Larry Kramer: People Who Use PrEP are Cowardly- Page 2

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 5/25/14 at 10:44pm

Let's b e hnest. I'd do Larry.

[vpd1981]

Posted: 5/25/14 at 11:15pm

When you read or see a play (or the film versions) of work, such as Kramer's "The Normal Heart," or the new McNally play "Mothers and Sons," or the films "Philadelphia," "It's My Party," "Angels in America," "How to Survive a Plague," "We Were There," or "Longtime Companion," (to name but only a few) it is stunning to see how far the medical field has come in terms of treatment.

That anyone, Kramer especially, would try to belittle any progress, or anyones choice to take advantage of such progress is baffling.

HIV/AIDS is still a terrifying thing; I have so many young friends who are ignorant and careless with their health. I constantly hear people compare HIV/AIDS with diabetes. "Oh, it can be treated now, it's just like diabetes." First of all, diabetes can still kill someone. It's still a disease that needs to be treated medically. It wasn't always such a small disease.

I applaud the progress. I wish there was more. I applaud anyone who wants to live their life the way they want to; shaming the people who choose to take this drug as a preventative (either in conjunction with or in place of condoms) is no different than saying a woman who takes birth control is a slut.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/25/14 at 11:25pm

Shaming people about sex or drug use has never stopped a single infection.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 12:43pm

Annnnnnnnnd we're back. I'm not going to dump on Zach Quinto for his poorly worded discussions of PrEP this week (or rail against the fact that nobody is dumping on Elton John for being scold about gay men LAST week), but I have to say, if there's one thing I could change about gay men who are older than other gay men is I would remove the part of our brain that makes us say things like, "The younger generation doesn't care!" or "The younger generation is LAZY!" or "The younger generation is complacent or didn't live through the horrors of the worst of the epidemic so what they say doesn't have the same moral weight as our every utterance!". But I can't.

Instead, I would like to link to this great piece that has a video interview with a serodiscordant couple (one is HIV positive, the other is negative) who are all of 19 years old. They should be role models for young gay men in America.

It is time to encourage young gay men (whatever that means to you!) to seriously consider PrEP to protect themselves, each other, and maybe end the epidemic.

(If you want to avoid Quinto discussions, just watch the embedded video, it's from before Zach started in).
I give you Chanse and Josh

[haterobics]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 12:47pm

Quinto did respond to this issue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zachary-quinto/on-my-cover-interview-for_b_6158498.html

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 12:57pm

And I personally don't think he made it any better.

I have heard too many stories of young people taking PrEP as an insurance policy against their tendency toward unprotected non-monogamous sex.

As the 19 year olds said in the article I linked, aren't those EXACTLY the people you want taking PrEP and aren't they being responsible and the opposite of complacent to get themselves access to it?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 1:14pm

Peter Staley says:


Stop Picking On Zachary Quinto

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 9:22pm

Among the many things Kramer fails to consider are that diligent condom use is not a 100% safeguard against hiv and that many committed couples have sex without condoms while trusting without 100% certainty that each partner would never be at risk of contracting hiv and bringing it home. He is also failing to consider that there are same sex couples who engage in sex without condoms (if here weren't no children would ever be traditionally conceived) who may also be in relationships where PrEP use might well be recommended. He also fails to consider that men run the risk of getting raped, some men (including men in certain at risk populations and men in abusive relationships with other men) more than others.

There's a great many things he has not considered (not to imply that he is even arguably right in calling the typical gay man who chooses to be on Prep a coward - far from it).

In addition, while diligent condom use is no doubt important, advisable and commendable I fail to see how it qualifies as heroic or brave such as to render PreP cowardly.

Cowardly may be the most consistently misused adjective in American political discourse.



Updated On: 11/18/14 at 09:22 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 9:30pm

Right after "hero".

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 10:00pm

I'm very tired of "robust."

Updated On: 11/15/14 at 10:00 PM

[TheatreFan4]

Posted: 11/15/14 at 10:14pm

Peter Staley says:
Stop Picking On Zachary Quinto


He loses his cred when he says he's a "dedicated Trekker"

[Plum]

Posted: 11/16/14 at 12:28am

No, Trekker's been in use in the fandom for decades, actually.

(I address the important issues!)

