"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the
president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt
THE TRAGEDY
OF TODAY'S
GAYS
An address to the gay community
By Larry
Kramer
(A speech made at Cooper Union, New York on Sunday, November 7, 2004, presented
by
HIV Forum in conjunction with NYU's Office of LGBT Student Services, Broadway
Cares/Equity Fights Aids, Callen-Lorde, and the Gill Foundation.)
I think this has
been
the most difficult speech I have ever had to write and to deliver. It is a long
speech. I pray you will bear with me until its end.
It is an attempt to give you some idea of who and what we are up against. It is
also an attempt to discuss our ability to deal with these.
I recently learned about
two dear friends, both exceptionally smart and talented and each in his own way
a leader of our community. One, in his middle age, has sero-converted. The
other, in his middle-age, has become hooked on crystal meth. Both of them are
here with us tonight.
I love
being
gay. I love gay people. I think we're
better than
other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and more
aware and I do, I do, I totally do. And I think we're more tuned in to what's
happening, tuned into the moment, tuned into our emotions, and other people's
emotions, and we're
better
friends. I really do think all these things.
To us it defies rational analysis that this incompetent dishonest man and his
party should
be
re-elected. Or does it?
I hope we all realize that, as of November
2nd, gay rights are officially dead. And that from here on we are going to be
led even closer to the guillotine. This past week almost 60 million of our
so-called "fellow" Americans voted against us. Indeed 23% of self-identified gay
people voted against us, too. That one I can't figure.
The absoluteness
of what has happened is terrifying. On the gay marriage initiatives alone 2.6
million against us in
Michigan.
3.2 million in Ohio. 1.1 million in Oklahoma, 2.2 million in Georgia. 1.2
million in Kentucky. George Bush won his Presidency of our country
by
selling our futures. Almost 60 million people whom we live and work with every
day think we are immoral. "Moral values" was top of many lists of why people
supported George Bush. Not
Iraq.
Not the economy. Not terrorism. "Moral values." In case you need a translation
that means us. It is hard to stand up to so much hate. Which of course is just
the way they want it. Please know that a huge portion of the population of the
United States hates us. I don't mean dislike. I mean hate. You may not choose to
call it hate, but I do. Not only because they refuse us certain marital rights
but
because they have also elected a congress that is overflowing with men and women
who refuse us just about every other right to exist as well. "Moral values" is
really a misnomer; it means just the reverse. It means they think we are
immoral. And that we're dangerous and contaminated. How do you like
being
called immoral by some 60 million people? This is not just anti-gay. This is
what Doug Ireland calls "homo hate" on the grandest scale. How do we stand up to
60 million people who have found a voice and a President who declares he has a
mandate?
The new Supreme Court, due any moment now, will erase us from the slate of
everything possible
in no time at all. Gay marriage? Forget it. Gay anything, forget it. Civil
rights for gays? Equal protection for gays. Adoption rights? The only thing we
are going to get from now on is years of increasing and escalating hate. Surely
you must know this. Laws and regulations that now protect us will be repealed
and rewritten. Please know all this. With the arrival of this second term of
these hateful people we come even closer to our extinction. We should have seen
it coming. We are all smart people. How could we not have been prepared?
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.
It is 25 years since 100,000 of us marched on Washington.
The Aids service organizations are all about to collapse. No money. And the problem
is too
big to
handle anymore. We have not slowed this thing down at all. $100 billion we're
spending on
Iraq.
This is a conscious choice
by
our "leaders" and
by a large
portion of the population of this country. They have in their infinite and
never-ending cruelty decided this was the most effective thing to do with
100 billion
dollars that might also end Aids, and a few other things like worldwide hunger.
But the cabal
doesn't care about these. People say well we can't take care of the rest of the
world. That is so stupid. The rest of the world is us. We are so intertwined
geopolitically that we cannot separate ourselves off into parts, into sections.
Those days are over. If they ever were here. We have everything required to save
the world except the will to do it. In a recent New Yorker piece Michael Specter
writes that
because
of Aids Russia is on its way to disappearing.
Disappearing.
Imagine that.
The immense knowledge we have learned about Aids has provided us with precious
little more than that knowledge. HIV/AIDS is now the worst disaster in recorded
human history. In parts of Africa 7,000 people are infecting each other each and
every day. We who are here are idiots if we think this fact is not going to
alter our lives mightily. If your company loses enough world markets, which it
most certainly will, you are going to lose your job. You will not have health
insurance, for a start. And for a finish. Economies are simply going to
collapse. This is already happening.
In 1990, that is some nine years into what was happening, 46% of gay men in
San
Francisco
were still fucking without condoms.
60% of the syphilis in America today is in gay men. Excuse me, men who have sex
with men.
Palm
Springs
has the highest number of syphilis cases in
California.
Palm
Springs?
I do not want to hear each week how many more of you are
becoming
hooked on meth.
HIV infections are up as much as 40%.
You cannot continue to allow yourselves and each other to act and live like
this!
One of these days the miraculous drugs we have to keep us alive are going to
stop working. Our systems cannot process these extreme chemotherapies
indefinitely. That is what we are on. We are on daily chemotherapy. No one wants
to call it that. We call it the cocktail. We are on chemotherapy! Chemotherapy
either kills the disease or kills us! What are we going to do when they don't
work any longer?
Some 70 million people so far are expected to die. "July
3, 1981,
Rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals." When I first started yelling about
whatever it was there were 41 cases. THERE ARE NOW OVER 70 MILLION WHO HAVE BEEN
INFECTED WITH HIV. Somebody up there is really listening, don't you think? There
is no way that all infected people can be saved. No one ever says that out loud.
