Here's why the new Nancy Reagan stamp prompted backlash from the LGBTQ+ community [View all]

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Members of the LGBTQ+ community are calling a new stamp featuring former first lady Nancy Reagan a "slap in the face," as it was unveiled at the beginning of Pride month and because of the Reagan administration's role in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

"I think it just brings up just this overwhelming, underlying grief that a lot of us have been having," said Sarah Epperson, a queer artist and illustrator who focuses on social justice issues and politics. "Not only did we lose an entire generation of our elders through the AIDS crisis in the '80s — you know, stories that we'll never have, people that we'll never have. ... But also we lost so, so many people. There would have been so many more of us had we not lost so many of them."...

The silence of Nancy Reagan and President Ronald Reagan on HIV/AIDS lasted for several years, with the president waiting until 1985 to directly address the issue while answering a reporter's question. It would be two more years until he made his first major address on the health issue in 1987.

Brandon Cuicchi, an organizer with ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, said Ronald Reagan's prolonged silence became a legacy of negligence...

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103575533/nancy-reagan-stamp-hiv-aids-pride-backlash-lgbtq