Apr 15, 2005  |  By: BRIAN MOYLAN  | COMMENTS     

speech I’ve ever made and it was hard to write. I don’t think we are anywhere and I don’t see us getting out of this rut. There are some feeble attempts being made now to get the rich people together and one can only hope that this will mushroom, but I see the forces on the right getting stronger and obliterating us even more as I see the forces on the left getting weaker and taking us down with them.

Blade: Do you have any hope?
Kramer: It’s pretty hard to see any right now. One should never say there’s no hope, but we’re in pretty shitty shape. Now, will this bring a crowd into Lambda Rising or will it scare them away?

Blade: You say that the younger generation of gay men has no sense of the history of gay people. Is there anything we can to do inspire them to learn more about gay history?
Kramer: I love you for asking me that. It’s one of the biggest fights we have against us. My brother [Arthur] set up this thing at Yale called the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian & Gay Studies. We’re working on that there. It’s hard to get schools, both high schools and colleges, to teach gay stuff. It’s very hard. It’s a big deal that a place like Yale has allowed this to happen. That’s my next big organizational fight, is getting the LKI, as we call it, really strong and well funded for the future so that we can turn it into a center, a real great center, for learning about ourselves and our history.

Blade: The speech also criticizes the success of “Will & Grace.”
Kramer: I think it’s been great. What I’m saying is that’s the icing on the cake. We have to deal with the meat and potatoes of it all.

Blade: But doesn’t the movement need the Rosie O’Donnells?
Kramer: I’m not criticizing them, not at all. I love them. I guess I question the use of the word ‘movement.’ I don’t see any movement. I see regression. And that scares me. And I don’t see very many people participating in the movement. That has always been the problem. It’s hard to call it a movement when there are so few people participating. We think it’s big and huge and wonderful. You have to go out to the rest of the country and see how they are ready to kill you. Sixty-five million people voted against us in the last election. They hate us. I think it’s time that we recognize that it is hate. We think that they just have a difference of opinion, but deep down they hate us, they won’t allow us anything, what else is that?

Blade: One of the mottos from the ACT UP protests was “Silence = Death.” And that was true at the time. The demonstrations brought attention to something that wasn’t being addressed. Now, gay civil rights issues are on the nightly news. If people know about them, why isn’t anything being<