Portal:LGBT/Selected biography/11

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Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935 in Bridgeport, Connecticut), is an American playwright, author, public health advocate and gay rights activist. He was nominated for an Academy Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was twice a recipient of an Obie Award. In response to the AIDS crisis he founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, which became the largest organization of its kind in the world. He wrote The Normal Heart, the first serious artistic examination of the AIDS crisis. He later founded ACT UP, a protest organization widely credited with having changed public health policy and the public's awareness of HIV and AIDS. He lives in New York City and Connecticut.

Kramer was a second child that his parents did not want. He enrolled in Yale where, in 1953, he tried to kill himself by overdosing on aspirin. The attempt was because he thought he was the "only gay student on campus," and the experience left him determined to explore his sexuality and set him on the path to fighting for gay people's worth. (MORE...)