At OUTMemphis, we are celebrating STD Awareness Month with an acknowledgement of all the LGBTQ people who have transformed the ways we fight HIV and other STDs.
Every week we will be highlighting an LGBTQ person whose work in sexual health has impacted the lives of LGBTQ people nationwide.
Spotlight: Larry Kramer (1935)
Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. Kramer witnessed the spread of AIDS among his friends in 1980, which inspired him to co-found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). GMHC has become the world’s largest private organization assisting people living with AIDS. He leveraged his skills as a playwright to raise awareness about the experience of living with and close to HIV, writing a play that focused on the experience of a gay man having to watch his partner die from AIDS (The Normal Heart).
Kramer continued his political activism with the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987. ACT UP is an influential direct action protest organization with aim of gaining more public action to fight the AIDS crisis. ACT UP has been widely credited with changing public health policy and the perception of people living with AIDS and with raising awareness of HIV and AIDS-related diseases.
In 1997, Kramer approached Yale University to bequeath several million dollars to create a permanent, tenured professorship in gay studies and possibly build a gay and lesbian student center.
Learn more about Larry Kramer: Wikipedia, The New York Times, PBS (Frontline), NBC News
