On Wednesday ABC aired the second installment of its LGBT-rights miniseries, When We Rise. Aside from focusing on how two lesbians don't need "male interference" to make a baby, the series also took aim at another of the Left's favorite targets: Ronald Reagan.
Yes, that old chestnut.
Rife with the obligatory jabs at Jerry Falwell, the Pope, and the U.S. government -- all of which supposedly welcomed (or even engineered) the AIDS epidemic in order to wipe those pesky gays off the face of the earth -- the show talked about how Reagan didn't "give a damn" about those afflicted with the disease. Newsbusters provides the video and transcript:
Reporter: Many religious groups have far less trouble defining homosexuality.
Rev. Jerry Falwell: When you break the moral laws of God, you mentally, physically, and spiritually pay the price.
Man: You're saying that this is a result of lifestyle. And immorality.
Falwell: You know that's true in your heart.
Ken: Thank you. That is -- That is very helpful. That was a community health liaison from Miami. They've got a cluster of new cases in Haitian immigrants -- mostly women. This could be the proof we need to rip off the "Gay" label and get federal action.
Richard: Proof of what?
Ken: That it's not just a gay thing. I.V. Drug users, black folks, poor folks, immigrants, women.
Richard: You think any of those groups are gonna get Reagan to give a damn?
Ken: If I didn't know any better, I'd say it's a government plot.
Richard: Yeah. I work for the government. They couldn't pull something this intricate off. Willfully letting it spread... That's another story.
Marvin: When did they start installing those ionizers in all the bars?
Cleve: Last year or two.
Marvin: What if it's the ionizers?
Man: Who'd go through all that trouble?
Marvin: The cops, the pope, Jerry Falwell.
Man: This isn't a conspiracy to kill us.
Cleve: Maybe just to knock us back down to size, take our political power.
Reporter: AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, kills four out of 10 people who acquire it, and that mortality rate might climb.
Ken: It wasn't until women started dying and babies were born with it that the CDC changed “grid” to AIDS. But it didn't matter that the word "Gay" was gone. To straight America, it was still that disease that kills fags.
As Newsbusters points out, the episode fails to mention how then-California Governor Ronald Reagan opposed his state's Proposition 6, which sought to legalize firing public school teachers and staff members on the basis of their being homosexual. The initiative was popular at the time, yet Reagan opposed the measure. That inconvenient tidbit, however, wouldn't fit the writers' revisionist narrative so it was left out entirely.
