{"id":8466,"date":"2020-06-01T02:18:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T09:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=8466"},"modified":"2020-06-01T02:18:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T09:18:21","slug":"rip-larry-kramer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2020\/06\/01\/rip-larry-kramer\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP Larry Kramer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since I came out \u2013 in 1986 \u2013 <strong>Larry Kramer <\/strong>has been saying he\u2019s dying.&nbsp; 34 year later, he did just that. &nbsp;At the age of 84 (a respectable age for anyone to die), a man who changed the world passed away.&nbsp; I suspect he didn\u2019t go peacefully \u2013 nothing Larry did was peaceful.&nbsp; He fought to start the <strong><em>Gay Men\u2019s Health Crisis <\/em><\/strong>in NYC, he fought to start <strong><em>ACT UP<\/em><\/strong>, he fought to get his play <strong><em>The Normal Heart<\/em><\/strong> produced, and he fought <strong>Barbra Streisand <\/strong>to regain the rights when she couldn\u2019t make a film of the play.&nbsp; By all accounts, Larry wasn\u2019t an easy person to be around.&nbsp; But you\u2019d sure want him in your corner when the chips were down.&nbsp; In a very few short months, we\u2019ve lost three pivotal voices for our community: <strong>Larry Kramer<\/strong>, <strong>Terrence McNally<\/strong>, and <strong>Mart Crowley<\/strong>.&nbsp; Throw in <strong>Jerry Herman <\/strong>and <strong>Roy Horn<\/strong>, and you\u2019ve got a mighty dramatic musical with an animal act!&nbsp; Rest in peace.<\/p>\n<p>One of the people who remembered Larry Kramer was <strong>Dr. Anthony Fauci<\/strong>.&nbsp; Here is an extended quote: \u201cThis is a very sad day, not only for me, but for many people who\u2019ve had the opportunity to deal with Larry Kramer.&nbsp; He was a most unusual figure in a very positive sense. &nbsp;He was a firebrand.&nbsp; He had extraordinary courage to speak out and challenge the system that was in place at the time of the early years of HIV\/AIDS.&nbsp; As a government official who was trying to do a job to address this, he saw me as the face of the federal government.&nbsp; And we became adversaries.&nbsp; I wasn\u2019t an adversary to him, but boy, he was an adversary to me.&nbsp; He attacked me, he called me a murderer, he called me an incompetent idiot \u2013 I mean publicly.&nbsp; But then, as I got to listen to what he had to say, I realized that he was making some important points that we in the establishment needed to listen to.&nbsp; We became, gradually, friends.&nbsp; And then we became very good friends.&nbsp; And then we became colleagues in the struggle.&nbsp; So it turned out that, you know, I loved the guy.&nbsp; And I think he loved me back.\u201d&nbsp; Once again, wise words from Dr. Fauci.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since I came out \u2013 in 1986 \u2013 Larry Kramer has been saying he\u2019s dying.&nbsp; 34 year later, he did just that. &nbsp;At the age of 84 (a respectable age for anyone to die), a man who changed the world passed away.&nbsp; I suspect he didn\u2019t go peacefully \u2013 nothing Larry did was peaceful.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8467,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions\/8467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}