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Larry Kramer PA Images

'A giant of a man': Influential Aids campaigner and playwright Larry Kramer dies aged 84

Kramer’s husband confirmed that he died from died from pneumonia.

TRIBUTES HAVE BEEN paid to Larry Kramer, the playwright who raised theatregoers’ consciousness about Aids, who has died aged 84.

Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to the Associated Press.

Kramer’s husband, David Webster, told the New York Times that Kramer died of pneumonia.

Sir Elton John has been among those to pay tribute, saying: “We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His anger was needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to Aids were being ignored by the American government.”

Kramer, who wrote The Normal Heart and founded the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, also known as Act Up, lost his lover to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus.

He also suffered from hepatitis B and received a liver transplant in 2001 because the virus had caused liver failure.

Kramer was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for Women In Love, the 1969 adaptation of DH Lawrence’s novel. It starred Glenda Jackson, who won her first Oscar for her performance.

He also wrote the 1972 screenplay Lost Horizon; a novel, Faggots; and the plays Sissies’ Scrapbook, The Furniture Of Home, Just Say No and The Destiny Of Me, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

Civil rights

For many years he was best known for his public fight to secure medical treatment, acceptance and civil rights for people with Aids. He loudly told everyone that the gay community was grappling with a plague.

Tributes from the arts community flooded in, with Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter saying: “what an extraordinary writer, what a life”.

Author and LGBT activist Dan Savage wrote: “He ordered us to love ourselves and each other and to fight for our lives. He was a hero.”

In 1981, when Aids had not yet acquired its name and only a few dozen people had been diagnosed with it, Kramer and a group of his friends in New York City founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), one of the first groups in the country to address the epidemic.

He tried to rouse the gay community with speeches and articles such as ’1,112 and Counting’, published in gay newspapers in 1983.

“Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of this earth is at stake,” he wrote. “Unless we fight for our lives, we shall die.”

The late journalist Randy Shilts, in his best-selling account of the Aids epidemic And The Band Played On, called that article “inarguably one of the most influential works of advocacy journalism of the decade” and credited it with “crystallising the epidemic into a political movement for the gay community”.

Kramer lived to see gay marriage made a reality – and married in 2013 – but never rested.

“I’m married,” he told the AP. “But that’s only part of where we are. Aids is still decimating us and we still don’t have protection under the law.”

Kramer split with GMHC in 1983 after other board members decided to concentrate on providing support services to people with Aids. It remains one of the largest Aids service groups in the US.

After leaving GMHC, Kramer wrote The Normal Heart, in which a furious young writer – not unlike Kramer himself – battles politicians, society, the media and other gay leaders to bring attention to the crisis.

The play premiered at The Public Theatre in April 1985.

A revival in 2011 was almost universally praised by critics and earned the best revival Tony. Two actors from it – Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey – also won Tonys. Joe Mantello played the main character of Ned Weeks, the alter ego of Kramer.

“I’m very moved that it moved so many people,” he said at the time. Kramer often stood outside the theatre passing out fliers asking the world to take action against HIV/Aids. “Please know that Aids is a worldwide plague. Please know there is no cure,” it said.

The play was turned into a TV film in 2014 starring Mark Ruffalo, Jonathan Groff, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Joe Mantello and Julia Roberts. It won the Emmy for best movie. 

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    Mute Garreth Byrne
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 2:27 PM

    The young prime minister Gabriel Attal has recognized the genuine grievances of French farmers, shared by farmers in several European countries. Too much unnecessary red tape (bureaucrats trying to intensify their power by imposing increased paperwork); too much blaming food producers for pollution; too much money required to stay in farming. In Brussels, Paris and Berlin there are 5-day civil servants; but there’s no such thing as a 5-day farmer.

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    Mute P. V. Aglue
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 4:36 PM

    @Garreth Byrne: all that red tape creates lots of civil service jobs,and their unsackable.

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    Mute brendan C5
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 5:00 PM

    @jak: to keep your food and drink cheaper than it would be.

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    Mute William Tallon
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 2:33 PM

    You sometimes get the distinct impression that some of Europe’s political elites really don’t have a clue about where the food they eat comes from and that real people called farmers work hard to make their livings producing and providing it. “Farmers, you say? Aren’t they the happy workers from the factories where they make the food that my staff purchase from those supermarket places?”

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    Mute Adrian Kehoe
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 3:31 PM

    @William Tallon: That’s true, I know nothing about farming but I certainly have great respect for the work they do, hours they put in for little gain .

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    Mute Elizabeth Doyle
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 2:06 PM

    CANT BEAT Le Bleu farmers.Hope we fare better tonight.As a Munster supporter I want Pete to have a good beginning to 6 Nations Campaign.Without our Irish Farmers we gave no Country,the backbone of our Nation and prosperity.

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    Mute Padraig O'Brien
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 2:24 PM

    No farmers no food is a myth in Ireland. Lots of our food is imported and lots of our meat is exported.

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    Mute Staker Wallace
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 2:45 PM

    @Padraig O’Brien: Ok, If there was no farmers in the *whole world*, what would you live on? Furze bushes?

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    Mute James Carolan
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 3:09 PM

    France 12 – 18 Ireland COYBIG

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    Mute Eoghan O Sullivan
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 3:22 PM

    Are if there were no car makers there wouldn’t be cars etc.. We have produce food sustainably. Seen the iFA fella on prime time last night tyring to defend excessive use of nitrates. Time is now.

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    Mute hi from heaven
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    Feb 2nd 2024, 5:51 PM

    All I hear is farmers complaining they work hard and make no money…
    I heard a good saying today” you don’t have to be smart to be a farmer, but don’t be stupid ”
    Give up the farm if it is not viable, there’s plenty of jobs out there..
    The farmers that really work hard and put in 10 plus hours a day are making money, because these are dairy farmers..there is no need for 95% of beef farmers to be home all day collecting subsidies and complaining about how it’s not enough..get a job

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