LGBT-Today

WASHINGTON – The White House Friday released a list of another ten nominees to serve in key roles it is forwarding to the U.S. Senate. Included in the list were two more LGBTQ folks as nominees including Scott Miller, Nominee for Ambassador to the Swiss Confederation and to the Principality of Liechtenstein and Todd Harper, Nominee for Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration. Losangelesblade.com

"Larry Kramer is one of America's most valuable troublemakers. I hope he never lowers his voice."
- Susan Sontag
Larry Kramer, RIP. An iconic AIDS activist and an in-your-face q***r advocate passes away.
He was an inspiration to me and to many other AIDS educators at the height of the AIDS pandemic.
I remember Larry from early non-activist works such as 'Faggots', a brilliant evocation of the promiscuous '70s, and a s*xually explicit capture of the compulsive, panting drivenness of the o**y scene in Manhattan and Fire Island back then.
Larry's switch to an activist role happened with the AIDS crisis.
Passionately concerned about the homophobic hatred behind the stigma surrounding HIV disease, Larry spoke out against the callousness of the US government and culture that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
He founded Gay Men's Health Crisis in the early '80s, and ACT UP in 1987.
This led to the openly confrontational group Q***r Nation which was a militant organization that integrated the LGBT spectrum in a rainbow cluster called 'q***r' and staged love-ins and protests in malls, streets, and other straight centers of power.
Larry's pioneering voice stimulated a whole culture of protest that eventually woke up a sluggish US government and stimulated research that led to the discovery of the 'AIDS cocktail', the three-drug combo that is an effective treatment of HIV disease.
The panicked scapegoating anxiety caused by the Coronavirus is very similar in some ways to the reaction to the HIV crisis of the '80s and '90s, except it goes much further. Whereas HIV disease rendered s*x iffy and highly risky except with condoms, Covid-19 renders the very physical presence of the Other as a risk. Thus, a pathological masked phobia of the Other comes with this territory.
On the other hand, because HIV was stigmatized a 'gay' disease, it was safely ghettoized and the search for a vaccine/cure was callously put on the back burner for years.
By contrast, the Corona crisis is seen as everybody's problem--hence the feverish race for a vaccine and cures.
Larry, may you be free of sorrow, may you be at peace and in a state of joy.
--Raj Ayyar