"The Tragedy of Today's Gays" - Larry Kramer (11/7/04 NYC)

I've been ruminating over this speech for a few days and thought it deserved a mention here at DU. Apparently, Kramer has pissed off a lot of people with this speech but keep in mind that it was delivered just 5 days after the general election.

The public airing of 'dirty laundry' was a bit hard for me to take and I winced a few times on the first reading. He's a bit harsh with a few of his generalizations - but I think most gay men will recognize the themes Kramer is discussing. (Many people have taken a very defensive posture regarding this speech so maybe it will inspire a few substantive comments from the LGBT DUers.) Hope you'll find it as thought provoking as I did.

Here's the link:

http://www.hivforumnyc.org/lk.php
<snip>
They have not exactly been making a secret of their hate. This last campaign has seen examples of daily hate on tv and in the media that I do not believe the world has witnessed since Nazi Germany. I have been reading Ambassador Dodd’s Diary; he was Roosevelt’s ambassador to Germany in the 30’s, and people are always popping in and out of his office proclaiming the most awful things out loud about Jews. It has been like that.

All Mary Cheney is is a lesbian! Even her mother is hateful! That Cheney must be one fucked-up kid to stick around that family. I hope she doesn’t want to teach school. One of the reelected Congress persons vows to make it illegal for lesbians to teach school.


I know many people look to me for answers. Perhaps that is why many of you are here. You want answers? We’re living in pigshit and its up to each one of us to figure out how to get out of it. You must know that by now. Crystal meth is not an answer. You must know that by now. And quite frankly statistically it is only happening to so few of us that it is hard to get anyone worked up about that problem. Just as it hard to get worked up about a middle-aged man with brains who sero-converts. You want to kill yourself. Go kill yourself. I’m sorry. It takes hard work to behave like an adult. It takes discipline. You want it to be simple. It isn’t simple. Yes it is. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. These are the answers. It takes courage to live. Are you living? Not so I can see it. Gay people are all but invisible to me now. I wish you weren’t. But you are. And I look real hard.

No one likes to be told to grow up. It’s insulting. But these are always the answers. They will always be the answers. The only answers. There will never be any other answers. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. Be proud of yourself. Be proud you are gay. I don’t know why so many find all this so complicated. But then I am 69 years old and have less patience for the many problems I had myself when young. It is one of the privileges of getting old.
<snip>

... I'd say gay acceptance is at an all time high. But then I live in the (just barely) blue state of Illinois.

Didn't the Supreme Court just this year vacate all anti-consentual-sodomy laws, and that based on a case in Texas?

No, not all things are going our way, but it sure as Hell isn't wrist-slitting time.

Compare to ten years ago, not the ideal future. We still have an independent judiciary.

It will always be an uphill climb, but the real struggle isn't legal or legislative, it's general acceptance.

In "liberal" New York in the 1970s, I was gang-beat for being a foggot with no recourse. And yes New York was "liberal" back then, by the standards of the time.

How far we have come. We have everything we need nationwide, except marriage. And that will come eventually.

I do not fear the "theocracy". Bush was put over the edge by people who voted for Gore last time, not the religious crazies. And it was because of the war and their view of it, not gay marriage.

I'd say gay acceptance is at an all time high.

Really? Where? Do not even consider looking at any blue states. Begin looking at the red states. After all, it is these jerks that are getting heard, not us. Remember "moral values."

Didn't the Supreme Court just this year vacate all anti-consentual-sodomy laws, and that based on a case in Texas?

With Bush* in charge you think Lawrence V Texas ruling is safe?

Compare to ten years ago, not the ideal future. We still have an independent judiciary.

Yes, do think back to ten years ago, because when Bush* is finished appointing his henchmen to the SCOTUS, we will be living those times again.

How far we have come. We have everything we need nationwide, except marriage. And that will come eventually.

You really don't know much about your own rights, do you?

YOU might have everything you want, but ask my partner if she has everything she wants. Ask the countless other binational couples if they have everything they want.