Have you noticed? Somehow in some dream world we are going to get treatment into
70 million people. It is never going to happen. IT IS TOO LATE. We told them.
But they didn't do anything.
Did
you notice? Nobody every does anything. I hope it's finally dawning on you that
maybe they didn't and don't want to. So, in case you haven't noticed, we have
lost the war against Aids. I thought I'd tell you that, too. I hope you might
have noticed. I can't tell.
The President refuses to
buy
generic drugs for dying people. He is still saying he is waiting to hear if they
are safe. These drugs have
been
approved. In some cases for several years.
Does
this sound like a President who wants to save anyone?
I do not understand why some of you
believe that
because we have drugs that deal with the virus more or less effectively that it
is worth the gamble to have unprotected sex. These drugs are not easy to take.
There are many side effects. Not life- but certainly comfort-threatening. I must
allow at least one day out of every week or two to feel really shitty, to have
no sleep, to
be
constipated, to have diarrhea, to require
blood
tests and monitoring at hospitals or in doctors' offices, and to have the
shakes. The shakes, which come often, are not useful with a mouse or reading a
newspaper or with a lover in your arms. And I don't enjoy eating anymore.
Keeping on weight is a constant problem. I have dry mouth. I get up six or seven
times a night to pee. Many of the meds we are now taking are new meds and were
approved quickly and side effects have a sneaky way of showing up after FDA
approval, not before. I recently discovered that I was taking an FDA
approved dose of Viread that has turned out to
be
five times the amount I actually need. We are all probably taking too much or
too little of every single one of our drugs. Doctors don't want to test for
this; tests are not readily available. You have to do a lot of homework
yourselves on these drugs. Is a fuck without a condom worth not
being
able
to taste food? Obviously for too many of you it is.
My lover often sits on top of me to make me eat. The first time this happened I
was in the hospital just after my liver transplant and I wouldn't eat and Dr.
Fung said I had to eat, or else I would die, and I just couldn't eat (do you
know how strange this is to someone who was always on a diet?). It was New
Year's Eve. We were in beautiful downtown Pittsburgh. David had brought a hamper
filled
with my favorite dishes. And I could not eat anything. Furiously he crawled into
bed
with me,
boots and
all, and started to cry. "We haven't come this far for you to die because you
won't eat," he screamed, tears streaming down his face. I will never forget
that. I will never forget this man I love so much in bed with me with his snowy
boots
on starting slowly to spoon into me whatever he'd made and I trying so
desperately hard to swallow it, looking at him, this man I love so much, doing
this for me,
both of us
now bawling our eyes out and hugging each other in this strange
bed
in this strange town, wondering how we got here.
It's so wonderful
being
a gay person. I said that
before.
I'm going to say it again. I love
being
gay. And I love gay people. I think we're
better
than other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and more
aware and I do, I do, I totally do. And I think we're more tuned in to what's
happening, tuned into the moment, tuned into our emotions, and other people's
emotions, and we're
better
friends. I really do think all of these things. And I try not to forget
them.
Since the very first day of this plague we have been given, almost as if
by
some cosmic intentionality, American leaders who most assuredly wish us dead.
There can no longer
be
any way to deny this fact. Each day
brings
more and more acts of hatred. Tell me it is not so. Tell me that the amount of
good that is
being
attempted is not totally and intentionally overwhelmed by the evil. Point out to
me how this is not so. I cannot see it. I have been unable to see it since
July
3, 1981.
I thought it was
because
it was a tricky virus. That is what we have
been
told. It's a very tricky virus. I hoped for a while. But we are being played for
chumps and it has
been
so since
July 3, 1981.
And we never saw it.
We of course continue to
be
in our usual state of total denial and disarray. Whatever structure the gay
world had, if we ever had one, is gone. Our organizations stink. Almost every
single one of them. I cannot think of one single gay organization that despite
the best will in the world is now anything
but
worthless to us. Oh maybe
one or two. We have no power. Nobody
listens to us. We have no access to power. The cabal
disdains us totally. We are completely disposable. It is a horror show. There is
not one single person in Washington who will get us or give us anything
but
shit and more shit. I'm sorry. This is where we are now. Nowhere. And you expect
me to cry for you if you get hooked on meth or can't stop the circuit parties or
the orgies. OK, I feel sorry for you.
Does
that change anything? I would say I feel sorry for myself,
but
I don't. I know I am fighting as hard as I can. I may not
be
getting anywhere
but I am
trying. It's exhausting and I have to do it every day, every single day, like
taking my meds which if I stop I know my
body
will cease doing something or other. I have accidentally missed a few days of
meds and
boy do I
know fast that was a mistake.
I fear for us as a people. Is that crazy? I am always being called crazy by somebody.
I love
being called
crazy. That's a sign to me that I'm on the right track. Maybe it takes a crazy
person to see into the future and see what's coming. Straight people say "my how
much progress gay people are making. Isn't that Will and Grace wonderful." If
it's so wonderful why am I scared to death? More and more I am filled with
dread. That is my truth that I
bring
to you today. Larry is scared.
Do
you see what I see? I don't think so. Most gay people I see appear to me to act
as if they're
bored
to death. Too much time on your hands, my mother would say. Hell, if you have
time to get hooked on crystal and do your endless rounds of sex-seeking, you
have too much time on your hands. Ah, you say, aren't we to have a little fun?
Can't I get stoned and try
barebacking
one last time. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND!
