Larry Kramer | |
|---|---|
 Kramer in 2010 | |
| Born | Laurence David Kramer (1935-06-25)June 25, 1935 Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Died | May 27, 2020(2020-05-27) (aged 84) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Yale University (BA) |
| Subject |
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| Years active | 1960s–2020 |
| Spouse | |
| Relatives | Arthur Kramer (brother) |
Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935 – May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working forColumbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked withUnited Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the filmWomen in Love (1969) and received anAcademy Award nomination for his work.
In 1978, Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his novelFaggots, which earned mixed reviews and emphatic denunciations from elements within the gay community for Kramer's portrayal of what he characterized as shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.
Kramer witnessed the spread of the disease later known asAcquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among his friends in 1980. He co-founded theGay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the world's largest private organization assisting people living with AIDS. Kramer grew frustrated with bureaucratic paralysis and the apathy of gay men to theAIDS crisis, and wished to engage in further action than the social services GMHC provided. He expressed his frustration by writing a play titledThe Normal Heart, produced atThe Public Theater in New York City in 1985.
His political activism continued with the founding of theAIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987, an influentialdirect action protest organization with the aim of gaining more public action to fight the AIDS crisis. ACT UP has been widely credited with changing public health policy and the perception ofpeople living with AIDS, and with raising awareness of HIV and AIDS-related diseases.[1]
Kramer was a finalist for thePulitzer Prize for his playThe Destiny of Me (1992), and he was a two-time recipient of theObie Award.
Laurence David Kramer was born inBridgeport, Connecticut, the younger of two children. His mother, Rea (née Wishengrad), worked as a shoe store employee, teacher, and social worker forRed Cross. His father, George Kramer, worked as a government attorney.[2] His older brother,Arthur Kramer was born in 1927. The family was Jewish.[3]
Kramer was considered an "unwanted child" by his parents, who struggled to find work during the AmericanGreat Depression.[4] When the family moved toMaryland, they found themselves in a much lower socioeconomic bracket than that of Kramer's high school peers. Kramer had become sexually involved with a male friend injunior high school. His father wanted him to marry a woman with money and pressured him to become a member of Pi Tau Pi, a Jewish fraternity.[5]
Kramer's father, older brother Arthur, and two uncles were alumni ofYale University.[6] Kramer enrolled atYale College in 1953, where he had difficulty adjusting. He felt lonely, and earned lower grades than those to which he was accustomed. He attempted suicide by an overdose ofaspirin because he felt like he was the "only gay student on campus".[6][7] The experience left him determined to explore his sexuality and set him on the path to fight "for gay people's worth".[6] The next semester, he had an affair with his German professor – his first requited romantic relationship with a man.[8] Kramer enjoyed theYale Glee Club during his remaining time at Yale,[9] and he graduated in 1957 with a degree in English.[10] He served in the U.S. Army Reserve before beginning his film writing and production career.[11]
According to Kramer, every drama he wrote derived from a desire to understand love's nature and its obstacles.[12] Kramer became involved with movie production at age 23 by taking a job as aTeletype operator at Columbia Pictures, agreeing to the position only because the machine was across the hall from the president's office.[13] Eventually, he won a position in the story department reworking scripts. His first writing credit was as a dialogue writer forHere We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, a teen sex comedy. He followed that with the 1969 screenplayWomen in Love, an adaptation ofD. H. Lawrence's novel, which was nominated for anAcademy Award.[14] He next penned what Kramer later referred to as (the) "only thing I'm truly ashamed of",[15] the 1973 musical remake ofFrank Capra'sLost Horizon, a notorious critical and commercial failure with a screenplay based very closely onCapra's film. Kramer later said that his well-negotiated fee for this work, skillfully invested by his brother, made him financially self-sufficient during the 1980s and 1990s.[15]
