Law & Policy

Craig DeSilva:  I’m Craig DeSilva. We’ve heard about what doctors and scientists were doing in response to the growing epidemic.  What about elected officials?  What was the government’s response?  At the federal level, apart from the slow, deadly pace of the FDA’s drug trials and drug approvals, and some work by the CDC, it seemed to those affected by HIV and AIDS that nothing was happening.  Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President in 1981, the year in which the first public reporting about AIDS surfaced in the U.S.  For the first four years of his Presidency, Reagan didn’t utter a single word to the American public about AIDS.  The words uttered by his White House staff were the opposite of the effective leadership and compassionate response we expect from our national government.  In October 1982, Reagan’s Press Secretary Larry Speakes joked about AIDS at a White House press conference in response to a question from journalist Lester Kinsolving:  

Kinsolving: Does the President have any reaction to the announcement by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta that A-I-D-S is now an epidemic in over 600 cases?

Speakes: AIDS? I haven’t got anything on it.

Kinsolving: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” [Press pool laughter.] No, I mean it is. It’s a pretty serious thing. One in every three people that get this have died. And I wonder if the president was aware of this.

Speakes: I don’t have it. [Press pool laughter.] Do you?

President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, Pat Buchanan, published an op-ed in the New York Post, writing: “The poor homosexuals — they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.”  Not until September 17, 1985, by which time approximately 12,000 Americans had died of AIDS, did President Reagan even mention AIDS, and then only in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference.  In twelve of the fifteen years we consider to be the height of deaths from AIDS in the U.S., from 1981-1996, Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were in the White House, and combating AIDS was not their priority.

By the early 1980s, the LGBTQ community had secured some state and local legal protection against discrimination in public employment, and almost half of the states had repealed their anti-sodomy laws.  But private employers, landlords, schools, doctors, dentists, restaurants, funeral homes and other private businesses were largely free to discriminate against LGBTQ people and anyone who had, or was suspected of having, HIV or AIDS.  What was it like to live in the height of the epidemic?  Often, people with AIDS or HIV couldn’t find jobs, couldn’t qualify for welfare benefits, or they lost their jobs, apartments and health insurance.  HIV positive young people frequently were barred from attending school.  If your life partner was sick or dying, you often couldn’t visit your life partner in hospitals or make end-of-life healthcare decisions for them.  Domestic partner laws and corporate benefits for domestic partners  were not widely adopted until the mid-1990s.

Bruce Vilanch:  Because gay marriage wasn’t legal, those whose partners had died couldn’t collect spousal benefits and didn’t inherit property unless there was a will.  Often, in the midst of their grief, they faced their late partner’s estranged relatives who came out of the woodwork to take a home or personal property that had been shared by the couple.  Funeral homes and cemeteries routinely refused to accept the bodies of those who died of AIDS.  I’m comedy writer and comedian Bruce Vilanch, and I helped write and perform in some of the earliest AIDS fundraisers in Los Angeles and across the country.  No one gets kicked out of their apartment or loses their job or is denied health care or custody of a child or a burial because they have cancer or some other disease, but AIDS was different because the public reaction combined fear of contagion with deep-seated prejudices.  In this sense, people with HIV or AIDS encountered what people of color have long experienced from racism’s impact on access to housing, services, benefits, and other essentials of life, even after anti-discrimination laws were passed in the U.S. in the 1960s and ‘70s.  

Torie Osborn:  The legal landscape got darker in 1986 when a California ballot measure called Proposition 64 sought to quarantine people with AIDS.  I’m Torie Osborn.  I was one of the co-chairs of No on 64.  After an intense campaign against fear and misinformation, the Proposition was soundly defeated.  Two others in California in 1988 would have eliminated the confidentiality of HIV test results and required reporting of HIV positive cases to state officials.  Both were defeated.  This climate of discrimination hampered efforts to slow the epidemic.  For many it felt too dangerous to get tested.  If you found out you were HIV positive, you risked losing family relationships, friendships, employment, housing and other social and financial necessities, and there was no treatment for the virus back then.  So, many people avoided getting tested, which only led to more spread of the disease by those who didn’t know they were HIV positive. 

Lindsey Horvath: Residents of some cities and counties were lucky that their governments acted to protect them against discrimination and stigma related to AIDS. 

I‘m Lindsey Horvath, Los Angeles County Supervisor for the Third District and former Mayor for the City of West Hollywood. In August 1985, the City of Los Angeles and the City of West Hollywood passed the nation’s first local laws banning discrimination against people living with AIDS in employment, schools, housing, medical care, insurance, and public spaces like restaurants and hotels. These were historic firsts that showed the nation what it meant to respond to a crisis with strength and humanity.

Soon, other cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, followed our lead.  In 1987, Los Angeles County funded one of the nation’s first AIDS hospice and home care programs, helping establish Chris Brownlie Hospice near Dodger Stadium.  And in 1989, Los Angeles County took another major step in banning discrimination by employers, landlords, schools and businesses against people living with HIV or AIDS.  California was also an early leader in offering anonymous HIV testing sites and to protect the confidentiality of HIV test results. These actions were rooted in a commitment to public health, to civil rights, and breaking the stigma around HIV and AIDS. They encouraged people to learn their HIV status without fear of discrimination if they found out they were HIV positive. We showed what it means to care for our neighbors in the face of crisis, and that’s a legacy we continue to build on today.

Lauren Meister:  I’m Lauren Meister, a member of the West Hollywood City Council and former Mayor. The U.S. Congress first funded AIDS research by the CDC and National Institutes of Health in July of 1983, but much more money and legislation were needed.  Soon after the death of film star Rock Hudson made headlines all over the world in 1985, federal funding for AIDS research more than doubled.  However, the Reagan Administration’s budget proposal for 1986 sought only $126 million for AIDS research, less than 2.5% of a total health research budget of $5.2 billion.

