The problem with gay men today

To say Larry Kramer is polarizing is like saying Rush Limbaugh is a little bit conservative. The Pulitzer-nominated playwright, screenwriter, author and activist has been one of the most controversial figures in American gay life over the past 30 years.

He first incensed gay men in 1978 with Faggots, his eerily prescient novel that critiqued the gay community's culture of promiscuity. And as a co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis and the founder of ACT UP, the influential AIDS activist group, he became one of the most strident and passionate voices in the early years of the AIDS crisis. While making countless enemies, most notably New York Mayor Ed Koch, he was one of the people most responsible for drawing attention to the disease.

Over the last decade and a half, as AIDS has transitioned from a death sentence to largely treatable and gay culture has transitioned from the margins to somewhere closer to the mainstream, Kramer has remained (almost) as angry as ever. In 2005, he published "The Tragedy of Today's Gays," a transcript of a speech in which he attacked the younger generation of gay men for their apathy over gay causes and accused them of condemning their "predecessors to nonexistence."

Next week, Kramer's politics will get another turn in the spotlight when his 1985 play, The Normal Heart, opens on Broadway for the very first time. The largely autobiographical story centers on a group of gay men in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and stars Joe Mantello as Ned Weeks, a Kramer-esque activist desperately trying to draw attention to the plague, alongside a cast that includes Ellen Barkin, Lee Pace and The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons. The play remains a highly effective, moving work that brutally conveys the desperation and terror that accompanied the emergence of AIDS. But nowadays, it also doubles as a history lesson for people who grew up long after the first wave -- a role that Kramer sees as vital.

Salon spoke to Larry Kramer in his New York apartment about the importance of The Normal Heart, iPhone's Grindr app and the problem with young gay men.

What do you think young people should take away from the play?

It's our history. We're gay. This was part of our history. This was the most horrible thing the gay population ever lived through. And yet it also represented -- later on, with ACT UP, and the getting of AIDS drugs -- the most spectacular achievement the gay population ever had. We gays did that.

I don't know why so many gay men don't want to know their history. I don't know why they turned their back on the older generation as if they don't want to have anything to do with them. I would like us to get beyond that.

You seem to have some anger at the young gay population.
No more than the old gay population. I'm an across-the-board person. We have responsibilities toward each other, as family, as brothers and sisters. We're all in this together. ACT UP was the most moving experience I ever had in my life. We were sick and dying and that gave everything a special glow of importance, but it showed us what we were capable of if we did do it.

More of this incredibly candid interview can be read here.