Decades before Dr. Anthony S. Fauci became a household name during the coronavirus pandemic, one of his detractors wrote that he was “a murderer” and “a liar” who “should be put before a firing squad.”The man behind those words was Larry Kramer, the argumentative writer and activist who helped shape the modern gay rights movement during the AIDS crisis and who died in May 2020 at 84.
On Monday evening, at a memorial for Mr. Kramer at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village, Dr. Fauci was among the speakers.
The second he strode onto the stage, people applauded.
In his speech, Dr. Fauci described his long, complicated relationship with Mr. Kramer, starting with the fiery words that appeared in the The San Francisco Examiner in 1988, when he was four years into his nearly four-decade tenure as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
At the time, Mr. Kramer blamed Dr. Fauci for the Reagan administration's tepid response to a disease that had claimed tens of thousands of lives in the United States by then.
Persons:
Anthony S, Fauci, ”, Larry Kramer, Kramer, Lucille Lortel, strode, Dr, Reagan
Organizations:
San Francisco Examiner, National Institute of Allergy
Locations:
West, United States