Rep. Henry Waxman:  I’m former U.S. Representative Henry Waxman.  I served in Congress from 1975 to 2015 and for most of that time my district included West Hollywood. I was also the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. 

In April 1982 I held the first of many subcommittee hearings on AIDS and the need for a federal response. I chose to hold the first-ever hearing at the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in L.A., after learning that AIDS was primarily affecting gay men, especially in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Throughout the 1980s my committee held hearings on AIDS to put pressure on federal agencies to step up their response. 

But we learned that we needed more money and we needed new legislation.  Working with Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Senator Ted Kennedy, we pushed for more funds. We wrote the landmark legislation named after Ryan White, to fund public education, provide special money to help local governments and AIDS programs to purchase new drugs, such as AZT, and to protect the confidentiality of AIDS patients. 

 Throughout this time, we had to fight the efforts of bigots like Senator Jesse Helms and Congressman Bill Dannemeyer who sought to blame the victims of the disease.  They argued that we would only encourage homosexuality and illicit drug use by even talking about them.   Representative Dannemeyer argued unsuccessfully that we had to get the names of every AIDS patient so we could isolate them on some island “prison.”  Senator Helms even wrote in law a provision that said AIDS education funding could not be allowed if it encouraged or promoted homosexuality, and he said what we needed to do was encourage abstinence, as if the Congress had control over such a thing.  This restriction prevented prevention and education efforts which could have reached the most at-risk communities using language that spoke of their specific needs and experiences. Despite these challenges, my allies and I strove not to let bigotry triumph over sensible, effective public policy. 

Danny Hang:  I’m West Hollywood City Councilmember Danny Hang.  In 1983, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services launched the National AIDS Hotline.  By the end of the first month, it was receiving between 8,000 to 10,000 calls each day. But other public educational campaigns from the federal government didn’t materialize until six or more years into the epidemic, in 1987-1988.  Hampered by the restrictions in Senator Helms’ legislation, those campaigns were criticized for not being focused on reaching the marginalized populations where AIDS had caused the greatest sickness and death. 

Sen. Barbara Boxer:  I’m former Senator from California Barbara Boxer. When I was elected to Congress from the San Francisco Bay Area in 1983, many in my congressional district were dying of a very mysterious disease. I remember begging for AIDS funding from congressional appropriators.  Some research funds were allocated but truly significant federal funding for HIV/AIDS testing, counseling and treatment did not begin until 1990. That was nine years after the disease was first reported.

In that year, Congress passed the Ryan White CARE Act authored by Congressman Henry Waxman.  That Act, which the late Senator Feinstein and I helped to pass, provided federal funding to states, cities and local community organizations to care for low income, uninsured and underinsured people with HIV/AIDS.  In the same year, Congress unanimously passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which provided nationwide rights to people with disabilities including people with HIV/AIDS.  President Clinton created the very first White House Office of National AIDS Policy in 1993 to elevate the urgency of the crisis.

In 1998, after AIDS deaths overall were in decline due to the use of protease inhibitors, nearly half of U.S. AIDS cases were in the Black population. Because of cultural pressure in much of the Black and Latino community, it made it more difficult to get members of those communities tested, educated and treated.

Robert Gerald Smith:  Most people know me as Bobby. Carl Bean and I created the Minority AIDS Project in my living room.  Jesse Jackson said to us –well, I’m paraphrasing – “I cannot go into the Black church and talk about AIDS and people who have HIV, because people are afraid and they won’t accept that.”  He says, “But this is what I can do.  I can go into church and tell people about people that they know. People who are part of their church community, part of their church family, they will go to that person’s aid, they will go to that person to help.  But I can’t just go in there and talk about AIDS.

President Clinton declared AIDS a serious ongoing health crisis in 1999 in the Black and Hispanic communities and Congress funded a minority aids initiative after significant lobbying by Congresswoman Maxine Waters and other members of the Black Caucus. In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, which has saved tens of millions of lives worldwide by funding prevention, care, and treatment programs in over 50 developing countries.

Jon Davidson: Despite these positive developments, problems with federal and state laws in the United States persist. I’m Jon Davidson, and as a civil rights lawyer at the ACLU of Southern California, Lambda Legal, and now the national ACLU, I’ve represented numerous people discriminated against because of their HIV status. The Clinton Administration was widely faulted for refusing to fund needle-exchange programs that would have reduced transmission of HIV among intravenous drug users and their sexual partners by giving them fresh needles to use instead of sharing needles.  Those programs were seen as too controversial by many politicians, although some states, local governments, and private agencies did set up needle exchanges.  Even today, however, numerous laws still discriminate against people living with HIV and discourage HIV testing.  It took until 2024 for the U.S. military to allow people living with HIV to enlist, and that only happened as a result of a court order in a lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal.  The U.S. is the world leader in prosecutions of people living with HIV for not disclosing their HIV-positive status to a sexual partner, even if they take precautions that will prevent transmission of the virus.  In many cases people are prosecuted even if their sexual partner didn’t get infected and wasn’t at risk of infection.  More than two-thirds of U.S. states have enacted laws that either criminalize otherwise-legal conduct or increase the penalties for criminal conduct based on a person’s HIV-positive status. Yet if people living with HIV had access to medication to suppress their viral load to undetectable levels, there would be no risk of transmitting the virus to others and therefore no basis for criminalizing their HIV status. Moreover, these laws discourage people from getting tested, learning their HIV status, and getting into treatment if they are positive, which would eliminate the risk of transmitting HIV to partners.