Kramer then began to integrate homosexual themes into his work, and tried writing for the stage. He wroteSissies' Scrapbook in 1973 (later rewritten and retitled asFour Friends), a dramatic play about four friends, one of whom is gay, and their dysfunctional relationships. Kramer called it a play about "cowardice and the inability of some men to grow up, leave the emotional bondage of male collegiate camaraderie, and assume adult responsibilities".[16] The play was first produced in a theater set up in an oldYMCA gymnasium on 53rd Street andEighth Avenue called thePlaywrights Horizons. Live theater moved him to believing that writing for the stage was what he wanted to do. Although the play was given a somewhat favorable review byThe New York Times, it was closed by the producer and Kramer was so distraught that he decided never to write for the stage again, later stating, "You must be amasochist to work in the theater and asadist to succeed on its stages."[17]
Kramer then wroteA Minor Dark Age, which was never produced.Frank Rich, in the foreword to aGrove Press collection of Kramer's lesser known works, wrote that the "dreamlike quality of the writing is haunting" inDark Age, and that its themes, such as the exploration of the difference between sex and passion, "are staples of his entire output" that would portend his future work, including the 1978 novelFaggots.[17]
In 1978, Kramer delivered the final of four drafts of a novel that he wrote about the fast lifestyle of the gay men on Fire Island and inManhattan. InFaggots, the primary character was modeled on himself, a man who is unable to find love while encountering the drugs and emotionless sex in the trendy bars and discos.[18] He stated his inspiration for the novel: "I wanted to be in love. Almost everybody I knew felt the same way. I think most people, at some level, wanted what I was looking for, whether they pooh-poohed it or said that we can't live like the straight people or whatever excuses they gave."[19] Kramer researched the book, talking to many men, and visiting various establishments. As he interviewed people, he heard a common question: "Are you writing a negative book? Are you going to make it positive? ... I began to think, 'My God, people must really be conflicted about the lives they're leading.' And that was true. I think people were guilty about all the promiscuity and all the partying."[19]
The novel caused an uproar in the community it portrayed; it was taken off the shelves of theOscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore – at the time New York City's only gay bookstore – and Kramer was banned from the grocery store near his home on Fire Island.[1] Reviewers found it difficult to believe that Kramer's accounts of gay relationships were accurate; both the gay and mainstream press panned the book.[20] On the reception of the novel Kramer said: "The straight world thought I was repulsive, and the gay world treated me like a traitor. People would literally turn their back when I walked by. You know what my real crime was? I put the truth in writing. That's what I do: I have told the fucking truth to everyone I have ever met."[1]Faggots, however, became one of the best-selling gay novels of all time.[21]
In 2000,Reynolds Price wrote that the novel's lasting relevance is that "anyone who searches out present-day responses on the Internet will quickly find that the wounds inflicted byFaggots are burning still".[22] Although the novel was rejected by the people from whom Kramer expected praise, the book has never been out of publication and is often taught ingay studies classes. "Faggots struck a chord," wroteAndrew Sullivan, "It exuded a sense that gay men could do better if they understood themselves as fully human, if they could shed their self-loathing and self-deception...."[22]
While living on Fire Island in the 1970s, Kramer had no intention of getting involved in political activism. There were politically active groups in New York City, but Kramer noted the culture on Fire Island was so different that they would often make fun of political activists: "It was not chic. It was not something you could brag about with your friends ... Guys marching downFifth Avenue was a whole other world. The whole gestalt of Fire Island was about beauty and looks and golden men."[23]
However, when friends he knew from Fire Island began getting sick in 1980, Kramer became involved in gay activism. In August 1981, although he had not been involved previously with gay activism, Kramer invited the "A-list" (his own term) group of gay men from the New York City area to his apartment to listen to a doctor say their friends' illnesses were related, and research needed to be done.[24][25][26] The next year, they named themselves theGay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and became the primary organization to raise funds for and provide services to people stricken withAcquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the New York area. Although Kramer served on its first board of directors, his view of how it should be run sharply conflicted with that of the rest of its members. While GMHC began to concentrate on social services for men who were dying, Kramer loudly insisted they fight for funding from New York City. MayorEd Koch became a particular target for Kramer, as did the behavior of gay men, before the nature of how theHuman Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was transmitted was understood.[27][28]
