Why I Admire Larry Kramer
Those who read this blog and know my politics may well be surprised to learn that for the last ten years, I have long been a fan of a man who is perhaps the angriest of gay activists and whom many consider to be among the most left-wing–Larry Kramer. I admire him not because I agree with his politics, indeed, I find his rants against Republicans to be unfair and over the top. But, when he talks about gay culture, his diagnosis of our woes is spot on, even if the solutions he offers may not be entirely to be my liking.
That is why I was delighted when I learned that he would be speaking at Breaking Stories, Breaking Waves, the LGBT Media Summit and National Convention. I just returned from his talk and took many pages of notes. I doubt I’ll get to everything he said in the post, indeed, even in subsequent posts should I blog on this again, but I’d like at least to address some of the salient points he made.
I believe this angry gay activist to be a great American largely because he is constantly reminding us that being gay is about more than just sex. He did so today, just as he did yesterday.
Ten years ago in The Advocate, he trashed Edmund White’s then-latest novel, The Farewell Symphony because it celebrated (in his graphic detail) White’s (endless and meaningless) sexual exploits. Like me, Kramer wanted to see more gay fiction which told stories of real relationships and love. In that spirit, he noted today that too often we find having sex with another man as the be-all and end-all definition of being gay. Instead, he said, “Love is what it’s all about it.”
Exactly. Sex talk permeates our culture. And we’re only beginning to talk about love between men as being more than a furtive sexual encounter having a meaning deeper than the cute and clever expression of a Hallmark card.
Like this blog, he was quite critical both of the Advocate and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), in large part, for some of the reasons we’ve been so critical of that publication and that group. He feels they have been too kind to the Democrats. He claimed to be “constantly taking swipes at HRC.”
Hillary “should kiss our ass to be there” (in the Advocate) and its reporters should “ask questions which amount to something.” He said the word “beggar” defines HRC “when it come to talking to the candidates.” While they fawn all over the candidates, Kramer said, “Hillary says ‘I love you’ and I don’t believe her.”
Unlike me, however, Larry Kramer is not an optimist, despite the cultural progress of the past few years. Much of what he has “learned about gay people is not comforting.” A pessimist, he remarked that there are “not enough curmudgeons.” Commenting on the Advocate‘s fortieth anniversary, he said he didn’t think things would be much different forty years hence (than they are today).
He did say a lot with which I did not agree. He is angry that the president got 20% of the gay vote (using the statistic the moderator gave him) in 2004. That said, even though I identified myself as a Republican who voted for Bush, he was very cordial to me when I asked him to sign my copy of his book The Tragedy of Today’s Gays after the talk.* His boyfriend David was also most gracious.
I’m sure I will find he offers many thoughts similar to my own in those pages — as well as ideas and notions at odds with those I have articulated on this blog. (The book is the published version of a speech he delivered at Cooper Union on November 7, 2004. I had read parts of it on Towleroad.)
While I agree with much of what Larry Kramer has to say, I often find his anger off-putting. He defended it, saying today, “Anger is one of the greatest emotions there is. Anger is as useful as love. Learn to use it.” I will agree that there is often much wisdom in anger. After all, the Greeks had a deity, Nemesis, who represented the quality of righteous indignation. And there is much that is righteous in Larry Kramer’s indignation.
Even where I disagree with Larry Kramer, I find some common ground. For like us, he relishes in taking on the gay establishment. He may not always be right, but he does always speak from the heart.
And we gay men would be wise to listen. Even if we don’t always take his advice.
- B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)
*He was even cordial when I responded in the negative when he asked if I regretted the vote.
16 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
[...] Original post by GayPatriotWest [...]
Pingback by Politics: 2008 HQ » Blog Archive » Why I Admire Larry Kramer — September 1, 2007 @ 9:47 pm - September 1, 2007
The thing I think most tragic about Larry Kramer is that he facilitates action which is completely contradictory to his ideals.
For instance, he rages about the gay community’s sexual practices destroying us, but then blames the Reagan administration for the rapid spread of HIV. He essentially gives gays a choice; when faced with a problem that your behavior caused, either admit what you’re doing is wrong and change your behavior, or blame it on other people instead.
