This article first appeared in Michelangelo Signorile’s Substack newsletter. To see the article in its original location or to subscribe, click here.
On this day that marks the 85th birthday of the late Larry Kramer, the prophetic, loud and influential AIDS activist and playwright who died last month, his words about AIDS ring true about coronavirus.
Kramer often called AIDS a “genocide” against the gay community. In his 1989 book, “Reports from the holocaust,” Kramer was careful to use a small “h” for holocaust, so as not to equate AIDS entirely with the Nazi extermination of Jews, while using a metaphor.
But he was clear in his view that the response to AIDS during the Reagan-Bush years was willfully, criminally negligent, and that it was