AFP:
Ronald Reagan's death has gone largely unmourned by the US's gay community, which still harbours bitter memories of his indifference to the emerging AIDs epidemic in the 1980s.
Gay activists yesterday offered sharply divergent verdicts on the Reagan presidency, which they see as tainted with the blood of thousands of victims of the HIV scourge.
Initial public awareness of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome dates to the early days of Reagan's first term, with the 1981 publication of an article in The New York Times that detailed a rare cancer being seen in the homosexual community....
The lack of significant federal funding to combat AIDS is cited by many as a major factor in the dramatic spread of the disease.
In the critical years of 1984-1985, according to his White House physician, Reagan thought of AIDS as though "it was measles and would go away".