Which is it likely that most people will choose?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 1, 2007 @ 11:39 pm - September 1, 2007
‘…then blames the Reagan administration for the rapid spread of HIV….either admit what you’re doing is wrong and change your behavior, or blame it on other people instead.’
Well, you see, as a gay advocate, Kramer doesn’t believe that sex with men is ‘wrong’ the way that the Reagan administration (if not Reagan himself) and its supporters (Falwell and Robertson come quickly to mind) did.
As a question, what do you consider ‘wrong’? Not using a condom while having anal sex? Having numerous partners? Then we we could possibly have a reasonable discussion about public health issues, which far too many gay men simply didn’t in the early 1980s, before the virus was even discovered, as the moral issues surrounding God’s putative revenge against sinners was all that was noted by homosexual men, who were far too familar with that attitude already.
And of course, when a Surgeon General actually suggested that information concerning condom use should be started early in school to educate children, that public health issue rapidly showed how much concern for public health American society was willing to tolerate in terms of sexual practices – effectively, none. Or have you noticed that ‘abstention’ has gone beyond the official policy supported by the federal government in terms of homosexual sex for eternally unmarried partners to now include abstaining from heterosexual sex for unmarried partners?
I’m pretty sure Kramer didn’t. Of course, maybe you meant ‘wrong’ in another context than either a committed relationship or effective use of condoms? If so, you have pretty effectively shown that the paradox you see in Kramer is a result your own blindspot. There is pretty of blame to spread around concerning what happened with AIDS in the early 1980s, including the failure of the American health system to deal effectively with the non-fatal spread of herpes. You do remember that several ‘epidemics’ were occurring at that time, right? One of them discussed in numerous mainstream outlets, and of major concern to many Americans who just happened to innocently encounter a virus, while the other viral epidemic led to grim jokes about trying to convince your mother you were Haitian, since that was better than admitting you were gay.
Comment by uh_uh — September 2, 2007 @ 9:47 am - September 2, 2007
GPW, again you take a stand I agree with completely. Kramer is interesting, in some ways unjust and destructive, in other ways positive.
For those interested in the history of the AIDS epidemic: Don’t miss Faggots, Kramer’s novel from 1978. It came eerily close to predicting the epidemic. It’s written as the sexual adventures / memoirs of one gay man moving through one gay New York weekend in the late 70s. It has lots of sex, and but-thinly disguises real personalities from the gay community of the time. The protagonist (a hotter version of Kramer) ultimately realizes the lovelessness and sheer craziness of it all. I don’t have my copy with me, but a key line toward the end suggests that gay men must come to their senses, “before we f*ck ourselves to death”.
Kramer had no idea of the real death that would follow a few years later, of course, but I find the line eerie just the same. On the eve of AIDS, it was possible even for a strongly pro-gay observer to look at the gay scene of the day and see that when certain extremes were reached (that Kramer documents), it had to be in a bad way.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 2, 2007 @ 12:48 pm - September 2, 2007
Well gee, uh_uh, I recall telling the college doctor that I was using condoms for birth control and she had a cow. An, Oh My Freaking Gawd Here’s a Tract on Condom Failure cow.
Which led to my conclusion that condom use promoted for disease control was mostly a lie. Because of that I found it sort of funny, in a sad way, when the language changed from “safe” sex to “safer” sex.
What else was going on, from a straight person’s viewpoint, when AIDS first became an epidemic was a very strange self-contradictory rhetoric. On the one hand we were told that everyone was at risk and we should all be very afraid of catching AIDS and should therefore do everything possible to stop it. On the other hand we were told that it was ignorant and hateful to fear catching AIDS because it was next to impossible to catch from another person.
The only thing more ignorant and hateful was suggesting that people ought to keep their pants on.
And no, the idea that our children must be assumed promiscuous and therefore be taught about sex and condoms at young ages, did not go over well. Particularly not in the general public school educational establishment rhetoric of messing up your own child’s appropriate innocent ignorance of sex for the benefit of some other child with bad parents.
