The High Cost of Charity
In a recent column, gossipist James Revson of Newsday, who is gay, attacked writers in OutWeek and the Village Voice for criticizing Mrs. William F. Buckley, Jr. Mrs. Buckley is the wife of one of the nation's chief homophobes, a man who has publicly called for the tattooing and incarceration of PWAs and who rants and rails in the press about AIDS being a "self-inflicted" disease. Mrs. Buckley refuses to disagree with her husband's position, responding with a regal "no comment" to questions about tattooing people with AIDS. In a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, she then lends her efforts and her famous Republican name to AIDS charity events.
Revson argued that this is all right, that AIDS charities need the money, and that in such a situation a wife is not responsible for distancing herself from her husband's deadly positions. We disagree.
The supreme enemies of gays and lesbians are those rightwing forces who enforce homophobia in our culture. Always a depressing reality, they became a deadly nightmare when AIDS struck, and there is no price tag on the misery they have caused.
It may be hard to remember, but there was a time in the recent past when the majority of us were not infected, when timely education could have prevented most of the AIDS nightmare. Instead, the Buckleys of the world avidly enforced a media blackout of AIDS. Then, after that had succeeded, they began floating proposals like concentration camps and tattooing.
These people are venal. They are to our community as the Nazis were to the Jews. The idea that we're so desperate for money that we should accept it from anyone, even our executioners, is ghoulish indeed.
Revson's comment that Mrs. Buckley somehow can't publicly disagree with her husband is nonsense. If she really wished to do something about AIDS she most certainly would disagree with him, often and loudly. In so doing she could take a lesson from her friend Barbara Bush, who publicly disagrees with her husband the president on gun control. Wives are autonomous and have a right to disagree with their spouses, even Republican wives, and they often do. The fact that Mrs. Buckley imperiously refuses indicates that she probably agrees with her husband's ugly views. Such complicity in extreme homophobia disqualifies her from using AIDS charity work to boost her social standing.
It's extremely sad when AIDS or gay organizations feel they must accept money from our avowed enemies, be they Coors Beer, the Roman Catholic Church or Pat Buckley. We should not allow homophobes who are killing us to confuse the issue by buying us off. We have enough genuine friends that we don't need to cringe for blood money.
— Editorial, OutWeek Magazine No. 21, November 12, 1989, p. 4.