When doctors suggested men stop having sex, Kramer strongly encouraged GMHC to deliver the message to as many gay men as possible. When they refused, Kramer wrote an essay entitled "1,112 and Counting", which appeared in 1983 in theNew York Native, a gay newspaper. The essay discussed the spread of the disease, the lack of government response, and the apathy of the gay community.[29] The essay was intended to frighten gay men and provoke them to protest government indifference.Michael Specter wrote inThe New Yorker, "it was a five-thousand-word screed that accused nearly everyone connected with health care in America – officials at theCenters for Disease Control, in Atlanta, researchers at theNational Institutes of Health, in Washington D.C., doctors atMemorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in Manhattan, and local politicians (particularly Mayor Ed Koch) – of refusing to acknowledge the implications of the nascentAIDS epidemic. The article's harshest condemnation was directed at those gay men who seemed to think that if they ignored the new disease, it would simply go away.[30]Tony Kushner, who won the 1993Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his playAngels in America about the impact of AIDS in the United States, described the essay as "With that one piece, Larry changed my world. He changed the world for all of us."[30]
Kramer's confrontational style proved to be an advantage, as it earned the issue of AIDS the attention of the New York media that no other individual could get. He found it a disadvantage when he realized his own reputation was "completely that of a crazy man".[31] Kramer was particularly frustrated by bureaucratic stalling that snowballed in cases where gay but closeted men were the ones in charge of agencies that seemed to ignore AIDS. He confronted the director of a National Institutes of Health agency about not devoting more time and effort toward researching AIDS because he was closeted.[32] He threw a drink in the face of Republican fundraiserTerry Dolan during a party and screamed at him for having affairs with men but using the fear of homosexuality to raise money for conservative causes.[33][30] He called Ed Koch and the media and government agencies in New York City "equal to murderers". Even Kramer's personal life was affected when he and his lover – also a GMHC board member – split over Kramer's condemnations of the political apathy of GMHC.[31]
Kramer's past also compromised his message, as many men who had been turned off byFaggots saw Kramer's warnings as alarmist, displaying negative attitudes toward sex. PlaywrightRobert Chesley responded to Kramer'sNew York Native article, saying, "Read anything by Kramer closely, and I think you'll find the subtext is always: the wages of gay sin are death".[1] The GMHC ousted Kramer from the organization in 1983. Kramer's preferred method of communication was deemed too militant for the group.[34]
In 1990, Kramer appeared inRosa von Praunheim 's award-winning filmPositive about the fight of activists in New York City for AIDS-education and the rights of HIV infected people.
Astonished and saddened about being forced out of GMHC, Kramer took an extended trip to Europe. While visiting theDachau concentration camp he learned that it had opened as early as 1933 and neither Germans nor other nations did anything to stop it. He became inspired to chronicle the same reaction from the American government and the gay community to the AIDS crisis by writingThe Normal Heart, despite having promised never to write for the theater again.[35]
The Normal Heart is a play set between 1981 and 1984. It addresses a writer named Ned Weeks as he nurses his lover, who is dying of an unnamed disease. His doctors are puzzled and frustrated by having no resources to research it. Meanwhile, the unnamed organization Weeks is involved in is angered by the bad publicity Weeks' activism is generating, and eventually throws him out. Kramer later explained, "I tried to make Ned Weeks as obnoxious as I could ... I was trying, somehow and again, to atone for my own behavior."[36] The experience was overwhelmingly emotional for Kramer, as at one time during rehearsals he watched actorBrad Davis hold his dying lover played byD. W. Moffett on stage; Kramer went into the bathroom and sobbed, only moments later to find Davis holding him.[37] The play is considered a literary landmark.[1] It contended with the AIDS crisis when few would speak of the disease afflicting gay men, including gays themselves; it remains the longest-running play ever staged at thePublic Theater, running for a year starting in 1985. It has been produced over 600 times in the U.S., Europe (where it was televised in Poland), Israel, and South Africa.[37] The Polish television adaptation débuted on theTVP channel on May 4, 1989, one month before thefirst free election in the country since 1928.[38][39]