Comment by Synova — September 2, 2007 @ 2:34 pm - September 2, 2007
Synova, if you track the sweep of 25 years of discourse about HIV disease: the position of most gay male activists is that gay men deserve unique sympathy and help for it, yet, must never be assigned the slightest blame for it – nor asked to change habits that spread it, except for a certain amount of condom use and even that is declasse, or rejected in some quarters.
That’s why the 25 years of discourse has been so tortured.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 2, 2007 @ 3:23 pm - September 2, 2007
Well, you see, as a gay advocate, Kramer doesn’t believe that sex with men is ‘wrong’ the way that the Reagan administration (if not Reagan himself) and its supporters (Falwell and Robertson come quickly to mind) did.
Please note what I actually SAID, uh uh:
For instance, he rages about the gay community’s sexual practices destroying us, but then blames the Reagan administration for the rapid spread of HIV.
My point is this; he has right what is destroying us — the promiscuous unprotected sex and drug use against which he rages — but instead of blaming gay men for their choosing to engage in such behavior, he tries to blame Ronald Reagan.
That doesn’t work on gays like myself who have figured out that our sexual orientation doesn’t require us to have promiscuous unprotected sex or use drugs. We know that we have a choice, and by making good choices, we can avoid HIV and personal destruction.
But when given the opportunity to have promiscuous unprotected sex and use drugs, then claim it’s all someone else’s fault, most gays chose and are still choosing that instead.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 2, 2007 @ 8:10 pm - September 2, 2007
Damn well said. To hear the other side of an issue is one thing. To listen to it, is quite another. Near the end of my opening scrred of a developing blog I suggest;
“So, as we view sources, we should vet them. However, in doing so, we should recognize what is fairly said, and not marginalize one or another because of some idiosyncratic interpretation that riles the pangs of PC (or loosens the binds of philosophical constipation).
Using, as you have, Nemesis is a great example of not only citing righteous indignation but conveying the emotion of it.
Comment by Shawmut — September 2, 2007 @ 9:03 pm - September 2, 2007
In “A Radical Holocaust,” an article faulting liberal-radical gay identity policies for the spread of the AIDS epidemic, David Horowitz cites A Normal Heart. (It appears in his collection, The Politics of Bad Faith.) I believe in the same piece Horowitz cites E. White to make a point about the harm of the revolutionary conceit which defined the early gay “movement.”
Fiction that treats gay issues well will issue from the same source which all good fiction issues from: “the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good art because that alone is worth writing about.” That and nothing else.
Comment by Jeremayakovka — September 3, 2007 @ 4:24 am - September 3, 2007
Synova-
‘…my conclusion that condom use promoted for disease control was mostly a lie. Because of that I found it sort of funny, in a sad way, when the language changed from “safe” sex to “safer” sex.’
The American military (like most of the world’s militaries) would disagree with your conclusion. As a matter of fact, the militarye still actively promotes condom use to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases – condoms being cheaper than antibiotics.
‘What else was going on, from a straight person’s viewpoint, when AIDS first became an epidemic was a very strange self-contradictory rhetoric. On the one hand we were told that everyone was at risk and we should all be very afraid of catching AIDS and should therefore do everything possible to stop it. On the other hand we were told that it was ignorant and hateful to fear catching AIDS because it was next to impossible to catch from another person.’
A fairly decent description of later Reagan era public health messages – I always found it tragically ironic that the largest group of tested individuals in that era were people who identified themselves as monogamous and married.
‘The only thing more ignorant and hateful was suggesting that people ought to keep their pants on.’
Oh no, what people like Falwell and Robertson was saying had little to do with keeping your pants on, but it did have a lot to do with Hell and damnation if two people of the same sex ever had sex. Keeping your pants on and using condoms would have sounded like German public health messages – you still see such ads promoting condom use all over the place, generally humorous and brightly colored – and very direct. (A current campaign plays on a pun between ‘food’ and ‘survival’ device – you have posters with condoms over different sausages, for example.)
