Oh, Larry

For many gay men, the fight for visibility among an epidemic is nothing new. The people who have survived the plague know who Larry Kramer is. Larry Kramer founded Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP, two organizations that fought to get the government to do something about the more than forty million people who have been infected with AIDS. Larry Kramer passed away on May 27, 2020 from pneumonia, less than a month away from his 85th birthday.

For many gay men, who live in the complacency and despondency he critiqued in his novel Faggots, Larry Kramer is if much, a blip in the news radar. But I think that his kind of activism, his kind of call to arms is absolutely needed in the world today. Not only because AIDS is not a thing of the past, but because today we face another virus that will keep us from basically living a normal life. I have written about the parallel between AIDS and COVID-19 and how it's felt like PTSD for many HIV+ survivors and yesterday speaking with a friend, I realized how much we need the kind of activism that Larry Kramer wanted us to promote.

I think I will not have sex with anybody I have not been sheltering in place with in a long time. At least until there's widespread testing for COVID-19 and a vaccine. Yep. That's the way it goes for me. I was posting on Big's blog yesterday where he talked about 'the touch of others' that I don't think I'll get that close to anybody I don't know in a long time. If I was weary of fucking a stranger before, now it's a matter of survival. And we know a COVFEFE-19 administration will mean that there will not be widespread testing any time soon. It'll make Cheeto's numbers 'look bad'. There won't be a vaccine any time soon unless it benefits Twitler and Big Pharma. We may be in for the long haul if we don't act. And how do we act? We vote the Orange Motherfucker out of the White House.

I think we all need to mobilize and stop the madness that has taken over the government in the United States. People need to vote the fucking Orange Clown out of power. Well, him and all his Repug enablers and hangers-on. The amount of corruption in the government right now is very Banana Republic but people's inability to DO anything about it reminds me of the passive response people gave to AIDS and the complacency with which the epidemic was taken by some gay men.

Kramer said it best:

“I don’t know what kind of organization to start. I don’t know how to give advice.  I don’t know how to lead anyone, should they want to follow," ,,, "I don’t know what to write anymore. I don’t know how to write any more articles because I’ve said what I have said to you tonight in one form or another for 10 fucking years.”

’40 million people is a f*cking plague’ — Watch Larry Kramer speak out against AIDS inaction in 1991. Kramer died this week at 84 pic.twitter.com/qx0vsZ4sGU

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 27, 2020

IMPOTUS still has about 40% approval in the United States, even after 100,000 people have died in a pandemic he helped made worse. And that number may not even be accurate. There may be more people dead. That's the number we are given with the measly testing the government is doing and with Repug governors tweaking the results to please their Orange Emperor. Because IMPOUTS did not want his inability to govern be put in the forefront. His criminal incompetence has killed many people. Cheetolini does not care about people. Especially if they're Black or Brown and they work for minimum wage. Where's the outrage? Why do we still demand purity tests from any Dem nominee? People need to get angry and vote that motherfucker out. No more complacency. Because if he's not voted out of the White House, we're as good as dead, as Larry said. Vote Blue, no matter who the fuck is running.

XOXO