Actors following Davis who have portrayed Kramer's alter ego Ned Weeks include;Joel Grey,Richard Dreyfuss (in Los Angeles),Martin Sheen (at theRoyal Court in London),Tom Hulce and thenJohn Shea in the West End,Raul Esparza in a highly acclaimed 2004 revival at the Public Theater, and most recentlyJoe Mantello on Broadway at theGolden Theater. Upon seeing the production ofThe Normal Heart,Naomi Wolf commented, "No one else on the left at that time ... ever used the moral framework that is so much a part of Kramer's voice, and that the right has coopted so skillfully. Conscience, responsibility, calling; truth and lies, clarity of purpose or abandonment of one's moral calling; loyalty and betrayal ..."[40]
In a review forThe New York Times,Frank Rich said:
He accuses the governmental, medical and press establishments of foot-dragging in combating the disease—especially in the early days of its outbreak, when much of the play is set—and he is even tougher on homosexual leaders who, in his view, were either too cowardly or too mesmerized by the ideology of sexual liberation to get the story out. "There's not a good word to be said about anyone's behavior in this whole mess", claims one character—and certainly Mr. Kramer has few good words to say about Mayor Koch, various prominent medical organizations,The New York Times or, for that matter, most of the leadership of an unnamed organization apparently patterned after the Gay Men's Health Crisis.[41]
In 2014, HBO produced afilm version directed byRyan Murphy with a screenplay by Kramer. It starredMark Ruffalo,Matt Bomer (who won aGolden Globe Award for his performance),Taylor Kitsch,Jim Parsons,Alfred Molina,Julia Roberts,Joe Mantello,Jonathan Groff, andBD Wong.[42]
In 1987, Kramer was the catalyst in the founding of theAIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), adirect action protest organization that chose government agencies and corporations as targets to publicize lack of treatment and funding for people with AIDS. ACT UP was formed at theLesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center in New York City. Kramer was asked to speak as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS. He began by having two-thirds of the room stand up, and told them they would be dead in five years. Kramer reiterated the points introduced in his essay "1,112 and Counting": "If my speech tonight doesn't scare the shit out of you, we're in real trouble. If what you're hearing doesn't rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men will have no future here on earth. How long does it take before you get angry and fight back?"[43] Their first target became theFood and Drug Administration (FDA), which Kramer accused of neglecting badly needed medication for HIV-infected Americans.[44]
Engaging in civil disobedience that would result in many people being arrested was a primary objective, as it would focus attention on the target. On March 24, 1987, 17 people out of 250 participating were arrested for blocking rush-hour traffic in front of the FDA'sWall Street offices.[45] Kramer was arrested dozens of times working with ACT UP, and the organization grew to hundreds of chapters in the U.S. and Europe.[46] ImmunologistAnthony Fauci stated, "In American medicine there are two eras. Before Larry and after Larry."[1] PlaywrightTony Kushner offered his opinion of why Kramer fought so relentlessly: "In a way, like a lot of Jewish men of Larry's generation, theHolocaust is a defining historical moment, and what happened in the early 1980s with AIDS felt, and was in fact, holocaustal to Larry."[47]
Two decades later Kramer continued to advocate for social and legal equity for homosexuals. "Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal, which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you," he wrote in 2007. "You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you."[48]
In later decades, Kramer also continued to argue for funding research into cures for AIDS, contending that existing treatments disincentivized the pharmaceutical industry from developing cures. This distrust of the industry was demonstrated in Kramer's final public statement about curing AIDS, via a question posed toJoe Biden at atown hall during the2020 presidential campaign, in which he accused pharmaceutical companies of "profit[ing] irrationally from HIV-positive Americans who depend on the medications forever," and asking "as president, how would you finance a CURE and scale back the avarice of pharmaceutical companies."[49]