At this moment in our history, no, you cannot. Anyway, we had your fun and look
what it got us into. And it is still getting us into. You kids want to die?
Because that's what I sometimes think. Well, then, die.
You cannot continue to allow yourselves and each other to act and live like
this!
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?
Does
it ever occur to you how much you have
been robbed
by both your country and your
behavior?
America let the men who should have carved out a space for you in the social
discourse, the development of your history and
being,
America let these men who should have
been
your role models die. So there is this
big empty
space in which you live. And you don't know where to go or how to fill it in.
This is not my original thought
but
Michael Brown's of the NYU gay student organizations that helped to bring me
here, who gave me this to think about.
It is sad for a young gay person to feel this way.
I had people to follow and many of you have not. No baton was passed to you.
In a way you must start everything over. You must invent a world from which you
can move forward from. This is
both
an extraordinarily exciting challenge and a terrifying one, one that can just as
easily leave you by the wayside as make a new man of you. I say man
because
it is gay men who appear to have the greatest difficulty, it seems to me, in
moving forward, getting off their particular dime.
Many of you deny the horrors of what happened to your predecessors. That is
something I do not understand. Every moral code I know of requires respect for
the dead. I often hear that many of you don't want to know about them or admit
to them. You disdain anyone older who was there.
This is denial of a most destructive nature. You cannot move forward without
accepting your past. I am going to say that again. We cannot move forward
without accepting and understanding our past. We were as varied as you are. We
were no different, really. We were very different from those who preceded us. We
were the first free gay generation and we were murdered because of our freedom.
And yes you
were robbed
of this freedom that for obvious
reasons could not
be passed on
to you as your heritage. So instead of being understanding of all this, you
condemn your predecessors to non- existence and flounder into a future that you
seem unable
to fashion into anything you can hold on to that gives you emotional sustenance.
You refuse to be part of any community. But if you don't have any community you
have no political strength. You are too busy denying and disassociating to know
that. You do not seem able, it seems to me, to fashion your future. To discover
what you want.
You don't
even ask what you want. You don't even ask what you need. Your needs are as
mighty as needs always have
been, but
you don't ask what they are, which amazes me. How can you not have curiosity
about your future as a gay person?
Don't
you want to go anywhere?
Do you want
to stay where you are? That is too
bad
if you do because we are about to enter a place more monstrously worse. You can
deny that, as you deny those of us who went before you, but just know that down
this path of your numerous denials lies your own continued destruction, the
continuing destruction of gay people as gay people, which this cabal of haters I
shall shortly describe,
and its supporters, which are legion, are intent on accomplishing with
increasingly ruthless vengeance. If you do not fight
back
you will
be murdered
in ways just as hideous as the ways in which we got murdered.
Every single president since 1981 has denied our existence and denied the
existence of AIDS.
And we let them get away with it. Oh a few thousand of us fought for the drugs
that we got
but many
millions of us did nothing and of course an enormous number of them died. They
died
because
they lost their health along their journey of non-involvement and their lack of
responsibility
to their brothers and sisters. Instead of learning from this lesson, you are
repeating it. And you are acting like this with your health intact, many of you,
which strikes me as even more perverse than what your dead predecessors did to
destroy themselves.
Does
it occur to you that we
brought this
plague of aids upon ourselves? I know I am getting into dangerous waters here
but it is time. With the cabal
breathing even more murderously down our
backs
it is time. And you are still doing it. You are still murdering each other.
Please stop with all the generalizations and avoidance excuses gays have used
since the beginning to ditch this responsibility
for this fact. From the very first moment we were told in 1981 that the
suspected cause was a virus, gay men have refused to accept our responsibility
for choosing not to listen, and, starting in 1984, when we were told it
definitely was a virus, this
behavior
turned murderous. Make whatever excuses you can to carry on living in your state
of denial
but this is
the fact of the matter. I wish we could understand and take some responsibility
for the fact that for some 30 years we have
been
murdering each other with great facility and that down deep inside of us, we
knew what we were doing.
Don't
tell me you have never had sex without thinking down deep that there was more
involved in what you were doing than just maintaining a hard-on.
I have recently gone through my diaries of the worst of the plague years. I saw
day after day a notation of another friend's death. I listed all the ones I'd
slept with. There were a couple hundred. Was it my sperm that killed them, that
did the trick? It is no longer possible
for me to avoid this question of myself. Have you ever wondered how many men you
killed? I know I murdered some of them. I just know. You know how you sometimes
know things? I know. Several hundred over a
bunch
of years, I have to have murdered some of them, planting in him the original
seed.
I have put
this to several doctors. Mostly they refuse to discuss it, even if they are gay.
Most doctors do not like to discuss sex or what we do or did. (I still have not
heard a consensus on the true dangers of oral sex, for instance.) They play
blind.
God knows what they must
be
thinking when they examine us. Particularly if they aren't gay. One doctor
answered me, it takes two to tango so you cannot take the responsibility
alone. But in some cases it isn't so easy to answer so flippantly. The sweet
young
boy who
didn't know anything and was in awe of me. I was the first man who fucked him. I
think I murdered him. The old
boyfriend
who did not want to go to
bed with me
and I made him. The man I let fuck me
because
I was trying to make my then
boyfriend,
now lover, jealous. I know,
by the way,
that that other one is the one who infected me. You know how you sometime know
things? I know he infected me. I tried to murder myself on that one.
Has it never, ever occurred to you that not using a condom is tantamount to
murder? I cannot
believe
you have never considered this. It is such a simple and intelligent thought to
have. And we all should have had it from day one. Why didn't we? That has been
haunting me for a while, that question. Why didn't we? It is incredibly selfish
not to have at least thought that question at that moment, all those moments
when we were playing Russian roulette.
