Larry Kramer – writer, playwright, activist, and author of the 1985 play The Normal Heart – has been a polarising figure in queer politics.
On the one hand, his activist energy in the early years of HIV/AIDS helped to galvanise community action, first in his own New York and later around the world. He co-founded two important organisations in the fight against AIDS: Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1981 and, in 1987, the much more activist and campaigning AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
