From the Advocate magazine in partnership with Glad, this is LGBTQ and A.

I'm Jeffrey Masters, and on the podcast recently, we've been talking a lot about HIV,

with people like Peter Staley, Sarah Schulman, Anne Northrop,

and today I wanted to continue and expand on those conversations by

bringing you an episode of Making Gay History featuring Larry Kramer. Making Gay History,

if you don't know, is an incredible podcast hosted by someone who's become a dear, dear friend

that is Eric Marcus. Eric got to interview Larry Kramer back in January of

1989. This interview really shows his softer side in a way that I find extremely compelling.

He ends the interview by saying that he loves being gay. Even with everything going on with HIV,

even with the suicidal ideation you'll hear him talk about, heads up there.

Even with all of that, he still calls being gay a wonderful, wonderful thing.

So if you enjoy our podcast, I think you will also enjoy Making Gay History.

And without further ado, let's hear it.

I'm Eric Marcus, and this is Making Gay History.

If you've heard of Larry Kramer, then his reputation as a passionate activist with high expectations and a short fuse probably precedes him.

If you don't know him, Larry is famous for being one of the first civilians to sound the alarm even before AIDS was called AIDS and became a catastrophic worldwide epidemic that has swept away millions of lives. Back in the early 80s, Larry earned more than a few

enemies because of his calls for gay men to cool it with their sex lives. Even before the virus that

causes AIDS was discovered, it was clear to Larry and many others that it was a sexually

transmitted disease. Coming on the heels of 1970s gay liberation and newfound sexual freedom,

almost no one wanted to hear an angry middle-aged man tell them that they had to stop having sex,

that it was a matter of life and death. Before the AIDS crisis, Larry was best known

for his work as a screenwriter and author. He wrote the Oscar-nominated 1969 screenplay for

...