Also, the idea that the Reagan administration at any point prioritized social conservatism in anything other than occasional lip service, empty promises (e.g. the appointment of evangelicals to the administration in proportion to their numbers in the population, a constitutional amendment allowing reestablishment of prayer in schools, etc.), and inspirational rhetoric in front of favorable audiences or that Reagan was genuinely interested in the causes and concerns of the Religious Right rather than their votes is laughable. Reagan played Falwell and other leaders of the New Right like a fiddle and they completely fell for it, e.g. when he assured Falwell that Sandra Day O'Connor would be a reliable conservative vote on the Court even when it was blatantly obvious (including to other Christian Right leaders/social conservatives like Robertson) that this was obviously not the case (and clearly not borne out by her judicial record).
The Republican ‘establishment’ has no one but itself to blame for its ‘angry’ and ‘disillusioned’ base when it has treated many of those people with contempt for decades or left their concerns unaddressed even when Republican presidents had the political capital and power to move those issues forward.
Reagan ignoring the AIDs epidemic was pretty clearly motivated by wanting to keep the Religious Right onside, no? I would argue that had some pretty serious consequences for a lot of gay men.
I always thought it was moreso the cultural and societal way gay men were viewed in the 80s, obviously not really respected in society, so not as much care/attention was given by the government and overall just wasn’t a priority for him, or he didn’t care. It wasn’t necessarily an attempt to galvanize the religious right.
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