From here on I am going to get even more complicated. I want you to pay
attention. This is the most important part of this speech.
Bill Moyers recently said this in a speech on October 20, 2004 at the Palace
Hotel
"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."
In other words, our country has
been
taken away from us
by
a cabal
that includes all the people who hate us.
These people make the rules. They are rarely elected officials. They may or may
not know each other. They have several things in common. They are very rich or
have strong connections to money or power. They are in agreement on what they do
not want. They
believe
fervently in their God. And that they are doing all this for Him. And they stay
in constant touch.
I hope you realize that all these people Bill Moyers is talking about hate us.
Thriller writers write
better
histories of our times than actual historians.
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.
You want to know why AIDS
was allowed to happen. This is your answer. You want to know why gay people have
no power and are unlikely to get any. This is your answer.
The top 1% of wealth holders control 39% of total household wealth.
The richest 5% of households own 2/3 of the value of all stock owned in the our
country.
The the top 1% have as many after-tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100
million.
The richest 20% of households received almost 50% of the national income, while
the bottom
20% received only 3%.
At a time when 265 people in the
United
States were billionaires, 32 million people were living
beneath
the official poverty line.
This inequality gap in the United States is the highest in the industrialized
world.
"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."
In 1971, Lewis Powell, a
Richmond
lawyer who called himself a centrist, was secretly commissioned
by
the U.S. Chamber of Congress to write a confidential plan on how to take back
America for the survival of the free enterprise system. Not democracy. Free
enterprise. Barry Goldwater had lost, Nixon was about
to implode, Vietnam had sucked the nation's soul dry, the cabal
saw their world unraveling. They saw the women's movement,
black
civil rights. student war protests, the cold war. They saw the world as they
knew it coming to an end. (We are not the first to feel our world crumbling
and becoming powerless.)
This is what Lewis Powell wrote "Survival lies in organization, in careful long
range planning, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in
the scale of financing only available through joint effort and in the political
power available only through united action."
This was the
birth
of what is now called the vast right wing conspiracy. It is known as the Powell
Manifesto. You can google Lewis Powell (not the one who helped to assassinate
Lincoln)
and read it in its entirety.
Under the supervision of some of the richest families in America, that plan has
been
followed faithfully since 1971 and it has resulted in these past years of horror
and the re-election of George Bush. Nine families and their foundations, all
under the insistent goading of Joseph Coors, have financed much of this. The
Bradley Foundation. The Smith
Richardson
Foundation. Four Scaife Family Foundations, The John M. Olin Foundation. The
Castle Rock (or Coors) Foundation. Three Koch Family Foundations. The Earhart
Foundation. The JM Foundation. The McKenna Foundation. From 1985 to 2001 alone
they contributed $650 million to this conservative message campaign. They have
helped to launch and gain financing for networks of newspapers and magazines.
They have
seen to it that hundreds of the most powerful think tanks have appeared,
including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American
Enterprise, Cato,
Manhattan,
Hudson Institutes, and many more. There are now in place an ever growing number
of well-funded student organizations at many colleges. There are legal advocacy
foundations, such as the Center For Individual Rights and Judicial Watch. There
are Leadership Institutes and Action Institutes and Institutes on Religion and
Public Policy and Religion and
Democracy.
There is a heavily visible
media participation Fox Television and Pat Robertson
and Oliver North and Radio
America
and the Washington Times and Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh,
to name but a very few, including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
For the preparation of this manifesto, Lewis Powell was rewarded by Richard
Nixon with a seat on the Supreme Court, where among other things he voted
against gays in Bowers v. Hardwick, and against Black people in Bakke v.
University of California.
It is vital for us to realize that this plan was written in 1971. The people it
was written for did not go off then to a disco, or to the Pines or into therapy,
or into drugs. They took this plan and they have executed it religiously every
day and night for the next thirty-five years initially with some 400 million
dollars and always from then until now with unending hours of backbreaking,
grinding, unglamorous work, of civic engagements county by county across the
entire expanse of America.
They took
the richest and most liberal
nation in the history of civilization and turned it hard right into a classist,
racist, homophobic
imperial army of pirates. 30% of
America now
self-identify as conservative or extremely conservative. When Lewis Powell wrote
his Manifesto that figure was less than 10%.
And on the morning of November
3rd we wrung our hands and wondered why.
And we have a community that still cannot decide on what we want or what to do.
We are completely inept at organizing ourselves and have a monstrously bad
record of attempting unity.
The continuing existence of HIV is essential for the functioning of the
totalitarianism under which gay people now live. It works out like this HIV
allows "them" to sell us as sick. And that kills off our usefulness, both in our
own minds, their thinking we are sick, and in the eyes of the world, everyone
thinking we are sick. All of this obliterates
the consciousness of those who should help us and don't.
This liquidates and incinerates our individuality and our spontaneity, our
abilities to fight back, to hold our oppressors to task. They want to keep HIV
going as long as they can! Why haven't we seen that? The signs have always been
there! But like everything else we couldn't
believe
them. No one could
be
as cruel as that. They want to make us superfluous. Their media, their
newspapers, their networks will see to it that our good qualities are invisible.
It should therefore come as no surprise that when HIV came along they, this cabal,
facilitated its rapid deployment and continue to do so. Before even making the
feeblest
attempt to commence any miniscule response or inquiry into what their press was
not reporting, which they most certainly knew about themselves, they waited
until masses of us had all been exposed to the whatever it was.
