A lot discussion about this came up during discussions of Reagan's legacy after he died died in 2004.

It depends on who you ask. Conservatives argue that Reagan actually did a lot to combat AIDS by increasing spending on medical research, but did not have an obligation to personally endorse condom use or needle exchanges.. On the other hand, some gay activists portray Reagan as a horrible homophobe who was literally worse than Hitler. Others argue that Reagan's silence wasn't anomalous; liberal politicians also avoided discussing AIDS publicly.

Some examples:

1. Larry Kramer, a gay rights activist wrote a scathing obituary about Reagan called 'Adolph Reagan.' Some quotes:

"Our murderer is dead. The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world, is dead. More people than Hitler even."

"I could never understand why Reagan’s hatred of us was so intense and manifest and never-ending. Some of Nancy Reagan’s best friends were gay, the self-loathing Jerry Zipkin, at one time her principle “walker,” chief among them. It is said he taught her how to dress. In my play, Just Say No, I dramatized my own theory of why she and her husband kept gays off their agenda as if we were the plague, which of course, as in some hideous self-fulfilling prophecy, we became. Ron Reagan, Jr. That is why. It was no secret in an ever-widening circle that Ron Reagan, Jr. was suspected of being gay"

For the record, Ron Reagan, Jr. was married from 1980 until earlier this year, when his wife passed away.

A conservative response from the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group:

"The real Reagan record on AIDS is different. AIDS funding skyrocketed in the 1980s, almost doubling each year from 1983 - when the media started blaring headlines - from $44 million to $103 million, $205 million, $508 million, $922 million, and then $1.6 billion in 1988. Reagan's secretary of Health and Human Services in1983, Margaret Heckler, declared AIDS her department's "number one priority." While the House of Representatives was Democrat-dominated throughout the 1980s, which Democrats would quickly explain was the source of that skyrocketing AIDS funding, Reagan clearly signed the spending bills that funded the war on AIDS."

And a third view:

"Most politicians of the age either failed to grasp the seriousness of AIDS or, grasping it, were reluctant to discuss openly a disease spread primarily through anal sex and dirty needles. For years, New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat presiding over the epicenter of the disease, refused even to meet with AIDS groups. AIDS was not mentioned from the podium of either national party convention in 1984. "Silence" about AIDS was a national failing, not one peculiar to Reagan."