WHAT ANGERS ME most about the media love affair with Ronald Reagan is that once again it exhibits a classic form of journalistic amnesia.

On and on the stories go, extolling the accomplishments of "the Gipper" while ignoring the fact that, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan supported blacklisting commies, and, as president, gave us Iran-Contragate and massive cuts in social service programs, not to mention a total disregard for the poor.

The San Francisco Chronicle on the morning after Reagan's death failed to mention the fact that the 40th president was constantly under attack during his two terms in office by queer activists for his total indifference to AIDS.

As a queer man who watched friend after friend die in the 1980s, I can honestly say I feel no sadness at the death of this former Hollywood actor who refused to utter the G word. In fact, Reagan made no public comment in 1985 when his friend Rock Hudson died of AIDS. He remained silent on AIDS until 1987, six years after the first cases appeared. By the time he mentioned it, 59,572 cases had been reported and 27,909 people had died.

It's a part of the Reagan legacy his family doesn't want us to recall. Ever since the controversy over the CBS miniseries The Reagans caused that network to pull it off the airwaves (instead the series aired on its cable outlet Showtime), Reagan's daughter Patti Davis has been on a personal crusade to convince us her father loved queers. One of the more controversial scenes in the miniseries has Reagan telling his wife, Nancy, after she pleads with him to publicly address the AIDS issue, "They who live in sin shall die in sin."

In an op-ed on Time.com, " 'The Reagans,' From One of Them" (Nov. 4, 2003), Davis countered that when she was eight or nine, her father explained Hudson's homosexuality to her as matter-of-factly as discussing someone's eye color. "What I do remember is the clear, smooth, non-judgmental way in which I was told," Davis wrote.

To his credit, Reagan did oppose the 1978 Briggs Initiative, a measure to ban queers from being school teachers in the state of California. Spearheaded by Orange County legislator John Briggs, it followed in the wake of the repeal of Dade County, Fla.'s gay rights bill in 1977. The cadre of right-wing forces that came together during the Dade County defeat helped propel Reagan into office in 1980.

Reagan may have personally favored letting consenting adults do whatever they want in their own bedrooms, as Davis alleges, but during a time when we were literally fighting for our lives, he stood by and did next to nothing. Had Reagan pushed for more AIDS research funding early on, had he treated AIDS as a public health emergency, had he gone on television in 1981 when the first AIDS cases were diagnosed and asked that the nation show compassion and that it not judge those who were sick and dying, the ensuing nightmare of AIDS-phobic discrimination and ostracism could've been curtailed.

Of course, Reagan's words alone couldn't have stopped all AIDS phobia. But his message would've impacted the mom-and-pop members of the religious right, many of whom had their own queer family members.

Appealing to them in the matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental manner Davis says characterized her father's view on queers could have changed attitudes, and that's what we needed in those dark years.

Unfortunately, Reagan wasn't willing to stand up to the right-wing forces that had elected him. If that meant letting people with AIDS eat cake, then so be it.

History should record that Reagan not only let us eat cake, he also let us die. And that's unforgivable.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a longtime queer activist and writer currently on a writing sabbatical, thanks to the Vanguard Community Foundation.