We on the
other hand chose to not
believe that
the whatver it was was a virus until this was incontestably
proved. But they knew what it was, or were willing to take the chance and hope
that it was, and they just sat
back
and waited. Their wildest dreams then started to come true. The faggots were
disappearing and they were doing it to themselves! I can locate no work of any
urgency, or indeed much work at all on aids for most of the period
between
1981-1984. Oh many claim it, as many claim seeing cases many years earlier,
which I also doubt, but I cannot locate whatever these are claiming. In those
four years almost every gay man who had fucked in
America
had been exposed to the virus.
And when they did start doing anything it was with such feebleness that it
amounted to nothing for ten years. You can give me all kinds of reasons why it
took so long
but
my research has convinced me that the actual scenario was completely intentional
neglect. Oh perhaps not the doctors or the scientists. But they had no money.
And they were not going to get any money. Or enough money.
People
upstairs were going to see to it that there would
be no money.
Let even more people get infected first. Blacks, junkies, prostitutes. Every
color of skin
but
straight white. Every religion
but
Christian. Excuse me, white Christian. Then we'll throw them a few pennies to
make it look like we're concerned.
The cabals
Bill Moyers talked about
have called all the shots in facilitating and accelerating the plague of aids.
If scientists discovered something useful, it has rarely
been
available.
I spoke earlier about the refusal of this president to allow already approved
generic drugs out to a desperate Africa and elsewhere. Of that huge
Congressional approval of many billions for HIV around the world that Bush
brags
about, something less that 2% has left
Washington
almost four years after its approval.
Does
this sound like a President and a government and a country that wants to help?
I guess I have suspected
behavior
like this all along. But I never knew it in quite the way that I have now come
to see it thanks to Bill Moyers intentionality is the only word to describe
the genocidal treatment the world is drowning in. Much of the world, most
assuredly including us, has been intentionally hung out to die. So far some 70
million of us. That is some manifesto Lewis Powell birthed. And all we have to
do is keep fucking each other without condoms and the rest of their "moral
issues" will
be
dead.
Do
you seriously think they care about
the continuing rise again of HIV infections? They are grateful for them. Do you
think they care about
a sudden plague of crystal? They thank us for our cooperation. And we thought
for one
brief second
of time that we might even
be
allowed to marry the ones we love.
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."
Marriage? Forget it. Non-discrimination laws? Forget them. Those that have been
enacted will
be rescinded
or amended into toothlessness. Adoption? Equal rights? Forget everything. We are
going to be erased into nothingness. They hate us so much and now they are in
complete and utter power, the most dangerous situation in the world for the
unwanteds to live under. And I no longer think it matters who is President.
Clinton turned out to be as rotten for us as George Bush, either one.
Ok, keep putting your life in jeopardy. 110 of their drug companies certainly
want you to do so. Keep dancing your asses off at circuit parties all over the
world as you go down to the sea in ships that are made to intentionally capsize
and take you down with them. Ok, keep being bored and crying for your poor
selves. You ain't seen nothin' yet. With our complete cooperation they have
already murdered several generations of us so far. They won't have to murder so
many more of us to get their wish. Like Russia, we will disappear. That is what
they want to do. Disappear us. And now they are able
to officially do it. George Bush has his mandate. Can't you see all this! People
high up there in their secret powwows don't want us here. Word has come down
from on high get rid of the faggots once and for all. You think the law will
protect us? Think again. Wait until you see the new Supreme Court.
You are here as a gay person
because
of certain events and certain people who lived and suffered and died
before
you. You must learn about
them and not continually deny their existence and importance in our history, the
history of gay people in
America. You
must learn about them! They have made your life possible!
What kind of person doesn't want to learn about
themselves? I don't know why
but
you don't want to.
Most of our
fellow gays don't read
books about
us. Or come to plays about
us. What do you want to do? I don't know. And for all I can tell in talking to
many of you, you don't know either. And this is very frightening. A large
uncongealed mass of potentially superior
beings
doesn't know what to do with themselves or
bother
to learn their history. So they dance. So they drug. So they go on to the
internet to find more sex. These are useful lives
being
wasted. Why is that? Why is there no useful creativity going on? Why is there no
mental agility visible, no audible questioning discussions ... almost anything
of importance? Don't you long for some involvement in the humanity that you
belong to, for your place in the scheme of things? You don't know how to make
entrance on these playing fields, is that it? I don't know what is wrong with
us. I wish you could tell me. What do you do with yourselves all week long,
seven days and nights a week, that amounts to anything really important? I can't
see many of you as doing anything important, to give your lives meaning. Oh I
can see lots of frocks on the runway
but
I can't see
bodies
inside of them, bodies with brains and concerned with anything
but
pretty and orgasms. What do you do to make your world, our world, a
better
place? A world that needs every
bit
of help it can get, our world, not their world. You don't seem able to connect
with anyone
beyond
the
basest ways.
"Why can't we look at our
bodies
and see not just a sexual definition? Why can't we see in the
body
all that the body represents? Sexuality, yes. But also mortality, humanness,
humaneness, innocence, purity, health, sickness, strength, consideration,
responsibility, divinity. When did we rob
our
bodies of all the complexity they possess? Why do we refuse to see all that we
are capable of? All the other things that make us full
beings."
That very
beautiful
paragraph was written
by my
friend, Jordan Roth, who is one day going to be a very fine writer if he just
keeps at it.
