In Trump’s America, We Don’t Have A Right To Be Cowards Anymore

LGBT People And Other Minorities Must Fight For Survival, Not Progress

Scenes from Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” have been stuck in my mind over the past few weeks. I’m not sure if I’m seeing the actual scenes or if I’m misremembering them, but suddenly, as we approach Donald Trump’s inaguration, I can’t get them out of my head. 

If you’re not familiar with it, “Angels in America” is a massive, two-part production that deals with the AIDS crisis, homosexuality, and the politics of the 1980s. It describes itself as “a gay fantasia on national themes” and features fantastical scenes with power and emotion — and yes, angels. It was first written for the stage in 1993 and was adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2003. (If you’ve never seen it or read it. I highly recommend you watch the film version or find a local production. It’s worth it.)

One of the main themes of the work is the idea that we don’t have the right to be cowards anymore — that, while perhaps at one point we could bury our heads in the sand and look the other way, not anymore.

In the scene below, Louis, a gay, Jewish man who abandoned his boyfriend Prior after finding out Prior had AIDS, meets up with Prior’s best friend (and nurse) Belize. 

The parallels between the upcoming Trump years and the Ronald Reagan years are unmistakable. When it came to AIDS, Reagan lived in his own reality. He refused to speak about AIDS publicly for most of his presidency. Much like Trump already has, Reagan’s administration turned a blind eye to the truth.

As we head into the Trump years, with a cabinet filled with people who are publicly, openly, and loudly ant-LGBT,  we have to deal with the reality at hand: We’re no longer fighting for progress, we’re back to fighting for survival. We’ll have a president who, even more so than Reagan, has at best a casual relationship with reality.  

It won’t be enough to say, “Well, we made it through the Reagan years, we’ll survive the Trump years.” The truth is over 25,000 people died of AIDS between 1985-1989 because Reagan was too cowardly to even acknowledge the AIDS crisis. To be sure, not everyone survived the Reagan years. 

We’re going to lose rights and needed protections in the coming years. That’s already certain. We’re going to get knocked down and it’s going to be harder to get back up. 

Many of us who are active today were either too young or not out in the 80s, and don’t remember the kinds of activism we’re going to need. We’ll have to look to the past and look to those who were on the front lines and follow their lead and inject our own brand of fighting. 

But more than any of that — no matter what tactic we choose, whether it be direct protest or fighting through the courts or by lobbying the legislature — the lessons of “Angels in America” are still just as poignant today: We don’t get to be ambivalent.

Robbie Medwed is an Atlanta-based LGBTQ activist and writer. He really doesn’t understand how so many neo-conservatives can point to Reagan as a model for the future, especially knowing what we know now. Follow him on Twitter: @rjmedwed