On the same sweltering Dallas day that later found him screaming at a crowd of gay revelers, I saw Larry Kramer offer water to a horse.
That was at the start of the city’s 2009 Pride parade, in which Mr. Kramer, the honorary grand marshal, was drawn along the route in a flower-bedecked open carriage, looking like a blissed-out maharajah. “But won’t the horse be thirsty?” he worried. “Let’s see if he’ll drink something.”
The horse was confused, and so was I. Mr. Kramer, who died on Wednesday at 84, was far better known as an apostle of anger than a pussycat. In his many careers — activist, journalist, playwright, novelist, curmudgeon — he had served as a kind of reverse lightning rod, drawing out homophobia from American society to light up the sky with danger.
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