Do
you know you are taking the same crystal meth as Hitler? The stuff that was
being used well into 1997, the government outlawed one of the ingredients and so
the original process was resurrected, the one as used
by
the Nazis. It was first synthesized
by the
Germans in the early part of the 20th century. Hitler was a crystal
addict. The new version is much more potent than the stuff you were taking
before 1997, which is the main reason why it is so hard to break an addiction.
Dr. Howard Grossman told me this
bit
of history. Maybe
I shouldn't have told you about
the Hitler part. To the more twisted among you it may
be a
turn-on.
I love
being
gay. I love gay people. I think we're
better than
other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and more
aware and I do, I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things. And I
try very hard to remember
all this.
But I am finding that I am not so proud of
being gay
anymore. It's come over me slowly. As much as I love
being
gay and I love gay people I'm not proud of us right now. It's disappeared. I
almost could say we've disappeared. But since you are here I can't quite say
that. But that's how I feel.
I do not see us, don't you see? I do not see us! They are killing us. They are
eradicating us from this earth. Little by little by little we are disappearing.
I do not see us and I am
beginning
to see us less and less.
I have recently come to
believe
that gay men and women are tragic people. We are so wonderful
but
we are also so fucked up. So
blind.
So ignorant in ways to look after ourselves. So uninterested in the Outside
World that is subsuming
us when we thought we were making them pretty and giving them songs to sing. So
without agendas to utilize our wonderful-ness. We know who the enemy is and we
just stand here letting them shoot us over and over again.
WE STAND HERE AND LET THEM DO IT!
All of the
brains
and abilities we have among us are useless. The smartest among us, our famous
ones, our rich ones, seem to allow this most of all. The ones who should help us
and speak up for us refuse that responsibility.
We have enough rich gay men and lesbians
to finance a takeover of the world
but
their brains and their money and their skills are not available
to to help us. To lead us. To inspire us. To finance us. To be like Lewis
Powell's Nine Families. That, too is tragic. To have so much money and to not to
use it for
brothers
and sisters, for family, for our continuation here on earth. Why is that?
Rockefeller tithed himself from his very first dollar, to go to his church for
his salvation. Please, can we get word to every rich gay person to show up to
help save us. We need our Nine Families desperately.
Public
service how many religions demand this of their members?
How much public
service in
behalf of
your brothers and sisters, your family, have you performed recently? Don't tell
me you don't know what to do. If you can find another ass to fuck, and you seem
endlessly inventive at accomplishing this, then you should be able to locate a
more useful and responsible
outlet.
For a few
brief
years we had some noble
moments, of togetherness and anger and progress. Not many of us, mind you. If
you are still alive, you know who you were and where you were during those worst
years of our mass murder. You know what you did and what you didn't. And I know
too. I know that most of you, should you still
be
alive, didn't do a goddamned thing. In fact, you were ashamed of us, many of you
were. I remember
that as well as I remember
those who died. "Friends" crossing the street to avoid me
because
I was advising cooling it. I was actually told to not come
back
to Fire Island Pines. Lots of people come up to me now on the street and say,
thank you for what you did for us. I do not consider that a compliment. My
response quite often's
been
a curt Fuck You, why aren't you doing it too! I don't do anything that anyone
else couldn't do. I just do it, and some 10 or 15,000 other people did it too
then. And the rest of you sat on your asses. And, those of you who are still
alive, know who you were and how little you did.
Yes for one
brief
moment in time we got angry. Correction, a few of us got angry. Of all our many
many millions of gay people in this country, about
10,000 of us or so got angry enough to accomplish something. We got drugs. We
got aids care. We got enough so we could continue fucking again. That in the end
is what it amounted to. As soon as we got the drugs, you went right
back
to what got us into such trouble
in the first place. WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? The cabal
can't
believe
their good fortune.
How many gay people in America in those years of Aids? Ten million? Twenty
million? Thirty million? How many of us are there now? We don't even know how
many of us there are! Or how many we lost! And every time some statistical
number is released by some faceless organization or government office, I always
wonder how the fuck do they know how many of us there are when we don't even
know how many of us there are? And none of our so-called gay organizations ever
bothers to find out. It would
be
nice to know, helpful to know.
Don't you
think?
You know, it isn't meant to
be
easy, life. I don't know why it isn't meant to
be
easy, but it just isn't, so we might as well get used to it and try to find
things that give us a certain sense of pride. We must create ourselves as
something we can live with. It takes energy, yes. Why are we so crippled
intellectually? Oh, we study sexuality and gender stuff until it comes out of
every university's asshole but we don't study history, who we were and where we
came from and our roots, the wellsprings of our historical existence. We do not
honor our dead as we do not honor ourselves. We continue without surcease to
be
and remain, endlessly, day after day, helpless victims. "In my country when
they raise the
bus
fares, we burn the buses," a Brazilian journalist said to me as she watched a
sparsely attended Act Up demonstration.
There is never one single hour that a disenfranchised minority does not have to
fight to
breathe
and stay alive. The hate out there will never lessen. It only grows and grows,
this hate. Most of you refuse to face this. I hate you for your doing that. I
really do. I have no more patience for this kind of weakness. I know this is
uncharitable
of me. I don't care. I am too tired of fighting with so few troops. You are now
dancing your own dance of death, you know. And I hate you for this, too. Grow
up, I beg you. Oh, grow up.
Time goes
by
so fast. We are allotted so precious little of it on this earth. How sad that
you use it so stupidly. Every minute that goes
by
is gone forever. You who have
been given a
new lease on life, the very gift of life itself, piss it away. It is so
incomprehensible to me who has come so close to death a couple times. I find
your inactivity and ingratitude and lack of imagination on how to act in
emergencies incongruous, incomprehensible, insulting. And unacceptable.
