Larry Kramer and the fight against AIDS

Many of you know little or nothing about Larry Kramer. I've read many articles about him and have followed him over the years. He has written several plays, essays and novels on the AIDS epidemic. He also founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis in 1981 and ACT UP, an AIDS advocacy and protest organization, in 1987.

I'm going to try not to be judgmental against Larry because I haven't been in his shoes and I don't have all of his experiences. I don't remember who said it, but in reference to Larry Kramer, some writer once said "...the problem with Larry is that he can't get out of the way of his own anger." For some reason that stuck with me.

From an article I just read on the internet:

Sitting in a chair on stage, relaxed in a pair of blue jeans, under a spotlight at the University of Michigan's Rackham Auditorium, Larry Kramer said he was getting chills recalling highlights from his career as an AIDS activist.

On Tuesday night, U-M medical historian Howard Markel interviewed Kramer in front of a packed house of 1,100 about his thoughts on AIDS in today's society and his ventures to raise awareness of the virus.

"To this day I don't understand why every gay man didn't fight to save his life," Kramer, 68, said of the AIDS epidemic during the early 1980s, specifically in New York.

It honestly surprised me that Larry Kramer would say this, given what he's been through with AIDS. Larry has HIV. His experience has been one of living with having HIV. I don't share that experience.

My experience with AIDS happened not too long after we moved to San Francisco. We lived in the Castro District and I was very active in different aspects of the gay community. I was coming of age as a young gay man and was feeling for the first time in my life that there was nothing wrong with being gay. I was feeling acceptance.

Then, AIDS came along. Here and there a friend would tell me that he had HIV. Not much was known about it then, except that it was a certain death sentence. In those days, you had 1-2 years to live. Now, there are medications that can greatly enhance the quality and length of life for those living with AIDS.

As time went on, more and more of my friends died of this disease. Many of them were like brothers to me. They were more than friends, they were family. Many of the organizations I was part of fell apart because people had died or were sick. Activist organizations, such as ACT UP, sprung up to get the word out to society that we needed help, as Larry said in the article I referenced. Help did not come.

It became very clear that no one wanted to hear what the queers had to say. Society was saying, "AIDS was their problem - not OUR problem". Do you know that for the entire eight years that Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, he never once publicly uttered the word "AIDS"? That's pathetic. This "great man" that everyone talks about let us die and DID NOTHING! There's a word for that. It's called genocide. He couldn't have cared less about us. How do you get someone like Ronald Reagan to give a damn? After Reagan left office, he said that he should have done more in the fight against AIDS. DUH!!! YA THINK? Anything at all would have been nice. This was the true nature of what we went through. It was a war zone.

What followed were marches and demonstrations one after the other. Nothing was accomplished. Instead of the Federal Government trying to help us, the effort was more on how to contain the disease to this group of people, and let them die off.

After awhile, I, along with many other people in our community, became disillusioned with life in general. That is when I lost my innocence about being an American. I realized that people in general really did not like us and really didn't care if we all died. It became very hard at times to find meaning in life and after awhile, I remember thinking that life was not such a big deal. You are born, you go through living hell, then you die.

That was my attitude when I left San Francisco. All my friends were dead, except for one. He died two weeks after my arrival in Connecticut. There was nothing left for me there. I remember leaving the city, parking alongside the freeway just outside of Berkeley and looking back one last time on the city that I had called home. Where others viewed a beautiful city, I only saw ugliness and felt bitter and empty inside. I didn't know what faced me in Connecticut, but even if I were attacked and murdered, it wouldn't be any worse than what I had been through. I no longer valued my life.

Over the next 15 years, I began a journey to find purpose in life. I believe that I became disillusioned with life because I was looking outside of myself for that purpose. I looked to others, to society, to... care. The fact is, and there's no way around this, 90% of society wishes gay people would just go away. We are a pain in the ass to society. How dare we ask to be treated equally? Who the hell do we think we are? It's not like we are part of society. We are, after all, a "fringe group". You see, everything in life can be devalued with labels. And if society is good at only one thing, it is applying labels to people - especially undesirables.

