Larry Kramer in Salon
Interviewer:
Coming out of the play [The Normal Heart] last night, my friend and I both felt a perverse nostalgia for those early AIDS years we never lived through. They were obviously utterly terrifying and filled with sadness, but there's also something appealing about having this galvanizing issue to unite gay men. We don't have that as much now.
Larry: There are these issues now. It's just that you don't think of them as galvanizing, mainly because they're not so life and death. I cite marriage, although I'm sort of fed up with how long it's taken and I think we've gone about it the wrong way. I'm 76, and my partner is 64. I'll obviously die before he does, and the way the laws are written it's very hard to leave him anything of substance compared to what I have to leave. It all goes to taxes because we're not legally federally married and that's not fair, that's just not fair. You don't care about it at your age, but I care about it at mine, and there are a lot of older gays who should care about it as well. That should be a galvanizing issue. Anything that keeps us from being unequal should be galvanizing. I want what they have. I do. And everybody should. But again, people don't think that way.
Comments
One reason the gay community is probably not as 'galvanized' is because we are not nearly as marginalized as we once were.
Larry's right about issues still there that can and should bring us together, but the gay community from the late 70s and early 80s could never dream of the freedoms, protections and advances that were made (in large part due to their political organizing and protests).
Its strange to say, but think about it. The majority of the US does not think that being gay is a psychological disorder, raids in gay bars are not a concern for most gay men going out, men are not being arrested for sodomy.
Even addressing those issues must sound strange to gay men in their 20s - inconceivable for them to think that a show like Ellen's in the 90s (not the talk show) would have been risque....
Oy... now I'm ranting so I'll stop.