Larry Kramer has been flexing his activist muscle even more than usual lately. Last week he and others from ACT UP were demonstrating in the street against Gen. Peter Pace's anti-gay rhetoric. He also gave an impassioned Kramer-style state of the gay movement speech at the LGBT Center in New York in which he lambasted gays for being too passive.

Today, Kramer lets his anger rip in a strongly worded editorial in the L.A. Times. In 'Why Do Straights Hate Gays?' Kramer directs his wrath and exasperation directly at heterosexuals and charges them not only with hating gays but being complicit in keeping us down. He demands answers on issues of hate crimes protections, spousal-survivor benefits/law, ignoring the persecution of gays overseas and more. After listing recent examples of homophobia in public discourse (Pace, Coulter, et al), he states:
"And there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come. If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is ...

... Why do you [straight people] hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much change coming.

I think your hate is evil."

Today's L.A. Times piece is classic Kramer:

In your face, no holds-barred, nail-spittingly angry words meant to wake people up. Larry Kramer doesn't push the envelope so much as he kicks it off the desk, stomps up and down on it and then expects you to eat it. Which is why people like Larry Kramer are important for gay rights.

The GLBT community's affection for Larry Kramer ranges from love and repect to vehement disdain and dismissal. As in the case of Rosie O'Donnell, it all depends who you ask. For my money, Kramer holds a place of honor in our community as a rabel-rouser extraordinaire. We need voices that will speak in the extreme. Without Kramer's anger, the battle to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s would have been very different. His brand of passion is a necessary ingredient in all struggles that seek to upset the status quo.

If you have a problem with the way he ruffles people's feathers, I'm here to say that we need him as much as we need the nice gay folks in suits who work the halls of Congress and state houses, or the armchair activists who write checks to gay groups and letters to companies who don't treat gays equally, or the nice gay guy or lesbian who doesn't push buttons but chooses to win people over by being nice and "normal." I think of Larry Kramer as the Special Forces of the gay movement: He shoots to kill.

Although I agree with many of his points, my problem with Kramer's piece in today's newspaper is that he comes off sounding whiney rather than forceful, and I rather doubt that his accusatory tone will be very well tolerated or understood by the very audience he's addressing, i.e., straight people. Plenty of gay people don't want to hear what he has to say -- primarily because Kramer's accusations about how uninvolved most gays are in the fight for GLBT rights hit a little too close to home (we've got vacations to plan!) -- I can't imagine how straight America will even begin to know how to process his claims. Seventy percent of persuasion is knowing your audience, and in this case I think Kramer's rant won't do much to change hearts and minds.

But I'm still glad Larry Kramer raises hell.