So where were the Christians?  In the midst of all of this death and isolation, when people were the most vulnerable, when there was so much stigma and fear and people were begging for an ounce of compassion and love – where were the people who were supposed to be known for that?

“Since our nation was founded, we have discriminated against certain things. We discriminate against kidnappers. We discriminate against murderers….There are laws that prohibit that kind of conduct. And there have been laws since the founding of our country against what are considered unnatural sex acts, sex between members of the same sex.”  – Pat Robertson

” If we do not act now, homosexuals will ‘own’ America!…If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way…and our nation will pay a terrible price!”  – Jerry Falwell

“AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals.” – Jerry Falwell

It is no secret that the Religious Right, the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, the conservative evangelical Christians jumped in bed with the government. 

In 1980 Reagan told a large group of pastors, “I know you pastors can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”  And as Jerry Falwell said, “He adopted our views and worked with us for 8 years.”  (Check out Reagan’s speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983.)

Religion and government were so well-entwined it was hard to tell one from the other.  And when you pair intense discrimination with government policy, everyone walks away with blood on their hands.

“With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.” – White House communications director Pat Buchanan

 “The silver lining in this tragic situation, is that it may get people … to behave…There is nothing like the threat of death to get the glands under control.” – Gary Bauer, Reagan’s chief domestic policy adviser

[In 1986] President Reagan asked the surgeon general to prepare a report on AIDS as the United States confirmed its ten-thousandth case. Leaders of the evangelical movement did not want Koop to write the report…”Gary Bauer… was my nemesis in Washington because he kept me from the president. He kept me from the cabinet and he set up a wall of enmity between me and most of the people that surrounded Reagan because he believed that anybody who had AIDS ought to die with it. That was God’s punishment for them.”

What is the church known for from this time period?  How does any of this look like Jesus?  Christians did not step into the midst of hopelessness and despair to show love, because the downfall of America trumps everything!

America has a very complex, messy, prejudiced history.  It is not a shining city on a hill and never has been, nor was ever meant to be.  Even Israel was never picture perfect, and quite frankly, if we want to hold up the golden age of David and Solomon as the basis for America, then we sure as shit need to get off the one man, one woman bandwagon.

Yes, America was founded on the principles of religious freedom and free speech, but also on manifest destiny and the priority of the white male.  It was not founded on the basis of straight people being married.  America was not founded on Levitical law.  (See Also: This Most Excellent Book.)

And once a legalistic faith infects the government, people die.

“The problem we had in the early days of AIDS, in my opinion, was essentially discarding of the role of government and public health by the higher authorities in the United States. …..that public health was undermined [from] doing its required effort to stop an epidemic, and that the leaders at the highest levels of government would not stand up and say, “Look, guys, I know that sex is unpleasant, needle injection is unpleasant, but we as a society have to take care of ourselves, and I will speak to you about that right now and go on talking about ways to interrupt the outbreak.” The highest authorities in the United States really inhibited us at CDC and set the stage to really help the outbreak spread.”

Because of the federal government’s attitude,

“it set a precedent for other conservative, high-level governors and the like to say: “Well, the highest levels of the White House don’t necessarily think we should put money into HIV/AIDS; then why should we? …

They set the stage, the early Reagan people who were anti-government, no doubt certainly not a caring group for homosexuals or IV drug users, and I think were perfectly happy to see them leave the world, but did not have the logic of a government, elected or appointed official, to do their job to protect the public’s health.”

—Don Francis 

I’m angry that Christians spent so much money and time on things that ultimately killed people.  I am angry that they did not care about gay people.  I am angry that they refused to talk about condoms.  I am angry that a Jesus who was known for loving the unloved was invisible to a large portion of the world.

And liberal, ‘social justice’ types of Christians aren’t off the hook.  They were not out there standing up, vocally supporting the gay activists.  They were not offering the broader culture any other view of Jesus.  And I understand that some denominations do not want to ‘evangelize’ their beliefs.  They want to lead by their individual actions, lead quiet lives that point to who Jesus is.  I can understand that, but when the loudest voice kills the most people, I question the wisdom of it.

“All of the churches were letting the fundamentalists carry the water for them….the fundamentalists were dancing on the graves of patients who had died of AIDS.  The fundamentalists were writing me letters….telling me that I was going to be damned in the eyes of God because I was trying to keep people alive who God was clearly punishing by giving them this fatal disease.”

You would expect something different from mainstream Christians, “but they didn’t say anything.  They didn’t deny what the fundamentalists were saying.  They didn’t stand up.”

“There were so many people who thought this wasn’t a bad thing.  This might rid the world of all these perverts.” – Stories from the Plague

Christian leaders would rather people die than have sex.  How did abstinence and straightness come to be the be all end all of Christian social policy?  Why is ‘winning’ on morality more important than winning on love and compassion?

For 20 years Evangelical Christians made hate a centerpiece of their theology.  We cannot underestimate the ramifications of that.  And we cannot ignore the fact that as they lost ground in America, they have moved that hate overseas.

Don’t forget about God Loves Uganda on Monday night, which really dives into this topic, in the present-day.

Gays, AIDS, and the Church

My Story: Part 1
Fear and Silence: Part 2
The Religious Right: Part 3
Oh, the Humanity: Part 4
Modern-Day Colonialism: Part 5
Africa, Russia, the Past, and Now: Part 6
The ‘Gay Agenda’: Part 7
The Rest of My Story: Part 8
Resources: Part 9