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for one or the other—I sort of let that moment slip. I don’t know that I could have turned it into anything more than what it was turned into. But I do feel in some way that I have failed. . . . You say one person is dying every minute, or 100,000 are going to die next year, or 100 million are going to die by the turn of the century. It doesn’t seem to scare anybody. After a while, you have to say, I really think this is being allowed to happen. You really have to say this is genocide. q: You have expressed strong feelings that people be open about being gay. For real progress on the AIDS front, is it necessary for people with the disease to also be public about that? kramer: I think it would make it a lot easier, especially if people in power who are HIV-positive or who have AIDS were to do so. But I don’t know that it’s ever going to happen. We just have to keep Wghting. Politicians only respect one thing, and that’s numbers and pressure. The gay community and the AIDS communities—and they’re not necessarily the same communities—haven’t been able to capitalize on that. So I tend to be very harsh on those of us who aren’t in this Wght in a confrontational way. I’ve been very critical of the gay community—especially the metropolitan gay communities—where it’s not so diªcult to be, if not out of the closet, certainly an active person politically. So one wonders whether there’s a death wish. People participate in their own genocide. An Interview with Urvashi Vaid, Author, Executive Director, and Foundation Leader in the Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement Anne-Marie Cusac march 1996 q: You talk about the gay and lesbian movement as transformative and redemptive. What do you mean by that? urvashi vaid: The redemptive potential of gay and lesbian sexuality is that it broadens and opens up gender rigidity. I don’t think everybody should be straight or gay. And I don’t think everybody should be gay at all, or will be. Some people are heterosexual. Some people are bisexual. And if sexuality were freed, truly freed, people would Wnd their own comfort level with what they want to be. I think gay relationships are really egalitarian, and they’re refreshing in the context of the sexism of the world. We shouldn’t give that up. And I also don’t think we should give up the sexual wildness in our relationships. I’m in a monogamous relationship, so I’m not talking about monogamy/non-monogamy. But there’s a way that we, by being conscious of sexuality and ourselves as sexual beings because we’re gay, keep it really fresh. Cusac / Interview with Urvashi Vaid 139 q: Is that what you’re talking about in your book when you talk about joy? vaid: Yes, I mean pleasure. I think gayness is about pleasure and pursuing pleasure. And that can be hedonistic, in the sense of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Or it can be moral, in the sense that it’s eros, which has a moral dimension, which is about aªrming life. Our relationships extend the deWnition of family. They don’t undermine it or threaten it; they actually broaden it and bolster it beyond bloodlines. Family has always been tied to blood because of the whole inheritance thing, the need to protect private property. And so, gayness comes along and redeWnes family beyond this economic realm of inheritance and blood into this other emotional commitment and responsibility realm. I have a gay and lesbian family of friends— straight friends, gay friends, their kids—that to me is as important and strong and part of me as my sisters and their kids and brothers-in-law. q: And it has the potential to deWne family beyond national boundaries and racial boundaries, too? vaid: Exactly, totally. The friendship circles that two people bring into each other’s lives are probably more important than their so-called family. Gayness deWnes friends as family. And it also has a very community-minded deWnition of family. Gay people have a strong sense of responsibility to community that comes out of having to create institutions to take care of our own, but which is exactly the sense of civic community and civic responsibility...

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