Larry Kramer, Whose Anger, Activism & Art Fueled Fight Against AI...

Who will there be to be angry at Larry Kramer’s memorial service (if and when we are able to have memorial services again)? When his gay and AIDS activist comrade Vito Russo died of AID... Show more

Who will there be to be angry at Larry Kramer’s memorial service (if and when we are able to have memorial services again)? When his gay and AIDS activist comrade Vito Russo died of AIDS in 1990, Kramer got up in front of a packed service at the Great Hall of the Cooper Union — then home to ACT UP meetings that attracted 500 people every Monday night — and spat, “You killed Vito! Every one of you!,” chiding us all for not doing enough amidst the plague that defined our gay lives and his own activism and art. Kramer’s work arguably saved millions of lives around the globe. His own life ended May 27, 2020 after a long illness and a bout with pneumonia. He was 84 and is survived by his husband, David Webster, and those countless millions. A screenwriter, playwright, author, his passion infused his impatient challenges to the nation and the LGBTQ community Kramer will be most remembered as a catalyst. When mysterious maladies were killing off young gay men in 1981, he crowded scores of us into his 2 Fifth Avenue apartment on Washington Square to listen in terror to Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien’s description of what was happening — the beginnings of an epidemic that would turn into a pandemic and what Kramer always called “a plague.” Kramer then gathered some friends in his kitchen to found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in a community not practiced in philanthropy for itself. He took a tin can out to Fire Island to collect money for the new group, stood on the pier himself, and took in a grand total of $60. He demanded government and press attention but could get neither from New York’s closeted hom...

“The Politician” Returns to Netflix in June

Warning: This article contains spoilers from the first season of “The Politician.” Will it be Manhattan State Senator Payton Hobart? Just when it seemed like Hobart’s fantastical presid... Show more

Warning: This article contains spoilers from the first season of “The Politician.” Will it be Manhattan State Senator Payton Hobart? Just when it seemed like Hobart’s fantastical presidential ambitions were crushed, the wild world of politics has afforded him another chance to keep the dream alive on the other side of the country. Season two of Ryan Murphy’s “The Politician” is slated to hit Netflix on June 19, giving viewers much-needed quarantine content just days before New York’s June 23 Democratic primary elections take place. Ben Platt’s college student with Oval Office ambitions shifts coasts, aims for New York State Senate Hobart, the young, obsessive, meticulous political whiz portrayed by out gay star Ben Platt, had been dead-set on carving a career path that will lead to the Oval Office: He engaged in a contentious election for student body president at his Santa Barbara, California, high school, doing just about anything to get his way, all while stubbornly strong-arming anything in the way of a collegiate future that aligns with the educational pedigrees of previous American presidents. And yet, in the backdrop, he struggles with his sexuality and suppresses his feelings as he focuses more intensely on politics. Although Hobart succeeded in winning the election for student body president in rather anticlimactic fashion, his future was derailed when the explosive political scandals behind his victory surfaced. Entering the new season, he is presented with a series of new realities: He moved from California to New York to attend college, his mother (Gwyneth Paltrow) finally st...

Racially Profiled Black Gay Birder Speaks Out

Two days after a routine visit to Central Park to engage in his passionate hobby of birding, Christian Cooper appeared on Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s “Gay USA” and reflected on his... Show more

Two days after a routine visit to Central Park to engage in his passionate hobby of birding, Christian Cooper a ppeared on Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s “Gay USA” and reflected on his feelings about how an encounter with a woman who wouldn’t leash her dog turned into a global news story. “It’s stressful,” the out gay African-American man, who sits on the board of Audubon New York City, told “Gay USA” hosts Ann Northrop and Andy Humm. “I was a bit rattled,” he added about the confrontation that blew up in the park. On the morning of May 25, Cooper was in the park’s Ramble when he ran into Amy Cooper, an investment banker with Franklin Templeton, who had her dog off leash. When Christian pointed to a sign stating that dogs must always be leashed in that ecologically sensitive part of the park, the confrontation quickly escalated to the point where Amy called the police to make the false report that “an African-American man is threatening me and my dog.” Using his iPhone, Christian filmed Amy as she warned she would call the cops and then proceeded to do so. He stopped filming when Amy leashed the dog, and then Christian continued on his way, never seeing if the police responded to Amy’s call. A day later, after Christian’s video clip appeared online, Amy had to surrender the dog, who was a rescue, to Abandoned Angels Cocker Spaniel Rescue, and she was fired by Franklin Templeton. In a tweet, the company said, “Following our internal review of the incident in Central Park yesterday, we have made the decision to terminate the employee involved, effective immediately. We do not tolerate ra...