‘And no, the idea that our children must be assumed promiscuous and therefore be taught about sex and condoms at young ages, did not go over well. Particularly not in the general public school educational establishment rhetoric of messing up your own child’s appropriate innocent ignorance of sex for the benefit of some other child with bad parents.’
Assuming you’re American, I have to agree that bad parenting has led to the highest teenage birth rate in the industrial world, but I’m quite sure that we completely disagree about what ‘bad parenting’ means. German mores are very different, and like their low rate of HIV, the low rate of teen births seems related to educating children in basic sexual knowledge. The U.S. providing a perfect demonstration of what costs are associated with ignorance.
North Dallas Thirty-
Clarification noted, but it does not really detract from the point that the Reagan administration did a fairly poor job handling a major public health crisis, in part because it was a ‘gay’ disease – and many supporters of that administration felt that dying in such a plague was the work of an angry Lord, finally pushed beyond mercy or compassion. An attitude still displayed by Falwell and Robertson in reaction to what happened in NYC, when another group of religious fanatics followed their beliefs into the World Trade Center towers. However, as noted, there was more than enough blame to go around, and their is no question, that just like with herpes then, multiple sex partners certainly led to the spreading of a virus. We can discuss this in terms of public health, or even in terms of stupid or self-destructive behavior, but to ignore the message of such groups as the Moral Majority when discussing the Reagan era is to ignore major areas of what those people were reacting to.
Comment by uh_uh — September 3, 2007 @ 10:55 am - September 3, 2007
Clarification noted, but it does not really detract from the point that the Reagan administration did a fairly poor job handling a major public health crisis, in part because it was a ‘gay’ disease
The irony, of course, is that the only way to “handle” this major public health crisis is to make people stop having unprotected promiscuous sex and using drugs.
Both of which the gay community staunchly opposed the government doing. Indeed, when Dianne Feinstein had the temerity to close San Francisco’s bathhouses, it nearly got her thrown out of office by irate gay leftists — even though the decision was based on sound epidemiological and medical data.
So really, I’m not blaming the Reagan administration for anything. Indeed, I will go even farther and say that the desperate attempts by the gay leftists to blame the Moral Majority and everyone but themselves is why HIV is still endemic in the gay population today. It has nothing to do with them and everything to do with an inability of gay leftists to take responsibility for themselves sexually.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 4, 2007 @ 12:49 am - September 4, 2007
I’m confused… how exactly was it in any way Raegan’s fault that there was so much AIDS going around in the 80′s? Sure, a lot of Raegan supporters were unsympathetic and thought it was just desserts, but that doesn’t make them at fault for it happening. A lot of leftists think America got what was coming on 9-11, but that doesn’t implicate those leftists in 9-11.
I have to go with NDT on this one. How do you prevent the spread of AIDS? By avoiding drug use and promiscuous, unprotected sex. And how exactly was the Raegan administration meant to stop either of those things in the gay community without looking like a moralist Puritan dictator? Tell the community to use condoms? Am I to believe that this was some deep mystery – that AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease – that the community was completely in the dark about and needed the President to brief them on?
The idea that the government is somehow at fault for some group’s unhealthy sexual behavior is very strange to me.
Comment by DoDoGuRu — September 4, 2007 @ 7:36 am - September 4, 2007
Ugh. I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one, GPW. Larry Kramer has called Reagan a Nazi. That man is so full of piss & vinegar I feel like barfing whenever I see him on TV. “All straights hate gays” – excuse me? Since when? He needs to direct his anger towards more productive endeavors. Let’s not forget that Mr. Kramer started ACT-UP (more like throw-up to me). You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar Larry darling.
Comment by Jimbo — September 4, 2007 @ 10:47 am - September 4, 2007
‘The irony, of course, is that the only way to “handle” this major public health crisis is to make people stop having unprotected promiscuous sex and using drugs.’
But you see, at the time, most Americans did not have such enlightened views as we are sharing. The prevailing attitude then had little to do with ‘unprotected promiscuous sex,’ but instead, the fact that men were having sex with other men. And a large number of Reagan supporters then, and Bush supporters today, care little about ‘protected’ sex – they instead believe that punishment from an angry Lord is what men having sex with other men deserve.