I suggest you begin doing some research ASAP. You really need to take a closer look at what rights you do have, and what rights you don't have.

Losing an election does not mean we are plunged into the dark ages.

Why didn't you answer my questions? Why did you jump all over one line and forget the rest.

I say again, you really don't know much about your rights, do you?

And I stand by every word I said! You are a fool if you truly believe things are going to go along just all lovely under the second term of the fourth reich.

We can all be chirpy little bluebirds singing songs of hope, but the bottom line is, we are entering the new dark age. It's only gonna get worse before it gets better, and it's only gonna get better if we fight like hell.

How far we have come. We have everything we need nationwide, except marriage. And that will come eventually.

How rapidly we're moving backwards. Some states that are outlawing gay marriage are also outlawing domestic partner benefits - benefits that took years to obtain and a lot of hard work...gone.

The largest employer in the country - the United States military - still forces us to remain in the closet, and even then thousands of us are hounded out of the service every year. It's a form of legalized discrimination that, until eradicated, will forever brand us as sex-crazed deviants who can't be trusted aboard a naval vessel or in a barracks. The message it sends is disgusting, yet no progress has been made in this area for more than a decade. How far have we *really* come?

I agree with Kramer that our organizations do nothing except hold fund-raisers with 'gay-friendly' celebrities and politicians. They are beyond worthless.

Thanks for posting this SF! I haven't read it fully yet, but have saved it so I can go back to it a little later.

and just read the entire speech. It is stunning! I am linking it to another board that includes both Democrats and Regressives.

I don't have a strong opinion about some of what Kramer says. It's none of my business how gay people respond to HIV. I will say that I went back to graduate school in order to work in public health mainly as a result of the new epidemic in the mid-1980s.

Kramer's message is bleak. He makes a convincing argument for believing that all of us - GLBT and straight - have lost democracy in the United States.

The middle section of this speech, where he quotes Bill Moyers and then discusses the Powell plan, is the best description of what is happening in this country that I have ever read. There truly is a "vast right wing conspiracy" and it happened right under our noses.

Our challenge is to see if we can take back democracy.

Please consider posting this in the Editorials forum. This is a message that everybody needs to read.

This powerful speech needs a wider audience.

absolutely brilliant! . . .

while Kramer is addressing the gay community, specifically gay men, if you read about half way into his text you'll see that he is also addressing every one of us . . . in his speech, he quoted another speech given by Bill Moyers on October 20 . . . Moyers knows exactly what's happening, and what the REAL issues are:

“For years now, the corporate, political, and religious right—this is documented from 1971 on—the religious and political right has been joined in an axis of influence whose purpose is to take back the gains of the democratic renewal in the 20th century and restore America to a rule of the elites that maintain their privilege and their power at the expense of everyone else. For years now, a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life.”

“Take note,” Moyers continues. “The corporate, political, and religious conservatives are achieving a vast transformation of America that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest inequality in America since 1929, they have saddled our nation, our States, and our cities and counties with structural defects that will last until our children’s children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions, except rewarding the rich and waging war.”

“That drive,” Moyers continues, “is succeeding with drastic consequences for an equitable access to public resources, the lifeblood of any democracy. From land, water, and natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and even to politics itself, a broad range of American democracy is undergoing a powerful shift in the direction of private control.

“We are experiencing a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power.”

later in the speech, Kramer says this . . .

"Anyway, it is done. What Moyers is talking about. It’s already happened. On a scale of such magnitude that it is difficult to see how we can ever take it back. It’s all in place now, this cabal of power. It almost doesn’t make any difference who is president.

and . . . (addressing gays, but again applicable to all) . . .

"And while all this happened, even if we had enough suspicions to act, what did we do? We completely shrank from our duty of opposition. Those are Christopher Isherwood’s words: “the duty of opposition.” But he was flagellating himself with these words. He fears that should he have to live face to face with a war in his backyard that he “would shrink from the duty of opposition.”

and . . .

"These are the problems we must confront as we go forward. If you are going to fight in a united way, which I am convinced is now the only way that can save us, we must find a platform that all of us can support without divisiveness and shame and guilt and all the other hateful weapons they will club us with.

