In an interview with online magazine Salon.com published on April 23, Larry Kramer, a prominent 76-year-old American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist asked "why so many (younger) gay men don't want to know their history" and why they seemed to have "turned their back on the older generation as if they don't want to have anything to do with them."
Larry Kramer, a prominent 76-year-old American playwright,
author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist.
The article noted that Kramer, who co-founded the New York City-based Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1982, that led the United States in the fight against AIDS, and resigned a year later to form the more militant ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) as a more political alternative, first incensed gay men in 1978 with Faggots, an "eerily prescient novel that critiqued the gay community's culture of promiscuity."
In 2005, he published The Tragedy of Today's Gays, a transcript of a speech in which he attacked the younger generation of gay men for their apathy over gay causes and accused them of condemning their "predecessors to nonexistence." Thomas Rogers, Salon's Deputy Arts Editor wrote: "The largely autobiographical story centers on a group of gay men in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and stars Joe Mantello as Ned Weeks, a Kramer-esque activist desperately trying to draw attention to the plague, alongside a cast that includes Ellen Barkin, Lee Pace and The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons. The play remains a highly effective, moving work that brutally conveys the desperation and terror that accompanied the emergence of AIDS. But nowadays, it also doubles as a history lesson for people who grew up long after the first wave -- a role that Kramer sees as vital."
Kramer, in an interview with Thomas Rogers, Salon's Deputy Arts Editor, said:
On whether there's been a cultural shift away from meaningless sexual culture
"I think there's still an awful lot of meaningless sex going on and the infection figures are still much too high and going up, so obviously there's still too much careless sex going on. I don't want to come out of this sounding like this prude. I never said don't have sex, but what's so hard about using rubbers? It doesn't seem to require much intelligence to figure that one out. I don't have much sympathy for people who seroconvert now, who know about AIDS. I don't care if you were on drugs or whether you were out of it in the heat of passion or whatever. Your cock is a lethal instrument. It can murder people."
On being a "gay person before anything else"
"I am a gay person before I’m anything else. I’m a gay person before I’m a white person, before I’m a Jew, before I’m a writer, before I’m American, anything. That is my most identifying characteristic and I don’t find many people who would say that. The polls say the same thing: People do not identify themselves as gay. And that’s too bad. In fact, it’s tragic. It will prevent us from ever having what we deserve, I believe."
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Reader's Comments
Accept that everyone is different and want different things from their own life.
All power to those that push the gay cause.
More power to those that accept that not everyone is the same.
Please, give me a break. Your GAY. Homo. 'Mo. A Nancy boy. Fag. Stop trying to freaking HIDE. Thats all your doing with this label avoidance. You all can be as different and want different things and be such an oh so complex and astounding person with so many sides that no one knows if your coming or going (who sex is only a "tiny" part of who they are) and still be a *HO*MO*SEXUAL*. Grow a pair.
Yet I must say, he is really a brilliant person. Of all his spoken words, are to ignite those comments. And I can see how he wants gays to speak up. Bravo!!!!
1. A woman can say she is "just human", if she wants to know how culture has made her an object, property, gave her husband the "right" for domestic violence, she must read FEMINISM, also goes for all minorities, racial...
2. to work on self takes techniques: meditations, therapy, psychoactive plants... to be "just human" is to be a sucker of "corporate publicity" that defines who you are...
WHO AM I is the koan, or hua tou we must study to be full, complete, compassionate and thus FULLY HUMAN, but after the homework.
so lets work
Joxxx
The Kinsey scale has a range from 1 to 6.
The concept of sexual identity may be politically useful, but is not necessarily relevant to human reality. Sexuality is fluctuant.
Oh and THANK YOU Larry. You and all like you are the very reason we (GAYS) have the rights that we have, instead of hiding in our label free closets
Our struggle has been about much more than acceptance, but being able to be our own distinct identity in a tripartite soceity.
This is no sepratist notion.