And yes, this was a tragedy – many people died because they couldn’t distinguish between the hateful rhetoric they had grown up with, and factual perspectives based on well-tested public health principles. And the Reagan adminstration certainly did little to improve the situation, knowing that any measures it took in regards to treating gay sex as being part of normal public health concerns would only lead to political problems among voters that had supported them (certainly, the blue collar Reagan Democrats were not supporters of gay rights). Or notice the comment of a woman above saying that children being taught about condoms is merely a reaction to bad parenting.
Even more ironically, their deaths are what allow people to discuss same sex marriage in a somewhat rational manner in the U.S. (of course, in many European countries, like Germany, civil unions are boringly routine, including leading politicians) . However, as many American religious fundamentalists do not accept the idea of natural selection being the mechanism of evolution, the irony of watching social mores evolve under brutal circumstances is certainly lost on them.
Comment by uh_uh — September 4, 2007 @ 1:32 pm - September 4, 2007
Exactly. The Reagan Administration’s one and only path that could have made a difference in stopping AIDS or preventing gay deaths, is the one path that gay male activists would have fought the most (or did fight).
Gay blame of the Reagan Administration comes down to 2 issues:
(1) Reagan didn’t make gays FEEL better. He didn’t solve our self-esteem and family problems. And, (2) as described above, Reagan didn’t save gays from themselves.
Both of which reflect badly on the ones doing the blaming. Therefore, the activists can’t admit them. Therefore, the activists give the world all this other tortured discourse.
Click here for a discussion of Reagan’s record on AIDS that is as fair as any I’ve seen. In reality, the Reagan Administration spent over $5 billion of 1980s dollars (would be more today) on AIDS research, assistance, etc.
By the way – the one American President who has done the most about AIDS by far, in terms of spending, is George W. Bush, whose Administration has multiplied certain helpful AIDS-related budgets over what Clinton spent. Will gays ever give him the credit?
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 4, 2007 @ 4:42 pm - September 4, 2007
“Why Straights Hate Gays”
This is in response to Larry’s question about why straight people hate gays. It’s really simple and easy to understand. They are carefully taught, brainwashed and expected to do so from the time they are in the womb until they are six feet under. This is of course, sanctioned, condoned and sanctified by the church, synagogue or mosque. The reason to hate others may vary, such as skin color, ethnic background, sex or sexual preference, but the outcome is always the same.
People who don’t like themselves, or are not sure of who or what they are need easy outlets, or vents to exorcise their own demons and what better way than to point the finger at someone else who looks, talks, thinks, feels, or believes, differently? People need a skate goat; you know, someone to fear, despise, loathe, envy, slander, pass judgment and legislation against and ultimately eliminate.
Let’s face the truth here. People just need someone else to hate, period. That’s the way it has always been and shall forever be. If you’re different in any way, shape, form or fashion from the “accepted normal majority religious way”, such as gay, look out!! It were not us, it would be and is or are someone else. It’s a sad sate of affairs, but it is part of and ingrained into human nature. The LGBT community is hated not because we have to be, but because some insecure individuals in high and low places need someone to rank on. We are the “unacceptable” “abnormal” ones who dare to differ, or “stand out”, therefore, we are “evil”, “wrong”, “outcast” and “damned”! The Bible, they are convinced, says so and they are using it as a weapon of choice against us. Taking scriptures out of context and ripping LGBT apart is the name of the game. Where is the love of Christ in all this? Where is the brotherhood? Where is the humanity, the forgiveness and compassion of Jesus?
Without us, who would they take their own self-loathing out on? They need us to whip in order to justify their own self-righteous, negative miserable existences, period. It we were all just alike, there would be murders out of boredom. The Gay-hating Straight must justify his or her own position for being “normal”, straight”, “blessed” and “right” making us the preferred target. Thank about it. Hatred starts within. If the Bible condemns us, it does them even more so. There is no sin-free person on the planet. Period. As I always say, it’s “too true to be good”.
Comment by Mike — September 12, 2007 @ 7:30 pm - September 12, 2007