Continuing his commentary on government indifference toward AIDS, Kramer wroteJust Say No, A Play about a Farce in 1988. In the dramatic work he highlighted the sexual hypocrisy in theReagan and Koch administrations that allowed AIDS to become an epidemic; it concerns aFirst Lady, her gay son, and the closeted gay mayor of America's "largest northeastern city". Its New York production, starringKathleen Chalfant, Tonya Pinkens, andDavid Margulies, was prized by the few who came to see it after its negative review byThe New York Times. Social critic and writerSusan Sontag wrote of the piece, "Larry Kramer is one of America's most valuable troublemakers. I hope he never lowers his voice."[50]
First published in 1989, and later expanded and republished in 1994,Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist contains a diverse selection of the non-fiction writings of Larry Kramer focused on AIDS activism and LGBT civil rights, including letters to the editor and speeches, which document his time spent atGay Men's Health Crisis,ACT UP, and beyond, with the updated edition being organised chronologically from 1978 to 1993.[51]
The central message of the book is that gay men must accept responsibility for their lives, and that those who are still living must give back to their community by fighting forPeople With AIDS and LGBT rights, for, as Kramer states, "I must put back something into this world for my own life, which is worth a tremendous amount. By not putting back, you are saying that your lives are worth shit, and that we deserve to die, and that the deaths of all our friends and lovers have amounted to nothing. I can't believe that in your heart of hearts you feel this way. I can't believe you want to die. Do you?"[52] The first publication provides a portrait of Kramer as activist, and the 1994 edition contains commentary written by him that reflects on his earlier pieces and provides insight into Larry Kramer as writer.[53]
Kramer directly and deliberately defines AIDS as aholocaust because he believes the United States' government failed to respond quickly and expend the necessary resources to cure AIDS, largely because AIDS initially infected gay men, and, quite soon after, predominantly poor and politically powerless minorities. InReport from the Holocaust, he wrote: "One inadvertent fall-out fromthe Holocaust is the growing inability to view any other similar tragedies as awful".[54] Through speeches, editorials, and personal, sometimes publicized, letters to figures such as politicianGary Bauer, former New York MayorEd Koch, severalNew York Times reporters, and head of theNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,Anthony Fauci, Kramer personally advocates for a more significant response to AIDS. He implores the government to conduct research based on commonly accepted scientific standards and to allocate funds and personnel to AIDS research. Kramer ultimately states that the response to AIDS in America must be defined as a holocaust because of the large number deaths that resulted from the negligence and apathy that surrounded AIDS in theRonald Reagan,George H. W. Bush, and earlyBill Clinton presidencies.[55]
The Destiny of Me picks up whereThe Normal Heart left off, following Ned Weeks as he continues his journey fighting those whose complacency or will impede the discovery of a cure for a disease from which he suffers. The play opened in October 1992 and ran for one year off Broadway at theLucille Lortel Theatre by theCircle Repertory Company.[56] It was a finalist for thePulitzer Prize, was a doubleObie Award winner and received theLortel Award for Outstanding Play of the Year. The original production starredJohn Cameron Mitchell, "a young actor who dominates the show with a performance at once ethereal and magnetic", according toThe New York Times reviewer Frank Rich. Most powerful, Rich wrote, was the thematic question Kramer posed to himself: "Why was he of all people destined to scream bloody murder with the aim of altering the destiny of the human race?"[56] Kramer states in his introduction to the play:
This journey, from discovery through guilt to momentary joy and toward AIDS, has been my longest, most important journey, as important as—no, more important than my life with my parents, than my life as a writer, than my life as an activist. Indeed, my homosexuality, as unsatisfying as much of it was for so long, has been the single most important defining characteristic of my life.[57]
Its 2002 LondonFinborough Theatre production was the No. 1 Critics Choice inThe Evening Standard.[58]
Tragedy was a speech and a call to arms that Kramer delivered five days after the 2004 re-election ofGeorge W. Bush and later published as a book.[47] Kramer believed that Bush was re-elected largely because of his opposition tosame-sex marriage, and found it inconceivable that voters would respond so strongly to that issue when there were so many more pressing ones:
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. NotIraq. 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.[59]
The speech's effects were far-reaching and had most corners of the gay world once again discussing Kramer's moral vision of drive and self-worth for the LGBT community.