I could never understand during all those years of Aids why every single person
facing death would not fight to save his own life. And I cannot understand now
how, life having
been given
back to us again, again you treat your life with such contempt.
Yes, all that I have spoken of tonight is the stuff of tragedy.
I wish we could truly look upon each other as brothers and sisters. It sounds
corny I am told when I keep using terms like this. How can we be related I am
asked dismissively. You do not know or want to know that we have been on this
earth as long as anyone else and that we have as many available heroes and
heroines as anyone else. Your family has
been
here a very long time and has an ancient and distinguished lineage. You must
learn that Abraham Lincoln was gay and George Washington and Meriwether Lewis
and so many others we are only just beginning to uncover. But they will not let
gay history be taught in schools and universities. And we seem unable
to teach ourselves. My own college, Yale, with $1 million of my own brother's
money to do just this, will not teach what I call gay history, unencumbered with
the prissy incomprehensible
gobbledygook
of gender studies and queer theory. Abraham
Lincoln did not talk that language.
We richly deserve the government we have received. We do not even know who we
are. And our enemies participate in their convictions every day of their lives.
We only show up when we want to, which is not very often. But then perhaps you
do not love
being
gay. Or think we are
better than
other people, and smarter and more talented and more tuned into what is
happening, and are
better
friends.
I leave the hardest topic we must face till last.
How do we fight as a united front when they don't approve of our "behavior"
and when our
behavior
is inseparable
from our beings? How do we fight as a united front when some of us won't or are
unable to change certain behaviors that many of us have difficulty in supporting
and defending ourselves? We've been so concerned about showing the world a
united front. We feel the need to say that everything gay people do is good and
it simply isn't so. We must have an honest discussion amongst ourselves about
what's good and what isn't. This is of course the problem
that has finally brought us down because we have refused to deal with it, and
perhaps is one reason today's youngsters have difficulty in acknowledging our
past.
It is the
unfaced devil in our closet, if you will, that we have refused to deal with and
which, now, now that they have achieved their position of imperial power, will
be
used to hang us once and for all. To
be
crude about it, how do we market and sell our wishes and our needs as they have
been able to package and sell their wants and needs so successfully for
thirty-five years? How do we frame this issue? How do we claim the God that they
have subsumed into their own ownership? It is inhuman to think that the only way
we can get through to some safe other side is
by
policing each other and in so doing destroy whatever hope we have of getting
along? If they have been able to convince this country that the Republicans
are the party of the people, surely so many sons and daughters can be smart
enough to find a way to sell our parents permission to co-exist.
I do not know how to answer any of this. And I don't think anyone among us does
either. To talk out loud about
what our bodies have done and continue to do is asking for trouble
from others of us. How do we admit our past, own it, and evolve from it and move
on? For we must do this.
I know some of you will immediately jump up to act. I caution rushing off to
form anything quite so fast until we decide how we want to deal with what I have
raised tonight. I know many of you are prepared to tough it out and say to them,
"fuck you, I am what I am." And point out quite rightly that they have simply
pushed us too far and, no matter what we have done and continue to do we simply
cannot allow them to treat us this way any longer. We are human beings as much
as they are, and their God is the same as our God and He simply cannot be
allowed to be as punishing as they are requiring Him to
be."
But this is perhaps too honest and reasonable to say to those who are not
either. Reasoning like this has not worked for us in the past. But I sense that
ignoring this question of responsibility for much that has murdered us will only
please them more.
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.
I would like to quote this from a Baptist minister, Tom Ehrich, in
Durham. By
chance, I found it on a Christian website at 300 this afternoon. "It would
be
helpful if we started in silence and just listened to each other's voices.
Whether we can muster such maturity amid toxic political attitudes remains to be
seen. If we are to have a meaningful national discussion of moral issues, we
will need to start with the sexual issues, not
because
they are the most important
but
because they are the fire engulfing the tower. Let's get it all on the table...
"And let's do so openly and
boldly,
without the code language that we often use in moral debates, without our usual
cherry-picking of Scriptures, without our usual blistering indignation, without
the bullying
that elevates one's viewpoint
into divine certainty."
So we are
being
invited to this table
whether we want to or not. We must
be prepared.
I love
being
gay. I love gay people. I think we're
better than
other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and better
friends. I do, I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things.
And I passionately and desperately want all my brothers and sisters to stay
alive and well and on this earth as long as they want theirs to.
Can we all help each other to reach this goal?
-----
(Note I would like to acknowledge the help of my friend Rodger McFarlane, my
lover
David
Webster, and my editor, Will Schwalbe
in preparing this speech. I am grateful to Rodger and the Gill Foundation for
educating me about
Lewis Powell and the Powell Manifesto, about
which I had been previously ignorant. Thanks too to Bill Moyers for his
extraordinary speech which is quoted here without permission. LK)
A Letter in Response to Larry Kramer’s: “THE TRAGEDY OF TODAY'S GAYS” Speech
By C. J. Kurkowski
Dear Larry,
I have had the pleasure of reading your philosophical viewpoint and would like to respond to your speech. I will be the first to admit that your speech is a strong call to arms in order to get us out there to fight for a cause again. However, instead of trying to unite us, you are playing the same game you did in the 1980s and 1990s in which you try to divide us.
I would like to say that you and your peers did a wonderful job in dealing with the crisis in the 1980s and 1990s by forcing our government to acknowledge that we were dying in order to drag money out of them for research to fight this dreaded virus (so we can, in your words, “fuck” again). Moreover, by being rebellious you and your peers made our voices heard across America.
