To speak now, as several have, about the Bush administration’s lack of response to the AIDS crisis is not about dishonoring the man’s death, but about honoring the deaths of others who were equally beloved to their communities, but far from equal in power, then or now. Perhaps if Bush had not died right on the eve of World AIDS Day, the desire to reflect on this aspect of his legacy would have seemed less urgent. “On a day when our wounds re-open,” the calls to mourn Bush acted as an “extra dash of salt,” another former ACT UP member wrote on Facebook. But perhaps not: The fight against silence was an enormous part of the AIDS activist project to begin with, and in the wake of Bush’s death it feels like some want to replace the silencing majoritarianism of the 1980s with an updated version of the same assiduous attention to the needs only of those who are already powerful and so avoid grappling with the late president’s complex domestic legacy. Bush’s actions cannot be explained away as simply reflecting the times, either; during those years, there were politicians who stood up for the humanity of gay people, even as the majority of Americans turned against them and poll-measured disapproval peaked. Nancy Pelosi was one of them. You can see that in this 1987 video her team released on World AIDS Day. Bush may have been lovely to those inside the circle of concern, but he drew that circle narrowly during a moment when it would have meant the world to draw it larger.