"And if we do want to go out and fight again in a united way we must ask ourselves: are we able to replicate the kind of devotion and commitment and backbreaking thankless work and tactics that continues to bring them year after year into such positions of unlimited power. Thirty-five years of that? For thirty-five years the cabal I have spoken of has worked every single day and night to bring them their success. Quite frankly they deserve their victory and we deserve our loss."

While this speech was intended and presented for a gay audience, there are truths here that resound for 95% of Americans. As OneBlueSky (BTW love your name and your posts) pointed out, the Bill Moyers quotes are very telling. Our upper class masters want to take away all our civil rights and tilt the playing field back against all of us, just as we've been beguiled to thinking that it was getting relatively more level.

My first blush take away is that our polarized society of classes, races, religions and sexual preferences has much more in common than our individual prejudice. To paraphrase my headline summary, we are shitting on ourselves.

Thank you 94114 for posting this. Like you, I intend to read it again because to me it is blinding in its truth.

It took them 33 years and now look - with 31% of eligible voters, our republic has been hijacked by fascists!! United States of America is now dead, replaced by YOOESSAY! We need to kill the YOOESSAY and resurrect the United States of America. Time to get organised and mobilise the 40% that did not vote. That's what it will take to get our country back. And that will not happen unless that 40% plus the 29% that voted for Kerry not only know us, but wish to protect us.

And we need to stop partying and playing willy-nilly. There's no time for that anymore. And no barebacking or "crystal."

This is what I believe to be the Repugnicans' vision (I just visited a Dominionist website - it's under the latest Falwell thread):

All us queers - exterminated.
All straight non-"Christians" - converted or exterminated (the so-called "Christians" will choose who will live and who will die)
All dissident Christians - exterminated as heretics.
All non-whites - enslaved.
All poor and middle class people - bankrupted and temporarily or permanently enslaved.
All women - disenfranchised and cooped up at home.
All non-Americans - who cares? Nuke 'em if they gets all uppity.
The Christian Church - the antithesis of Christianity, and the Dominionists know it not! lol
The environment - trashed.

UGH! This will have the potential to destroy the WHOLE EARTH! x(

Our vision - or at least mine.

All us queers - full and equal rights including marriage rights under any suitable common title (sorry, Marriage is not it), and not "separate but equal".
All straight non-Christians - free exercise of Religion.
All manner of Christians - ditto, except Dominionism is fully discredited as the antithesis of Christianity.
All non-whites - full and equal rights and on a level economic playing field.
All poor and middle class people - ditto.
All women - ditto, plus those who choose to stay at home are respected and supported.
All non-Americans - living in full harmony with us and with each other to the degree that defense departments will have to hold bake sales to exist as small militias, or go out of business.
The Christian Church - practicing true religion and displaying compassion to such a degree that every member will appear as saintly as Mother Theresa.
The environment - kept healthy and diverse.

Ya know, it looks more like socialism than like capitalism. And I like it! :)

WHAT WOULD JESUS CHOOSE?????????

May God/dess bless and help America and bring her back.

Kramer is often a difficult man to understand. He is angry and bitter. But he gained anger and bitterness honestly. He is also intelligent and insightful. But I wonder how many people will ever realize that? I didn't until I watched my friends, my lovers die from AIDS.

But thanks for quoting the speech. It's necessary sometimes to be reminded, to be pushed and cajoled and forced to confront what has happened and is happening.

Khash.

kramer is always thought provoking --

Unfortunately some get too caught up in his tone to listen to what he says. The most important thing to take away is the fact that the the country is run by people who see death, or servitude followed quickly by death, as the preferred state for most of the world. These people truly hate gays and want us dead and the very least we can do is not help them.

There was a book about climate change a few years ago called Listening to Cassandra. The theme applies here as well. In Greek mythology, Cassandra is cursed with always knowing what is going to happen and never being able to have anyone listen. There are Cassandra on all sorts of situations who are never truly heard until it is too late.