TBT: Super Awesome People™ in History.
“I was trying to make people united and angry. I was known as the angriest man in the world, mainly because I discovered that anger got you further than being nice. And when we started to break through in the media, I was better TV than someone who was nice.”
– Larry Kramer, 2017
Larry Kramer died on May 27, 2020, at the age of 84. His death came 51 years after the Stonewall Riots, 39 years after the New York Times first reported on GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency Disorder; later renamed AIDS), and 33 years after Kramer inspired the formation of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).
Over the course of his writing career, Larry Kramer wrote six plays, three novels, two nonfiction books, and three screenplays (the screenplay for Women in Love was nominated for an Academy Award). Kramer was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won two Obie awards (all for The Destiny of Me), and his play, The Normal Heart, won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, and a 2014 Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special.
But not all of Kramer’s writings were well-received. The majority of his work featured commentary on the gay population (often with a Kramer-like figure at the center), but the commentary wasn’t always flattering. His first novel, Faggots (1978), was especially controversial as a “profane, bitter riot of a novel” which was considered by many to be a “self-hating screed” and was banned by Manhattan’s only gay bookstore at the time, although it went on to be used in gay studies classes and has never been out of publication.
“I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a very opinionated man who uses words as fighting tools.”
– Larry Kramer
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Photos of Larry Kramer by David Shankbone (Wikimedia Commons)
In his writings and in his life, Larry Kramer wasn’t afraid of speaking up and acting out. In the early ’80s when AIDS was the unknown, terrifying disease that was killing his friends, Kramer first became an activist. He cofounded the GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis) in 1982 with five us his friends, and the organization began to raise funds and provide services to people who were stricken with AIDS.
In 1983, Kramer wrote a 5,000 word essay that appeared in the New York Native, 1,112 and Counting, which detailed the spread of AIDS and the lack of government response from local and national politicians. His essay also criticized the apathy of the gay men whom Kramer believed weren’t doing enough to fight for their survival. Many gay men took his criticism as abusive and violent, but they were words that needed to be said, and they served as a wake-up call—and a call to action.
“If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble. If this article doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men may have no future on this earth. Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get.”
– Larry Kramer, 1,112 and Counting, 1983
Kramer left the GMHC in 1983, dissatisfied with the organization’s non-confrontational approach to the AIDS crisis. Kramer was angry, and he wanted his anger known. He railed against everyone who wasn’t doing enough to stop the disease—President Reagan (who didn’t even say “AIDS” publicly until 1985), NYC Mayor Ed Koch, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID—as well as the gay men who continued to live promiscuously, despite the risk of infection. Kramer alienated friends and foes alike, but his outspoken, uncensored fury did what it needed to do—people started to listen.
In 1987, Kramer inspired the founding of ACT UP, a more militant political action group than the GMHC. The grassroots organization marched on Wall Street, protested the price gouging of pharmaceutical companies developing AIDS treatments, interrupted political, news, and religious events, staged die-ins, held political funerals, and stormed the NIH. ACT UP and Kramer demanded to be heard, and SILENCE=DEATH became their most powerful and enduring rallying cry.
“AIDS was allowed to happen. It is a plague that need not have happened. It is a plague that could have been contained from the very beginning.”
– Larry Kramer, 2011
Larry Kramer died before a cure for HIV/AIDS was developed, although antiretroviral therapy (ART) has dramatically reduced the viral load of infected individuals and the severity of their illness. Kramer may have felt like he ultimately failed as a movement leader, but his legacy lives on in more than just play revivals and gay history studies. In 2020, Dr. Fauci is back in the news, there are novel—and familiar—plagues besieging the globe, and there are revitalized grassroots activists who are mad as hell and who aren’t going to take this anymore.
SILENCE=DEATH, and WHITE SILENCE=VIOLENCE. Rage might be alienating, but sometimes it’s justified, and as Larry Kramer proved, it can also be effective.
Read More Tributes to Larry Kramer
- Larry Kramer, Playwright and Outspoken AIDS Activist, Dies at 84 (New York Times)
- Larry Kramer, Pioneering AIDS Activist And Writer, Dies At 84 (NPR)
- The Curse of the Prophet (The Atlantic)
- The Benevolent Rage of Larry Kramer (The New Yorker)
- Larry Kramer, Prophet and Pussycat (New York Times)
- Larry Kramer Knew That an Honest Debate Was a Rude One (The Atlantic)
- Tony Kushner: Larry Kramer Spoke the Truths We Needed to Hear (New York Times)
- Larry Kramer Had the Courage to Act on His Fear (The New Yorker)
- “We Loved Each Other”: Fauci Recalls Larry Kramer, Friend and Nemesis (New York TImes)