GMHC
August 12, 2016 12:06 PM Subscribe
Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of the founding of what would become known as the the Gay Men's Health Crisis. On August 11, 1981, Nathan Fain, Larry Kramer, Lawrence Mass, Paul Popham, Paul Rapoport, and Edmund White met with Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien and discussed the "gay cancer" that was affecting their friends and lovers. "In 1983 Larry Kramer, one of the founders of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, was kicked out of the organization he helped create, due to his loud and often controversial methods of raising public awareness about the AIDS epidemic." Today, GMHC serves more than 10,000 people per year.
On June 5, 1981, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published a report of five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) among previously healthy young men in Los Angeles. All of the men were described as “homosexuals”; two had died. (PDF)
Guide to the Gay Men's Health Crisis records (PDF)
Remember Respond Resolve - GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis)
Larry Kramer accepts Lifetime Activism Award (with introductions by Joe Mantello and Mark Ruffallo)
Nathan Fain (1942-1987)
Dr. Lawrence Mass
Paul Popham (1941-1987)
Paul Rappaport (1940-1987)
Edmund White
Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien
GMHC Timeline
1,112 and Counting (published in 1983): There are now 1,112 cases of serious Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. When we first became worried, there were only 41. In only twenty-eight days, from January 13th to February 9th [1983], there were 164 new cases - and 73 more dead. The total death tally is now 418. Twenty percent of all cases were registered this January alone. There have been 195 dead in New York City from among 526 victims. Of all serious AIDS cases, 47.3 percent are in the New York metropolitan area.
On June 5, 1981, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published a report of five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) among previously healthy young men in Los Angeles. All of the men were described as “homosexuals”; two had died. (PDF)
Guide to the Gay Men's Health Crisis records (PDF)
Remember Respond Resolve - GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis)
Larry Kramer accepts Lifetime Activism Award (with introductions by Joe Mantello and Mark Ruffallo)
Nathan Fain (1942-1987)
Dr. Lawrence Mass
Paul Popham (1941-1987)
Paul Rappaport (1940-1987)
Edmund White
Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien
GMHC Timeline
1,112 and Counting (published in 1983): There are now 1,112 cases of serious Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. When we first became worried, there were only 41. In only twenty-eight days, from January 13th to February 9th [1983], there were 164 new cases - and 73 more dead. The total death tally is now 418. Twenty percent of all cases were registered this January alone. There have been 195 dead in New York City from among 526 victims. Of all serious AIDS cases, 47.3 percent are in the New York metropolitan area.
The AIDS organizations that were created in the wake of the illness are some of the most incredible and impressive community organizations I've ever heard of, on par with the Underground Railroad. I often have occasion to walk past mortuaries in The Castro in San Francisco and it brings a tear to my eye what the walls of those places could say. I can't imagine what it was like for the gay community to have to figure all of this out for themselves while their friends and lovers are dying all around them. There should be national recognition of these people, and I'm pretty sure the Presidential Medal of Freedom should be involved.
posted by rhizome at 12:39 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 12:39 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
The Reagan administration's response to the AIDS crisis
posted by lalochezia at 1:01 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 1:01 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
The lionizing of Larry Kramer is so irritating to me. Yes, he absolutely had some great ideas. He also had some shitty, stupid and worthless ideas, just like everyone else. In addition to being a hero, Larry is an attention whore and a drama magnet and there are thousands of other heroes who did more in relative secrecy with no kudos, no Tony awards, no guest authorships and no galas. But all we hear about is Larry and all of his sacrifices.
Larry called the organization I worked for equivalent to Auschwitz. He said:
"...organizations like GMHC and APLA are indeed our enemies. They're our exterminators. GMHC is our Dachau and APLA is our Auschwitz - the places we send all our "Jews" so that they can be put to death quietly, so that no one can hear our agonizing screams in the dead of night. These AIDS organizations are our censors, our thought police, our SS....They tranquilize the infected lest the rest of the world hear or see anything too uncomfortable or too embarrassing.
The boards, the executive directors, the management of these organizations are our Himmlers and Gorings, our Ilse Kochs. The endless stream of volunteers are their stormtroopers."
Fuck you. We were providing access to the only treatments available and dental care and hospice services and groceries, but he accused us of marching people into ovens. We should have left people to die in their own filth in pain and starvation and fungal infections eating their bodies from the inside out?
GMHC was a great organization. Screw Larry Kramer.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:07 PM on August 12, 2016 [15 favorites]
Larry called the organization I worked for equivalent to Auschwitz. He said:
"...organizations like GMHC and APLA are indeed our enemies. They're our exterminators. GMHC is our Dachau and APLA is our Auschwitz - the places we send all our "Jews" so that they can be put to death quietly, so that no one can hear our agonizing screams in the dead of night. These AIDS organizations are our censors, our thought police, our SS....They tranquilize the infected lest the rest of the world hear or see anything too uncomfortable or too embarrassing.
The boards, the executive directors, the management of these organizations are our Himmlers and Gorings, our Ilse Kochs. The endless stream of volunteers are their stormtroopers."
Fuck you. We were providing access to the only treatments available and dental care and hospice services and groceries, but he accused us of marching people into ovens. We should have left people to die in their own filth in pain and starvation and fungal infections eating their bodies from the inside out?