Kramer even stated: "Does it occur to you that we brought this plague of AIDS upon ourselves? I know I am getting into dangerous waters here but it is time. With the cabal breathing even more murderously down our backs it is time. And you are still doing it. You are still murdering each other."[60]
Kramer, again, had his detractors from the community. Writing forSalon.com, Richard Kim felt that once again Kramer personified the very object of his criticism:homophobia.
He recycles the kind of harangues about gay men (and young gay men in particular) that institutions like theTimes so love to print – that they are buffoonish, disengagedPeter Pans dancing, drugging and fucking their lives away while the world and the disco burn down around them.[61]
Around 1981,[62] Kramer began researching and writing a manuscript calledThe American People: A History, an ambitious historical work that begins in theStone Age and continues into the present. For example, there is information relating to Kramer's assertion thatAbraham Lincoln was gay. In 2002,Will Schwalbe, editor-in-chief ofHyperion Books – the only man to have read the entire manuscript to that date – said, "He has set himself the hugest of tasks," and he described it as "staggering, brilliant, funny, and harrowing."[1] In 2006, Kramer said of the work, "[It is] my own history of America and of the cause of HIV/AIDS ... Writing and researching this history has convinced me that the plague of HIV/AIDS has been intentionally allowed to happen."[62]
The book was published as a novel byFarrar, Straus & Giroux in 2015. InThe New York Times Book Review,Dwight Garner wrote, "I wish I could report thatThe American People, Volume 1 had power to match its scope. It does not. As a work of sustained passion, it is formidable. As a work of art, it is very modest indeed. The tone is talky and digressive; few real characters emerge; one feels lashed to the mast after only 50 pages or so." In the book, Kramer writes that in addition to Abraham Lincoln,George Washington,Benjamin Franklin,Alexander Hamilton,Andrew Jackson,Franklin Pierce,James Buchanan,Mark Twain,Herman Melville, andRichard Nixon were gay.[63][64] The second volume, 880 pages, was published in 2020.[65]
In 1997, Kramer approachedYale University, to bequeath several million dollars "to endow a permanent, tenured professorship ingay studies and possibly to build a gay and lesbian student center."[6] At that time, gender, ethnic and race-related studies were viewed warily by academia. The then Yale provost,Alison Richard, stated that gay and lesbian studies was too narrow a specialty for a program in perpetuity.[6] Kramer's rejected proposal read: "Yale is to use this money solely for 1) the study of and/or instruction in gay male literature, by which I mean courses to study gay male writers throughout history or the teaching to gay male students of writing about their heritage and their experience. To ensure for the continuity of courses in either or both of these areas tenured positions should be established; and/or 2) the establishment of a gay student center at Yale."[6]
In 2001, both sides settled upon establishing the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, which would include visiting professors and a program of conferences, guest speakers and other events. Arthur Kramer endowed the program at Yale with $1 million to support a five-year trial.[66] Kramer agreed to leave his literary papers and those chronicling the AIDS movement and his founding ofGMHC andACT UP to Yale'sBeinecke Library. "A lot has changed since I made my initial demands," said Kramer. "I was trying to cram stuff down their throat. I'd rather they fashion their own stuff. It may allow for a much more expandable notion of what lesbian and gay studies really is."[66] The five-year program ended in 2006.[67]
In 2020, in response to theCOVID-19 pandemic, Kramer began to write a play titledAn Army of Lovers Must Not Die.[65]
Larry andArthur Kramer were eight years apart. Arthur was the founding partner of the law firmKramer Levin. Their relationship was portrayed in Kramer'sThe Normal Heart (1984). In the play, Kramer portrays Arthur (as Ben Weeks) as more concerned with building his $2 million house inConnecticut than helping his brother's cause. HumoristCalvin Trillin, a friend of both Larry and Arthur, once calledThe Normal Heart "the play about the building of [Arthur's] house".Anemona Hartocollis observed inThe New York Times that "their story came to define an era for hundreds of thousands of theatergoers".[4] Arthur, who had protected his younger brother from the parents they both disliked, could neither reject Larry, nor accept his homosexuality. This caused years of arguing and stretches of silence between them. In the 1980s, Arthur refused Larry's request for Kramer Levin to represent the fledglingGay Men's Health Crisis, blaming the need to clear it with his firm's intake committee.[6] When Larry called for a boycott ofMCI, a prominent Kramer Levin client, Arthur took it as a personal affront. In 1992, afterColorado voters endorsedAmendment 2, an anti-gay rights referendum, Larry supported a boycott of the state, while Arthur refused to cancel a ski trip toAspen.[4]
