Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935 – May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist.

Kramer grew frustrated with bureaucratic paralysis and the apathy of gay men to the AIDS crisis, and wished to engage in further action than the social services GMHC provided.

ACT UP has been widely credited with changing public health policy and the perception of people living with AIDS, and with raising awareness of HIV and AIDS-related diseases.

[12] Kramer became involved with movie production at age 23 by taking a job as a Teletype operator at Columbia Pictures, agreeing to the position only because the machine was across the hall from the president's office.

Kramer called it a play about "cowardice and the inability of some men to grow up, leave the emotional bondage of male collegiate camaraderie, and assume adult responsibilities".

In Faggots, the primary character was modeled on himself, a man who is unable to find love while encountering the drugs and emotionless sex in the trendy bars and discos.

[21] In 2000, Reynolds Price wrote that the novel's lasting relevance is that "anyone who searches out present-day responses on the Internet will quickly find that the wounds inflicted by Faggots are burning still".

"Faggots struck a chord," wrote Andrew Sullivan, "It exuded a sense that gay men could do better if they understood themselves as fully human, if they could shed their self-loathing and self-deception...."[22] While living on Fire Island in the 1970s, Kramer had no intention of getting involved in political activism.

[24][25][26] The next year, they named themselves the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and became the primary organization to raise funds for and provide services to people stricken with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the New York area.

Mayor Ed Koch became a particular target for Kramer, as did the behavior of gay men, before the nature of how the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was transmitted was understood.

Michael Specter wrote in The New Yorker, "it was a five-thousand-word screed that accused nearly everyone connected with health care in America – officials at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, researchers at the National Institutes of Health, in Washington D.C., doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in Manhattan, and local politicians (particularly Mayor Ed Koch) – of refusing to acknowledge the implications of the nascent AIDS epidemic.

[30] Tony Kushner, who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Angels in America about the impact of AIDS in the United States, described the essay as "With that one piece, Larry changed my world.

[32] He threw a drink in the face of Republican fundraiser Terry Dolan during a party and screamed at him for having affairs with men but using the fear of homosexuality to raise money for conservative causes.

[34] In 1990, Kramer appeared in Rosa von Praunheim 's award-winning film Positive about the fight of activists in New York City for AIDS-education and the rights of HIV infected people.

[38][39] Actors following Davis who have portrayed Kramer's alter ego Ned Weeks include; Joel Grey, Richard Dreyfuss (in Los Angeles), Martin Sheen (at the Royal Court in London), Tom Hulce and then John Shea in the West End, Raul Esparza in a highly acclaimed 2004 revival at the Public Theater, and most recently Joe Mantello on Broadway at the Golden Theater.

Upon seeing the production of The Normal Heart, Naomi Wolf commented, "No one else on the left at that time ... ever used the moral framework that is so much a part of Kramer's voice, and that the right has coopted so skillfully.

Conscience, responsibility, calling; truth and lies, clarity of purpose or abandonment of one's moral calling; loyalty and betrayal ..."[40] In a review for The New York Times, Frank Rich said: He accuses the governmental, medical and press establishments of foot-dragging in combating the disease—especially in the early days of its outbreak, when much of the play is set—and he is even tougher on homosexual leaders who, in his view, were either too cowardly or too mesmerized by the ideology of sexual liberation to get the story out.

It starred Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer (who won a Golden Globe Award for his performance), Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Julia Roberts, Joe Mantello, Jonathan Groff, and BD Wong.

This distrust of the industry was demonstrated in Kramer's final public statement about curing AIDS, via a question posed to Joe Biden at a town hall during the 2020 presidential campaign, in which he accused pharmaceutical companies of "profit[ing] irrationally from HIV-positive Americans who depend on the medications forever," and asking "as president, how would you finance a CURE and scale back the avarice of pharmaceutical companies.

"[50] First published in 1989, and later expanded and republished in 1994, Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist contains a diverse selection of the non-fiction writings of Larry Kramer focused on AIDS activism and LGBT civil rights, including letters to the editor and speeches, which document his time spent at Gay Men's Health Crisis, ACT UP, and beyond, with the updated edition being organised chronologically from 1978 to 1993.

[55] The Destiny of Me picks up where The Normal Heart left off, following Ned Weeks as he continues his journey fighting those whose complacency or will impede the discovery of a cure for a disease from which he suffers.

The original production starred John Cameron Mitchell, "a young actor who dominates the show with a performance at once ethereal and magnetic", according to The New York Times reviewer Frank Rich.

Most powerful, Rich wrote, was the thematic question Kramer posed to himself: "Why was he of all people destined to scream bloody murder with the aim of altering the destiny of the human race?

[47] Kramer believed that Bush was re-elected largely because of his opposition to same-sex marriage, and found it inconceivable that voters would respond so strongly to that issue when there were so many more pressing ones: Almost 60 million people whom we live and work with every day think we are immoral.

[61]Around 1981,[62] Kramer began researching and writing a manuscript called The American People: A History, an ambitious historical work that begins in the Stone Age and continues into the present.

In 2002, Will Schwalbe, editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books – the only man to have read the entire manuscript to that date – said, "He has set himself the hugest of tasks," and he described it as "staggering, brilliant, funny, and harrowing.

In The New York Times Book Review, Dwight Garner wrote, "I wish I could report that The American People, Volume 1 had power to match its scope.

"[6] In 2001, both sides settled upon establishing the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, which would include visiting professors and a program of conferences, guest speakers and other events.

In the 1980s, Arthur refused Larry's request for Kramer Levin to represent the fledgling Gay Men's Health Crisis, blaming the need to clear it with his firm's intake committee.

In 1992, after Colorado voters endorsed Amendment 2, an anti-gay rights referendum, Larry supported a boycott of the state, while Arthur refused to cancel a ski trip to Aspen.