So when Larry Kramer says, "To this day I don't understand why every gay man didn't fight to save his life," I want to tell Larry Kramer, "Do you have no sense of reality? Have you lost your mind? Society didn't care about those men what so ever, and they still don't."

My friends who died are today only statistics on a report telling how many queers have died of AIDS. They are remembered by a few of their friends who are still left standing. They received no recognition, no black granite wall with their names carved in it, no mention from their President, nothing. I honestly don't understand why he's puzzled. He of all people should understand that at some point, you just give up. I did. If I would have had AIDS then in that environment, I would have just gone with it and waited to die because life sucked.

Now life is different for me. What made me want to value life again? I actually found the purpose of life from a very unsuspecting source. One day after I had finished my meditation (treatment for depression), I opened my eyes and noticed that my cat who was young at the time, was looking at an insect that had landed on the screen. The insect was moving slowly up the screen. On the cats face - WONDERMENT. It was as if the cat were thinking, "How could this be?" I realized that I was looking at life in the wrong way. Instead of looking outward for what life should be, I looked into myself for that answer.

If you look to others to give you meaning, you will have no meaning. If you look to others for love, you will not be able to receive love because you do not love yourself. It all begins with you. When gay men started dieing of AIDS, who loved them? Who cared?

Today, nothing has really changed that much. The syntax of how issues are expressed has changed. Acceptance is still not there. Life-changing medications now exist, largely because AIDS didn't confine itself to the queer community. Now, the children of the very people who despised us so much are becoming HIV positive. Now, it is also their problem. The days of hearing people on the radio say, "...I don't want my tax dollars going to help THOSE people with AIDS...", are now gone.

Today, AIDS is no longer our community's problem. We have become so accustomed to it that it is as common to us as coffee. Young gay people believe in themselves so little that some of them now view having HIV as a "badge of honor" because they at least feel that if they have HIV, they belong to something. They actively try to get HIV. This is what our society has come to.

Today, we live in a country that won't grant us the most basic human rights that others outside the queer community have - the right to dignify our relationship with our mate in a ceremony of marriage. And then, they turn around and say that we are incapable of sustaining long term relationships.

Homophobia is still a huge problem with many of the gay bashings going largely unreported. In some cases there's no point. The police in some areas think that we deserve it.

But the worst gay bashings of all happen in our nation's capitol. Our President and our Congress have demonized us to the point that the hatred that many of us experience is now in our everyday lives. The sad part of it is, it's all by design. We talk and we beg for these rights when we know that they will only give them to us when they have no other alternative. I use to tell myself, "thank God for the Constitution", because I thought that it was one powerful document that protected us somewhat. But now, I'm finding out that where gay people are concerned, an exception can be made. An effort to amend the Constitution is underway just for the purpose of keeping gays from getting married. Other states are actively following suit to outlaw gay marriages at the state level.

In the year 2003 most of the main-line churches are against gay marriage, will not even recognize that there might be a gay couple in their midst, and if they do, will tell them that they will enjoy everlasting life in Hell for the way they love.

Today, gay men are still barred from donating blood by the American Red Cross, for life.

Many talk that they are "tolerant" of homosexuals, yet are happy to be a scout leader with their sons in the Boy Scouts of America, an organization that will not allow gay scouts or gay scout masters. What does this teach their sons about tolerance and acceptance? And they wonder why teenage boys go out and bash gay men for sport.

So, if you are gay and look at external sources to give you validation, I'm afraid it's just not going to be there. You have to find it in yourself. I have concentrated on my family. My family consists of Kent, my two cats, and a couple of close friends. That's all. I haven't been too successful in gaining acceptance from my family or Kent's family. It's the same way with most gay people I believe. You have to really work at making an island of acceptance. Why is it then that we are surprised when we find that so many young gay men find their life valueless? The answer is right before our eyes. Because we, as a society have told them time and time again, in so many ways, that they have no value.

Nothing has changed.