported that Biden’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the criticism as of early this week.
The first class “Forever Stamp” was scheduled to be officially issued on July 6, which marks the 101st anniversary of Reagan’s birth. She becomes the sixth first lady to appear on a U.S. postage stamp. The others included Martha Washington, Dolley Madison, Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson.
Reagan died in 2016 at the age of 94.
The White House ceremony came one week after President Biden issued a Pride Month proclamation expressing his longstanding support for LGBTQ rights and denouncing what he said were hostile efforts in many states placing LGBTQ people under “relentless attack.”
In a statement to the Blade, Francis said he was concerned that recent efforts by some historians and authors to “rehabilitate” Reagan as a behind-the-scenes supporter of LGBTQ people and people with AIDS cannot be backed up by the facts.
“And here we go again with more Nancy Reagan rehabilitation with a new Nancy Reagan postage stamp announced during Pride,” Francis said. “Please consider if you write about the ongoing outrage that even our friends like Jill Biden fall for the memory-dead notion that Nancy Reagan was not political LGBTQ America’s worst enemy,” he said.
Francis points to documents that the Mattachine Society of Washington obtained from the Reagan presidential library in California in the group’s role of using “archives activism” to undercover long hidden government documents showing discrimination and harassment against gay government workers and others.
One of the documents the group found was a telegram sent to the White House in 1985 by an aide to actor Rock Hudson at the time Hudson traveled to France to seek medical treatment for his AIDS diagnosis, which he initially kept secret. Media reports and a copy of the telegram released by Mattachine Society of Washington shows that Hudson confidant Dale Olson sent the telegram to then White House Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary Mark Weinberg.
The telegram informs Weinberg that Hudson was seriously ill in a French hospital and needed to be transferred to another hospital where a doctor Hudson had seen and received treatment from in the recent past was located, but the second hospital declined to admit Hudson on grounds that he was not a French citizen. Olsen’s telegram urges Weinberg to arrange for the White House to contact the hospital on Hudson’s behalf and call on the hospital to admit Hudson.
“Only one hospital in the world can offer necessary medical treatment to save life of Rock Hudson or at least alleviate his illness,” Olson stated in the telegram.
Other documents obtained by Mattachine Society of Washington from the Reagan Presidential Library show that Weinberg brought the matter to Reagan’s attention and at Weinberg’s recommendation, Reagan declined to intervene or have the White House intervene on Hudson’s behalf on grounds that it would be improper for the White House to take action that it would not take on behalf of any other American citizen. Instead, the White House responded to the telegram by referring Hudson and his aides in France to take the matter to the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
A detailed February 2015 article about the Hudson-White House development by BuzzFeed reports that the hospital in question eventually admitted Hudson. The article reports that the doctor treating Hudson, a recognized specialist in the early development of AIDS drugs, told Hudson his HIV infection was too far advanced for the experimental drug the doctor had to be of any help to the famed Hollywood star.
According to the article, the seriously ill Hudson flew back to Los Angeles, where he died on Oct. 2, 1985.
The BuzzFeed article says that Weinberg told BuzzFeed in an interview that Reagan informed her husband about Hudson’s situation shortly after the telegram had been received and that President Reagan called Hudson at the French hospital to wish him well.
“I spoke with Mrs. Reagan about the attached telegram,” BuzzFeed quoted Weinberg as saying in a memorandum to another White House official. “She did not feel this was something the White House should get into and agreed to my suggestion that we refer the writer to the U.S. Embassy, Paris,” Weinberg said in his memo.
“That refers to special treatment for a friend or celebrity,” BuzzFeed quoted him as saying in his 2015 interview with the news organization. “It had nothing to do with AIDS or AIDS policy or — that’s a whole different issue,” BuzzFeed quoted Weinberg as saying.
Francis and other critics of the Reagan administration handling of AIDS said Nancy Reagan’s reasoning for turning down Hudson’s appeal for help at a time he was seriously ill in a French hospital was faulty.
“Seems strange that the Reagans used that excuse, since they often did favors for their Hollywood friends during their White House years,” BuzzFeed quoted longtime AIDS activist Peter Staley as saying.
“I’m sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him,” Staley said. “There’s no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson to dry. As soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”
