INTERVIEW WITH LARRY KRAMER

An Angry Heart

As ''The Normal Heart'' gets a reading in the D.C. area, its author, Larry Kramer, talks about what's missing from gay activism



I never understood why so few of us are willing to fight. At the height of the AIDS plague, from '91 to '96 when it was really awful – with how many millions of gay people, 10 [million], 20 [million], who the fuck knows how many, but a lot – there were no more than maybe 5,000 or 6,000 people in various ACT UP chapters around the country or in California with Project Inform who were willing to fight for their lives. I've never been able to understand that. So few of us were willing to fight to get those drugs. We got those drugs. ACT UP got those drugs. They're not there for any other reason.

And, now, all these people who want to get married so badly, where are the demonstrations? All these people who are married, don't they know that marriage is what I call a ''feel-good'' marriage – doesn't provide anything except nice, warm feelings? That seems to me to be cowardly – a cowardly evasion of the truth.

We're all in an enormous state of denial somehow – and we continue to be. And it doesn't get any better.

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