Larry Kramer, "ACT UP" AIDS activist, dies at 84 [View all]

Larry Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised theatergoers’ consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early years of the epidemic, has died at 84.

Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press. Kramer’s husband, David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died Wednesday of pneumonia.

“We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His anger was needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to AIDS were being ignored by the American government,” said Elton John in a statement.

Kramer, who wrote “The Normal Heart” and founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or “ACT UP”, lost his lover to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus. He also suffered from hepatitis B and received a liver transplant in 2001 because the virus had caused liver failure.

https://apnews.com/9525f22e3d9c78fc46378a060bf40f36