GMHC was a great organization. Screw Larry Kramer.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:07 PM on August 12, 2016 [15 favorites]
Great post, thanks.
I'm about to go through all the links, but I wanted to include a (related) great article I read a few years back which really stuck with me - Why Did AIDS Ravage the U.S. More Than Any Other Developed Country? Here's the Mefi thread where we discussed it.
posted by triggerfinger at 1:14 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm about to go through all the links, but I wanted to include a (related) great article I read a few years back which really stuck with me - Why Did AIDS Ravage the U.S. More Than Any Other Developed Country? Here's the Mefi thread where we discussed it.
posted by triggerfinger at 1:14 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
GMHC was a great organization. Screw Larry Kramer.
GMHC doesn't exist without Larry Kramer. Millions of people are still alive because Larry Kramer had the guts to suggest that people stop going to bath houses and stop having unprotected sex until the doctors could do their work and figure out what the hell was happening.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:15 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
GMHC doesn't exist without Larry Kramer. Millions of people are still alive because Larry Kramer had the guts to suggest that people stop going to bath houses and stop having unprotected sex until the doctors could do their work and figure out what the hell was happening.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:15 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
People are still alive because Michael Callen had the guts to put out a brochure, people are still alive because Michael Gottlieb finally wrote up a report. People are still alive because Mathilde Krim took it seriously. People are still alive because Jewel and Rue Thais-Williams gave a shit about people of color.
There are other heroes who didn't call me Ilse Koch.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:29 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
There are other heroes who didn't call me Ilse Koch.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:29 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
I don't mean to talk out of school, but the term "erasure" comes to mind.
posted by rhizome at 1:34 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by rhizome at 1:34 PM on August 12, 2016
Obviously, Kramer was one of many. But AIDS would have been a much worse epidemic without him.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:40 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:40 PM on August 12, 2016
It would be a lot easier to give props to Larry Kramer if he hadn't spent the last twenty-five-plus years crowing about how desperately important he was and/or should have been, from the asinine self-glorifying screed of Reports From The Holocaust, a wretched little book I had to read in my literature of AIDS course in college back in '93 or '94, to the still-screedy old-man-with-a-rake epic that was 2005's The Tragedy Of Today's Gays. Yeah, I get that he was important in a key moment, but just like Allen Ginsburg's elitist latter-days NAMBLA-celebration and Randy Shilts ultra-destructive "Patient Zero" nonsense, it's possible for heroes to turn to shit, too.
posted by sonascope at 2:08 PM on August 12, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by sonascope at 2:08 PM on August 12, 2016 [11 favorites]
I agree 110%, but they did do their heroic turn just the same. Credit where due, though it's a shame what some people do with the sociopolitical capital they earn.
Thank you for the backstory on the intervening years.
posted by rhizome at 3:15 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Thank you for the backstory on the intervening years.
posted by rhizome at 3:15 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
One last thing I have to get off my chest. After 24 years, I'm still not sure what Larry would have had us do differently. Did he really think that we should have shut down the organizations and allow the hungry to starve? Should we have allowed those who were too disoriented to drive to try to figure out their own disability insurance? Should we have sent every client with wasting syndrome to attempt to protest rather than giving them Ensure? What, Larry? What would you have had us do differently with the diaper-clad, bleeding, half-blind skeletal wraiths of formerly beautiful men and women that stumbled through our doors?
posted by Sophie1 at 4:41 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by Sophie1 at 4:41 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
The Reagan administration's response to the AIDS crisis
Hating someone is a very heavy load to carry around with you. It saps your strength, takes up room in your brain etc etc etc and eventually, it'll kill you.
That said, I fucking hate RR, his fucking wife and everyone that was connected with them. If I could get near it, I'd piss on his grave. Somehow I managed to turn the hate into activism and volunteering with HIV/AIDS organizations. Been doing it for years and I'll continue to do it for years to come. That, I believe saved my life. And doing what the docs told me to do. And using my RR/Nancy dart board.
Bless the GMHC and all who support it
posted by james33 at 5:37 AM on August 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
Hating someone is a very heavy load to carry around with you. It saps your strength, takes up room in your brain etc etc etc and eventually, it'll kill you.
That said, I fucking hate RR, his fucking wife and everyone that was connected with them. If I could get near it, I'd piss on his grave. Somehow I managed to turn the hate into activism and volunteering with HIV/AIDS organizations. Been doing it for years and I'll continue to do it for years to come. That, I believe saved my life. And doing what the docs told me to do. And using my RR/Nancy dart board.
Bless the GMHC and all who support it
posted by james33 at 5:37 AM on August 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
Millions of people are still alive because Larry Kramer had the guts to suggest that people stop going to bath houses
Yeah, there's been quite a bit of research since about whether the bath houses needed to be shut down and the answer's actually murkier than this.
posted by listen, lady at 7:36 AM on August 13, 2016
Yeah, there's been quite a bit of research since about whether the bath houses needed to be shut down and the answer's actually murkier than this.
posted by listen, lady at 7:36 AM on August 13, 2016
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posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:15 PM on August 12, 2016