BULLETIN: Larry Kramer, Tireless AIDS Activist, Author, Playwrigh...

Larry Kramer, who was one of the founders of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1982 and whose speech on AIDS at Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center in 1987 helped galvanize the formation of ACT ... Show more

Larry Kramer, who was one of the founders of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1982 and whose speech on AIDS at Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center in 1987 helped galvanize the formation of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, has died at the age of 84. In addition to his decades as an outspoken activist, Kramer was also a celebrated screenwriter, playwright, and author. According to the New York Times, Kramer’s husband, David Webster, said the cause of death was pneumonia. Kramer, who lived with HIV for more than three decades, had been in ill health in recent years, but had successfully come through a liver transplant in 2001. Kramer’s political style was confrontational, but his anger was not only directed at government officials, the medical establishment, and American society whose indifference and hostility to gay men, he argued ferociously, led to hundreds of thousands of AIDS death, but also at the LGBTQ community itself, which he often said was timid and even self-hating in its unwillingness to stand up for itself. Kramer inspired thousands of activists, in ACT UP and elsewhere, but he could often be scolding when speaking to gay audiences. In a 2004 appearance at the 92nd Street Y, Kramer proclaimed himself angry at “everybody,” including himself, for the queer community’s lack of progress. “I am motivated by what is so wrong,” he said, “and it is wrong that we are treated like such shit.” Kramer’s depiction of gay life in Manhattan and on Fire Island in his 1978 novel “Faggots” also shined a stark light on the community, which the book painted as caring more about sex than love...

Ruben Diaz, Sr.’s Long History of Acting the Republican

What does it mean to be a Democrat in New York City? “I do like Donald Trump,” Bronx Democrat Ruben Diaz, Sr., then a state senator, said in a 2016 interview with the Washington Post. “... Show more

What does it mean to be a Democrat in New York City? “I do like Donald Trump,” Bronx Democrat Ruben Diaz, Sr., then a state senator, said in a 2016 interview with the Washington Post. “He’s like me, making enemies everywhere he goes.” On paper, Diaz, a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage and women’s reproductive rights, is a Democrat. But in a progressive City Council and with a mayor who first won office in 2013 running as arguably the most left-leaning in the Democratic field, his party label and his political leans are at odds with each other. So what does it mean to be a Democrat in New York City? Bigoted city lawmaker has stood up for Trump, Giuliani, and others — what’s he doing in the Democratic primary? For Diaz, who has spent decades railing against same-sex marriage rights and once said the 1994 Gay Games held in New York would lead to the spread of AIDS and “wider acceptance of homosexuality by young people,” it seemingly means that he is willing to use his power and influence as an elected official to prop up Republicans across different levels of government ranging from presidents to governors to senators. For Diaz, it means praising Trump, welcoming Republican Senator Ted Cruz to the Bronx, and endorsing the campaigns of Republican Rudy Giuliani for mayor, George Pataki for governor, and Rick Lazio for United States Senate in his unsuccessful bid to thwart Hillary Clinton in 2000. For Diaz, it means supporting Ed Koch over David Dinkins in the 1989 Democratic primary competition for mayor and then backing Giuliani over Dinkins in that year’s general election. For Diaz, it...

Costa Rica Is Central America’s First to Legalize Same-Sex Marria...

Following a prolonged legal battle, Costa Rica on May 26 became the first nation in Central America to welcome same-sex marriage rights. The nation officially recognized marriage equali... Show more

Following a prolonged legal battle, Costa Rica on May 26 became the first nation in Central America to welcome same-sex marriage rights. The nation officially recognized marriage equality after years of legal hand-wringing that led to a 2018 ruling by Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court that the nation’s legislature would have a year and a half to legalize same-sex marriage or else the court’s ruling would automatically usher in marriage equality. Even then, stubborn lawmakers opposed to same-sex marriage battled to the very end and sought to use the coronavirus as justification to delay the implementation of the law, according to The Costa Rica Star. Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada, who rose to power in 2018 following a contentious election battle that featured an anti-LGBTQ candidate, praised the ruling and described it as a step forward for equality. “Today, Costa Rica officially recognizes same-sex marriage,” he wrote in a tweet translated from Spanish to English. “Today we celebrate liberty, equality, and our democratic institutions. May empathy and love be the compass that guide us forward and allow us to move forward and build a country that has room for everyone.” Couples started getting married at midnight on May 26 as they made history in the first nation to achieve marriage equality in the region since Ecuadorians did so last year. Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, and many of Mexico’s states allow same-sex marriage. Whenever the coronavirus pandemic dissipates, same-sex marriage rights could potentially lead to a boost in tourism to Costa Rica, which already h...