We see ourselves entirely as part of the global commubnity but within that sphere we are, it could be said, the rainbow ribbon that ties the whole thing together.
Are you talking about D&G, Diesel, Dior and such? Those are the only labels I know people are in pursuit of... As for LGBTQ and such, I've observed in my interactions that those who tend to (aggressively) deny labels [such as butch (for lesbians) and bottom/sissies/gay (for gay men)] tend to have negative feelings towards certain attributes that are akin to reverse homophobia. It seems to be a terrible thing to lesbians if some of "us" are too "butch" and for gay men if some of "us" are too "femme"...
He can define his life as he wishes and he should allow others to define their life as they wish. It is not heresy to place differing priorities on traits that are part of our identity.
I have always felt pity for this man, as he always seems to be angry. I could never imagine living a life like his. It must be a very dark place he comes from.
I think Larry Kramer has a very good point; a lot of people posting say that being gay is a small part of their identity, like eye color or 'race'. That sounds pretty, but it's also not quite true. Anytime someone asks you if you're married, or if you've got a girlfriend, you're being asked about your sexuality. Even if you say you're single and you're not looking, groups are going to define you and pressure you. However, in nations where gays have come out more and more, that pressure has dissolved. And then being gay does become less important, like race...
... Only race does matter, as anyone who's lived anywhere knows.
All that said, I do think I can see where some irritation comes from. It's hyperbolic to assert that not identifying as gay is "tragic"; does anyone think Gore Vidal is tragic? (You do if you're Republican, but that's another story.) The political creation of 'gay space' in democratic cultures is one thing; the almost Nietzschean position that there are no homosexuals, only homosexual acts (and let's have a lot of those) is Vidal's position, and he feels safe in a European "what goes on behind closed doors" culture. Well, good for all these old angry queens.
I think in the end, to take a position strongly like either Kramer or Vidal is to basically admit that you're retired. If you travel for work, as a lot of us do on Fridae, then you are changing your identity more often than most to recognize that play of shadow puppets that is our 'identity'. I'm "out" in the US, but "not" in China; however, I have a gay boyfriend in China, and not in the US. So, am I gay in America where I don't fuck, Mr.Vidal, and am I gay in China where I am not "out" but tragically fuck, Mr. Kramer?
"I never said don't have sex, but what's so hard about using rubbers? It doesn't seem to require much intelligence to figure that one out. I don't have much sympathy for people who seroconvert now, who know about AIDS."
I believe Mr Kramer isn't as proud of him being gay, as compared to him believe that by thinking that way, he is being a principled person.
Many at times in a conservative communities, identify homosexual is embarassing, rahter keep silent unless there is a need to declare your own orientation.
Self-Recognition is important, avoid to get one loses.
His feeling of it being "tragic" to be gay but not self-identify, self-declare is possibly as much a condition of his era and experience as it is his reaction to society's speech and action towards his personal "investment" in AIDS and other causes. I see nothing wrong with his feeling because it is HIS feeling; he owns it but I do not have to do so. I merely read and assimilate that which fits, discarding that which does not.
Regarding him not having sympathy for those who seroconvert nowadays, please remember he's a playwright; I imagine he used that word with careful thought. Not having sympathy implies he has equanimity; afterall, most of us are aware of the paths to infection and can take precautions. If we don't, it's out of choice rather than simple ignorance. He doesn't say he has no sympathy for suffering, just the acts that lead to sero-conversion. And I choose to believe he does have compassion for the suffering of others, just not what he perceives as self-destructive choices.
I went on to marry. My coming out was a long hard process. When, after my marriage ended, I again told mom that I was gay, she responded by partially disowning me and then soon passing away.
Point is, we may all be in different stages of our development regarding our "out" identity and our acceptance of it. In addition, I'm not one of these gays who feels it requisite to relocate to WEHO and to form my life around "being gay". My life is quite full of many facets, thank you! So I think Kramer's approach lacks both understanding and balance...
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