I honestly don't think anybody who hates himself as much as Larry could possibly "love" an entire community. I think Larry's one of the most dangerous pathology combos of all, a narcissist who is self-loathing.
It's all in this paragraph from the Cooper Union speech and I will bold the part that is particularly egregious:
And by the way, when are you going to realize that for the rest of your lives, probably for the rest of life on earth, you are never going to be able to have sex with another person without a condom! Never! Every time you even so much as consider this I want you to hear my voice screaming like crazy in your ears. STOP! DON’T! NEVER! NO WAY, JOSE! Canadian scientists now warn that even partners who are both un-infected should practice safe sex. As I understand it, more and more new viruses and mutant viruses and partial viruses that are not understood are floating around. Are you ready for that one? Do you see this? Do you see what he does? He is so repulsed by sexuality that he imagines that somehow, by the very act of two monogamous uninfected partners making love they are going to spontaneously create another plague JUST BY HAVING SEX. You know, because they're two gay men. That is absolutely insane. Larry Kramer is a person with extreme post traumatic stress disorder whom people trot out every now and again and somehow think he's a goddam oracle. (Incidentally, it's all in the dreadful novel Faggots too, which with this show revival is being called "prescient." Sure, prescient in its utter disdain for its subject matter, the community Kramer "loves.")
No community in the history of mankind ever undertook such radical changes in their sexual behaviors as the gay male community after the advent of HIV. Never. Kramer has never acknowledged this because all he cares about is immediacy and absolutes. All gay men didn't stop having sex they day he said they should and so it's been one big long series of tut tut tuts from the man ever since.
But somehow, Kramer's a HERO because he screamed his head off and yelled that gay men had to stop having sex? And you know what, fine. For him. I mean, I am left wondering if he puts anywhere near as much energy into the risk assessments he needs to make to get out of bed every morning, get in the shower, get out of the shower ... to cross the GD street? How does the man make it through the DAY?
The heroes were the Michael Callens and the Joe Sonnabends who sat down and tried to figure out a way to help guys navigate through those awful waters of the early epidemic. THEY helped invent safer sex. Kramer was screaming NEVER HAVE SEX. And he's still screaming it.
And yes, it's important for people to learn their history, but The Normal Heart really ought not to be their only source. In fact, I think in many ways this revival is being set up by the people working on it to make it seem like after people see this, they'll really be up to speed. In much the same ways disinterested Broadway audiences went to see Falsettos and came away feeling they had done their bit for AIDS. They won't be. They'll see a romanticized fantasy of the work of one man, written by that man.
Of all the things I hate Larry Kramer for, however, it's the fact that he is one of the chief offenders who just keeps repeating all the same negative BS about the gay community that has become the received wisdom over the years. Gay men don't care about each other, gay men have attitude, all gay men care about is sex. He knows nothing. He really knows nothing about what happens on a community level and he never has. He knows his rarified world, he thinks using his dog as a way to get a dig at Koch is an important bit of political activism.
In my book it's not heroic to repeat these negative bromides over and over. In fact, I think it's rather villainous.
Twitter @NamoInExile
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