Larry Kramer, a trailblazing gay rights and AIDS activist, is dead at the age of 84. Kramer, who had various health complications through the years, has passed away from pneumonia.
Kramer, who founded both the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, was credited with shifting the national response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980's and '90s. He also went on to write the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “Women in Love.” For many, he known for his Tony Award-winning play, “The Normal Heart.”
He is survived by his husband, David Webster, and a community that would literally not be alive had it not been for his brand of ardent activism. As author Dan Savage notes, “Larry Kramer valued every gay life at a time when so many gay men had been rendered incapable of valuing our own lives. He ordered us to love ourselves and each other and to fight for our lives. He was a hero.”
Source: Daily Beast