You and your peers helped get movie stars to support us, got the WHO to acknowledge us, and pushed to get a system set up in order to help care for our sick. Nevertheless, as we got what we wanted, and some of you got rich off your own popularity the system started to break down.
Instead of uniting all the organizations and making one colossal structured system that could cater to our healthcare, politics, funding, and self-worth, you and your peers forgot about the basic needs of the community. Survival.
Do you know that charity events that were started and have roots in organizations that you and your peers built back in the 1980s and 1990s, like Chicago’s Fireball, the Black and Blue party, the Red Ball, and other events cater more to the drug culture than it does in trying to help people. Each year my peers tell me how much of a good time they had by taking all the drugs they did and what a blast they had screwing all the men they could during these events. To me, it is a vicious cycle. We give money to a charitable event in order to help those with HIV and AIDS only to see the people at these events take drugs, fuck other men with out condoms, have orgies, and then get sick a few years later. It’s as if we eat our own in this community. Do we try to stop these guys at the door and ask them to give us their party favors? Do we hand out free condoms at the door? Do we make it a drug free and liquor free event? No, we don’t!
Instead, the charity organizations overspend on the events, the bars mark up their liquor prices and cover charges, and some bar owners even go as far as to bring in their own drug dealers so people can have their party favors at these events. The sentiment from the charity organizations is that people like to donate more money when they are drunk and/or high.
When the night is over, everyone takes their cut of the pie, leaves town, and puts whatever money is left over in the pot. Now we wonder why these charity organizations are failing financially. It’s because they have forgotten the grassroots reason of why we are trying to get money in the first place... To help those in need, not to line people's pockets or to have extravagant events. Let’s keep it simple, low cost events, equals more money for those people that need it. The excess money raised also helps to expand the community health resources and gives more money to research foundations. To be perfectly honest, I am glad that some of the organizations are failing; it is time for some consolidation in the community. It is time to get rid of some of these greedy folks who take advantage of our money. It is time to start fresh and create a new vision.
While we are creating this new vision, we should think about raising money to build gay nursing homes and more hospices. We should continue to create drug, alcohol, eating disorder, and sex rehab centers that cater to the gay community. We should push for more education on all of the issues I just mentioned within the gay Generation-Y community, who, by the way, are clueless about the support that is out there for them. Maybe we can also create learning centers for gay men and women so they can learn how to be in a committed gay relationship. We can teach people how to learn to love our partners with open and honest communication between each other, and maybe educate them about moderation concerning alcohol, drugs, and sex. Your generation certainly didn’t get the hint on that.
After reading your opinion on the conspiracy that is going on in this country concerning Bush and the conservative right, the think tanks, and the elitist doctrines that is being played out in America, I believe that we have a huge generation gap between us. As a Gen-X person who hangs out with the Gen-X, Gen-Y, and Baby Boomer crowds the sentiment you display in your speech is not how we view the world today.
As I see it, and from what I have heard and have viewed from the general mainstream gay populous, is that we want to be educated, we want to go out into the work force, we want to create a safe and financially stable home and life for ourselves, we want to find a good, honest lover and friends, and if we have time, then we will climb up the social ladder. We contribute to the charitable and political organizations with time, money, and blood when we get the time. However, some of us are so wrapped up in our day-to-day lives that we don’t get a chance to contribute, but the sentiment is still there. We don't have time for conspiracy theories. We don't have time to watch the elitist social groups plan and plot against our own American society. We have our life to live and we choose to live it day by day.
We know what you and your peers have done for us, and we have kept the fire lit so we can move on and forward with the fight. How much more do you need from us? Why didn’t you and your peers pass the torch down to other people with your ideals if you are so unhappy with the way we are doing things? Do not chastise us on something you and your peers could have prevented.
You also speak of us as “tragic” individuals with no heroes to look up to in this American society. I will be the first to admit that we do have a lot of tragedy in our community. From the drugged out street hustlers, to the alcoholic men that beat their boyfriends. From the POZ parties in which normal healthy gay men go to POZ group orgies so they can become infected and feel like a real gay man, to the gay politician that gets threatened with being outed because of an affair that’s gone bad.
Yes, we have it all, just like the straight community. However, what I mention is the minority, and not the majority. Most of us are hard working people who strive to be better. We pay our taxes, enjoy the bar scene in moderation, support our local gay businesses, and try to enrich our lives. In the process we try to adopt children, we buy homes with our lovers, and we try to build a family structure built on honesty, happiness and love. Where are the heroes? It is within ourselves. If we can make this happen and enjoy a fulfilling life with our partner, then we are all heroes.
With all this that is happening around us, is it important to have gay marriage or civil unions? I believe it is, but our America is not ready for that yet. We are not as liberal as a nation as we think we are. So what do we do? We hire good lawyers that hammer out strong wills and pre-nuptial agreements, we quietly go about our business and we start electing more gay officials to higher offices, we get gay judges elected, and we move forward with our agenda. We need to start with small steps in order to get what we need. Little by little, America will come around and then we will win the battle. Forty gay officials were elected this year to government offices, lets keep up the trend and push forward with our agenda. Sometimes doing something in stealth mode is more effective than a radical outspoken agenda Mr. Kramer.
I hope you do continue to fight for our rights till your last dying breath. I also hope that you will take your torch and pass it down to people that are worthy to carry it and move forward with the ideals you have placed before us and the rest of the country. Your words and ideals will not be forgotten. Trust us. We know where to go from here.
Sincerely,
CJ