[haterobics]

Posted: 11/16/14 at 12:50am

"not to imply that he is even arguably right in calling the typical gay man who chooses to be on Prep a coward - far from it"

Err, but he didn't use that word in either his original interview or his rebuttal, so it is not only consistently misused, but also incorrectly attributed, it seems.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/16/14 at 1:58am

I am assuming Henrik is referring to "hero" Larry Kramer's calling people on PrEP cowards, which was the impetus of this thread and remains its title. I put my most recent post in this thread rather than start a new one so as to avoid making it all about Quinto when I would prefer it to be for getting the word out about PrEP.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/16/14 at 7:38am

As far as I'm concerned, it's more important that Zachary Quinto started a discussion than it is that he misused the word "recreational" and expressed some common misassumptions about gay men younger than he is.

I just hated the pile-on that hit him on the Internet--especially when his statement mirrored what so many gay men initially thought about PrEP or still do. That kind of scolding is worse than the scolding Zach was accused of, because it only serves to shut down discussion.

What Zach did that very few have done--or even CAN do--was bring the debate about PrEP to his several million movie fans, his million+ Twitter followers, his 600,000+ FB fans and his 400,000+ Instagram followers--many of whom undoubtedly will think about PrEP for the first time.

Maybe instead of calling him names, we should say "Thanks for bringing this up, Zach. Here are some things you might not know."

Peter Staley said: "You can count on one hand the number of times a young, openly gay Hollywood actor has talked about HIV/AIDS in the last decade. In fact, you'd probably only need a couple of fingers. Zachary Quinto just boldly went where few gay thirty-somethings have gone before, talking passionately about how HIV is affecting his community, and he's getting dumped on for straying from the HIV/AIDS party line. I want to thank him for being one of the few that gives a ****, and for speaking out about gay men and HIV."


And Michelangelo Signorile agreed with Peter Staley on the difference between scolding Zach and schooling him:

"Let's encourage more public figures to speak about HIV prevention, period. And yeah, when they don't get it right, let's have a dialogue about it.... I just want to encourage more discussion among public figures, and yes, let's correct them when they're wrong. i think Peter's initial point about so few public speaking on this was right and we don't want their publicists saying don't talk about this at all because it just gets you in trouble."

Updated On: 11/16/14 at 07:38 AM

[haterobics]

Posted: 11/16/14 at 8:49am

"I am assuming Henrik is referring to "hero" Larry Kramer's calling people on PrEP cowards"

OIC. I just read "he" as Quinto, since that was the new part of the discussion. Didn't realize he was back to commenting on the Larry bit.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/17/14 at 9:14pm

A great op-ed in The Advocate that was given a terrible headline.

It engages the issues Quinto brings up without exactly "picking on" him the way uber fan Peter Staley urged people not to. I like when he writes, "I think PrEP certainly opens up a floodgate of questions regarding HIV stigma, the medical-industrial complex, access, and more. I commiserate that sometimes something new can be very scary." I think these are things that a lot of us feel as PrEP evolves. And someday it will be more than Truvada as PrEP, but right now we're fighting this war with the weapons we've got.

I also like that the writer acknowledges the trauma so many of us experienced and still live with.
Check your headline writer

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/17/14 at 10:49pm

He still engages in name-calling, though, when he calls Quinto a troglodyte.

But you have to kind of admire him for his startling use of gratuitous self-pornographizing non-sequitur:

My mentors knew Spencer Cox while he was in college. My friends are on New York State's task force on AIDS. I **** activists.

Spencer would've loved that line.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/17/14 at 10:52pm

It is the best line in the piece!

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 11/18/14 at 10:21am

Why must he make us imagine him having sex with anyone?

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 11/18/14 at 2:56pm

Indeed, FindingNamo, I was referring to Kramer's statement, not Quinto's.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/18/14 at 5:04pm

Why must he make us imagine him having sex with anyone?

I think he thinks it gives him "cred."

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/1/14 at 2:09pm

It's World AIDS Day, 2014. I've lost track of my non-Larry Kramer PrEP thread so I'm boosting this one with a link to an interesting discussion between Peter Staley and Sean Strub about PrEP as prevention for HIV transmission.

A caveat: Listening to a couple of middle-aged financially comfortable HIV-positive white gay guys talk about PrEP can bring up some echoes of powerful white men debating abortion. Generally more informed than the guys who debate (and defund) abortion, but there's something one level removed hearing this discussion between long-time HIV-positive guys.

Still, it's a worthwhile read.


The most celebrated, mistrusted little pill in the world