by itabix | Dec 3, 2018 | Coming to terms with the past, Larry Kramer
The Congress, at this moment, is delivering eulogies in the Capitol Rotunda. Somebody said, “A man of grace.” Vice-President Pence was moved to say, “He was a good man.” Well, no. George Herbert Walker Bush, in his campaign for president, accepted the help of the...
by itabix | Sep 5, 2016 | Courage, Courage, Fighting Back, Larry Kramer
At the Olympic Games in 1968 in Mexico City Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who had won the gold and bronze medals in the 100 meter track event, raised their clenched fists during the US national anthem. Everybody understood them to be giving the Black Power salute....
by itabix | Mar 14, 2016 | AIDS, Anger, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting Back, Larry Kramer, The effects of bigotry, Walking wounded
Each day the response from LGBTQ people and their allies gets more furious. First, on Friday, March 11, 2016, two days ago, Hillary Clinton complimented Nancy Reagan on her “low-key” AIDS advocacy in the early eighties, which, she says, started a national...
by itabix | May 27, 2014 | Larry Kramer
Before I arrived in Boston in 1984, I didn’t know anything about AIDS, or, as it was called, Gay Cancer, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), before AIDS was settled on in 1985. Nobody else did either. We knew that it was fatal. And we knew that they didn’t know...
by itabix | May 25, 2014 | Larry Kramer
Tomorrow night, at nine, HBO will carry The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer’s play about the first years of the AIDS epidemic, from 1981 to 1984. It was originally produced in New York by Joseph Papp. Kramer’s play is about one of those times in the lives of men when there...
by itabix | Oct 1, 2012 | Fighting Back, Larry Kramer
Before AIDS, people got sick, went to their doctors, were told what to do, and got better—or worse and died—and that didn’t change until HIV had been among us for five years or so. Since the drug companies weren’t coming out with effective medications, and since the...