Throughout their disagreements, the two remained close. InThe Normal Heart, Larry wrote: "The brothers love each other a great deal; [Arthur's] approval is essential to [Larry]."[68]
In 2001, Arthur endowed a $1 million grant for Yale University to establish theLarry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, a program focusing ongay history.[18]
Kramer Levin LLP would later become a staunch advocate for the gay rights movement, assisting theLambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on high-profile cases asLawrence v. Texas before theU.S. Supreme Court andHernandez v. Robles before theNew York Court of Appeals.[69] Arthur Kramer retired from the firm in 1996 and died from a stroke in 2008.[4]
In 1988, stress over the closing of his playJust Say No, only a few weeks after its opening, forced Kramer into the hospital after it aggravated a congenitalhernia. While in surgery, doctors discovered liver damage due tohepatitis B, prompting Kramer to learn that he wasHIV positive.[70]
In 2001, at the age of 66, Kramer was in dire need of aliver transplant, but he was turned down byMount Sinai Hospital'sorgan transplant list. People living with HIV were routinely considered inappropriate candidates for organ transplants because of complications from HIV and perceived short lifespans. Out of the 4,954 liver transplants performed in the United States, only 11 were for HIV-positive people.[12] The news promptedNewsweek to announce Kramer was dying in June 2001; theAssociated Press in December of the same year mistakenly reported Kramer's death.[71] Kramer became a symbol for infected people who had new leases on life due to advances in medicine. "We shouldn't face a death sentence because of who we are or who we love", he said in an interview. In May 2001, theThomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, which had performed more transplants for HIV positive patients than any other facility in the world, accepted Kramer as a potential transplant recipient.[12] Kramer received a new liver on December 21, 2001.[72] In April 2019 he suffered a broken leg.[65]
Kramer and his partner, architectural designer David Webster, were together from 1991 until Kramer's death. Webster's ending of his relationship with Kramer in the 1970s had inspired Kramer to writeFaggots (1978). When asked about their reunion decades later, Webster replied: "He'd grown up, I'd grown up."[12] On July 24, 2013, Kramer and Webster married in the intensive care unit ofNYU Langone Medical Center in New York City while Kramer recovered from surgery.[73][65]
Kramer divided his time between a residence inManhattan, nearWashington Square Park inGreenwich Village, andConnecticut. Another resident of Kramer's Manhattan residential complex was Kramer's longtime nemesis,Ed Koch, who had been mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989. The two saw each other relatively infrequently, since they lived in different towers. When Kramer saw Koch looking at the apartment in 1989, Kramer reportedly told him, "Don't move in here! There are people here who hate you!" On another occasion, Koch tried to pet Kramer'sWheaten Terrier dog, Molly, in the building's mail area, and Kramer snatched the dog away, telling her that Koch was "the man who killed all of Daddy's friends."[74]
Kramer died of pneumonia on May 27, 2020, at age 84, less than a month short of his 85th birthday.[75][76][77]
Many of us who live in daily terror because of the AIDS epidemic cannot understand why the Food and Drug Administration has been so intransigent in the face of this monstrous tidal wave of death. ... There is no question on the part of anyone fighting AIDS that the FDA constitutes the single most incomprehensible bottleneck in American bureaucratic history — one that is actually prolonging this roll call of death.
To give a sense of the historical context I've appended notes to most of the pieces, detailing the occasion that led me to write or other relevant facts.
From 2001–2006, a generous gift from a donor allowed LGBTS to establish and oversee the Larry Kramer Initiative, which hosted a wide array of public programs on LGBT issues and strengthened LGBTS at Yale.
Media related toLarry Kramer at Wikimedia Commons
