➤ LARRY KRAMER, from p.4
duce his searing play “The Normal
Heart” in 1985, during the darkest
times of the AIDS plague. It was
the highest use of theater — telling
an urgent story to people living
through it. At a preview, I saw several
of the people portrayed in the
play — Rodger McFarlane, Larry
Mass, and Kramer himself — sitting
in the audience for the alley
staging. Kramer famously went up
to Times critic Frank Rich at a preview
he was reviewing and said,
“I have never wanted someone to
like something so much.” The play
starred Brad Davis who soon had
to be replaced for health reasons by
Joel Grey. (Davis eventually died of
AIDS complications himself.)
As GMHC became much more
focused on services instead of
advocacy, Kramer used a March
1987 “Second Tuesday” speech at
the LGBT Community Center to
demand more militant action of us.
Indeed, it was a command performance
— Kramer calling everyone
he knew and demanding we show
up to hear what he had to say.
(“Just fucking be there,” he told
me and hung up. So I went along
with 300 others.) That led to the
founding of the AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power, or ACT UP — gathering
scores and then hundreds of
activists together for weekly meetings
(and countless subcommittee
meetings) to fi ght for government
action after years of neglect by
Koch, New York Governor Mario
Cuomo, and, most notably, President
Ronald Reagan who at that
point — six years into the plague
— had yet to publicly address the
crisis.
When Reagan did fi nally speak
on AIDS at an AmfAR event in June
1987, Kramer was there in the tent
— grateful that we might fi nally
see a step-up in federal commitment.
But when Reagan, fl anked
by Dr. Mathilde Krim of AmfAR
and AIDS activist Elizabeth Taylor,
drifted into some right-wing rhetoric
about forced testing, Kramer
joined in the chorus of boos from
many in the audience.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director
of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, with
whom he often tangled (Kramer
once comparing him to Adolf Eichmann),
famously said, “In American
medicine there are two eras.
Larry Kramer speaking at last June’s Central Park rally following the Queer Liberation March.
Before Larry and after Larry.”
ACT UP led the fi ght to speed up
government approval of drugs to
treat HIV. But it wasn’t until 1995-
6 that an effective combination of
drugs began to allow people with
HIV — including Kramer himself
— to survive to relatively normal
lifespans.
Bill Dobbs, longtime activist and
member of ACT UP in the early
years, said, “Larry was a critical
catalyst in the fi ght against AIDS.
He was a scold, an artist, not much
of an organizer, but a powerful
force in pushing back against a
deadly pandemic.”
Kramer was particularly furious
with Koch, the closeted mayor.
When Koch spoke at a GMHC
AIDS Walk, Kramer alone stood at
the front of the opening ceremony
outside Lincoln Center with a sign
saying, “Ed Koch: The Worst!” The
GMHC organizers did not dare have
the police remove him. When Koch
once told an interviewer he “happened
to be a heterosexual,” Kramer
and others carried signs at an
ACT UP demonstration at City Hall
reading, “Koch: ‘I’m heterosexual.’
And I’m Marilyn Monroe!”
Kramer moved into Two Fifth
Avenue in the early 1970s, renting
there when such places were affordable.
When Koch moved into the
building after his mayoralty ended
in 1989, Kramer would insult Koch
when he saw him. When the building’s
board ordered Kramer to stop
speaking to Koch, the next time
Kramer saw the former mayor he
said to his dog, “Molly, that’s the
man who killed daddy’s friends.”
Kramer also took on anti-gay
DONNA ACETO
religious leaders, especially New
York Cardinal John O’Connor, who
led the opposition to the city gay
rights bill in 1986 and who was
infamously appointed by Reagan
to his AIDS Commission in 1987.
In the book “Gay Pride” by Fred
W. McDarrah and Timothy S.
McDarragh, Kramer wrote, “The
new Catholic archbishop, John
O’Connor, upheld his group’s tradition
of bigoted opposition, but he
was more than counterbalanced by
the common decency of religious
leaders such as Episcopal Bishop
Paul Moore, Rabbi Balfour Brickner,
and, in his own church, Sister
Jeannine Gramick, Reverend Bernard
Lynch, and the members of
Dignity.”
Kramer was a staunch supporter
of ACT UP’s 1989 “Stop the
Church” action inside St. Patrick’s
Cathedral.
“It made everyone afraid of us,”
he said. “They did not know what
we might do next.”
Kramer followed “Normal Heart”
with “Just Say No” (1988), a shortlived
polemic against the Reagan
family, and the Off-Broadway
critical hit, “The Destiny of Me” in
1992, charting Kramer’s early life
and struggle with AIDS and as
an AIDS activist. His books also
included “Reports from the Holocaust:
The Making of An AIDS
Activist” (1989), a collection of his
essays and polemics.
Richard Lynn wrote, “He asked
me medical and science questions
when he was writing ‘The Destiny
of Me’ and wanted to get everything
to be precisely correct. His devotion
to telling the truth, no matter
how uncomfortable it was to hear,
is unmatched.”
After the 2004 reelection of the
anti-gay George W. Bush, Kramer
gave a speech (later a book) titled,
“The Tragedy of Today’s Gays,”
saying, “Almost 60 million people
whom we live and work with every
day think we are immoral. ‘Moral
values’ was top of many lists of why
people supported George Bush.
Not Iraq. Not the economy. Not terrorism.
‘Moral values.’ In case you
need a translation that means us.
It is hard to stand up to so much
hate.”
Veteran gay activist Ron Madson
last saw Kramer outside the revival
of “Normal Heart” on Broadway
where producers nixed a program
insert on AIDS.
“He stood at the lobby handing
out leafl ets that scolded people
that the epidemic has not ended,”
Madson recalled. “I truly mourn
his loss. He showed us how to be
advocates in the face of hateful obstruction.
He was a raptor when
society wouldn’t even tolerate a gay
gadfl y. His soul lives in every one of
us that he helped save. His passing
is a colossal loss. I’m in tears.”
Between 2015 and 2020, Kramer
published Volumes I and II of his
sprawling, nearly 1,700-page “The
American People,” a reimagining of
US history, guided by “Fred Lemish,”
his protagonist and alter-ego
in “Faggots.” In his tomes, he proclaimed
the homosexuality of everyone
from George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln to Mark
Twain. When he tried to get the
producers of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s
“Hamilton” to deal with Alexander
Hamilton’s bisexuality and love
for John Laurens, he was rebuffed
and Laurens was portrayed as a
devoted friend instead.
Laurence David Kramer was
born June 25, 1935 in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, but was raised
in Washington, DC, from 1941
by George and Rea Kramer (nee
Wishengrad). While he hated his
father, his mother was an inspiration
to him and he felt protected
by his older brother Arthur. While
he followed Arthur to Yale in 1953,
Kramer — like most all but a handful
of homosexually-oriented people
of his generation — struggled
with his sexuality, saw a psychiatrist
about it 20 years before it was
➤ LARRY KRAMER, continued on p.24
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