ACT UP Lives Again!

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Larry Kramer employed his inimitable charm at last night’s celebration of ACT UP. Speaking to a packed crowed, Kramer insisted that the fight for gay rights is far from over.

I wish I could make all gay people everywhere accept this one fact I know to be an undisputed truth. We are hated. Havenâ€™t enough of us died for all of us to believe this?
…
No one is looking out for us anymore the way ACT UP looked out for us once upon a time.

ACT UP is not saving us now. This is not meant as finger-pointing or blame. It just is. No one goes to meetings and our chapters all over the globe have almost disappeared. And we must recognize this, I beg of you.

I donâ€™t want to start another organization. And yet I know we must start another organization. Or at the very least administer major shock therapy to this one.

As part of this revival, Kramer has asked concerned homos to gather in Times Square tomorrow at noon to protest Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. While there’s no telling how many sissies with show their beautiful, outraged faces, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey’s pledged his support. That’s what he tells New York, at least.

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By: Andrew Belonksy
On: Mar 14, 2007
Tagged: Act-Up, Activism, Jim McGreevey, Larry Kramer

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12 Comments

No. 1 · nystudman

Larry’s great, a real hero, but when he says that “virtually every” gay man who had sex with another man contractged HIV by teh time REagan said the word AIDS, he indulges in the kind of hyperbole that turns peole off to his message. I had sex with many, many men at that time, and so did my friends. I buried a lot of them but a lot didn’t contract HIV. I realize that rhetoric entails literary devices like hyperbole, but he has a bad tendency to exagerrate things (remember how tina had killed off the whole gay movement at Cooper Union?)

Posted: Mar 14, 2007 at 11:40 am · @Reply Reply to this comment

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No. 2 · jack e jett

great news. wish i could be there.

does any know what ever happened to queer nation?
jack jett

Posted: Mar 14, 2007 at 12:11 pm · @Reply Reply to this comment

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No. 3 · Neilio PC

to be fair, nystudman, in both The Tragedy of Today’s Gays and his most recent speech, which I was at on Tuesday, Larry did not say that virtually every gay man had contracted HIV by the time Reagan said the word in public–he said that virtually every gay man had potentially been ital*exposed*ital to it…which is a different thing entirely, and i think obviously true. I’m only 23 so my opinion is completely uninformed by having been there, but by ’87 huge numbers of gay men had clearly been exposed to infection due to the numbers of infected gay men there were. Many like you were lucky but many were also not. That’s all he was saying, though youre right he uses hyperbole like 10 million times too much (thats a joke).

Also, as a young gay guy, I have to say how heartbroken–plain and simple heartbroken–i was to see the latest stats on HIV infection in Gay City News. The three highest groups being infected in 2000-2004 in NYC where i live were between like 35 and 49 in age. I think my generation is doing moderately well in protecting ourselves–I wish the older gays, whom my friends and I absolutely need to give us some sort of perspective on how to survive as a gay person as we grow older, could do the same. I just don’t understand, is it survivor’s guilt? it sucks, whatever it is, i wish i could help somehow but i really just don’t understand…sigh…

Posted: Mar 15, 2007 at 8:56 pm · @Reply Reply to this comment

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