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| Former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey shocked the nation by
announcing earlier this year that he is a ‘gay American.’
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: KEVIN NAFF and KEN SAIN COMMENTS
 
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President Ronald Reagan in June, gay
and AIDS activists revisited the debate over whether Reagan could have helped
save the lives of many gays had he responded differently to the AIDS epidemic.
Reagan’s death on June 5 at age 93 of Alzheimer’s disease came
on the 21st anniversary of the U.S. Center for Disease Control & Prevention’s
first published report of gay men contracting a rare form of pneumonia in Los
Angeles — an illness that would later be named AIDS.
Gay critics — including AIDS activist Larry Kramer — recalled the
early years of the epidemic, when friends and loved ones in New York and San
Francisco started dying from Pneumocystis carini pneumonia and Kaposi’s
Sarcoma, conditions linked to a weakened immune system.
“There was no research into our health. Even as we were dying like flies,”
Kramer wrote in a column published by the Advocate. “How could he not
have seen us dying? The answer is he did see us dying and he chose to do nothing.”
Reagan’s supporters called the criticism unfair, saying the Reagan administration
sought to address a mysterious new disease as scientists and public health officials
scrambled to learn how best to respond.
The “down-low” phenomenon caught fire in 2004, following publication
of a 16,000-word story in the New York Times Magazine and a visit to Oprah Winfrey’s
talk show by author J.L. King, who wrote a best-selling book about the subject
of black men who have sex with other men, then return to relationships with
women.
The much-hyped “down-low” craze was blamed for a spike in HIV rates
among black women, a claim that was later challenged by some public health experts.
The notion that these “down-low” men are serving as a “bridge”
for HIV from gay men to black women is largely based on media hyperbole and
the anecdotal testimony of King, David Malebranche, an assistant professor at
Emory University’s School of Medicine, told the Blade late in the year.
Malebranche, who studies how race, gender and sexual orientation impact health
disparities in America, said that media reports were leading black women to
a place of fear and confusion with misleading information.
“What [King has] done is taken his life and made broad, general, sweeping
generalizations, and people took it and ran with it,” Malebranche said.
“One good story sent the media into a frenzy.
“I think everybody is loving this bridge theory where the main predators
are
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