William James Kraus (June 26, 1947 – January 11, 1986) was an American gay-rights and AIDS activist as well as a congressional aide who served as liaison between the San Francisco gay community and its two successive US Representatives in the early 1980s.

Early years

Kraus was born in

Fort Mitchell, Kentucky Fort Mitchell is a home rule-class city in Kenton County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 8,702 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area. History Fort Mitchell was the site of one of seven Civil War fortifi ...

. His father died when he was in his early teens. Kraus was a 1965 graduate of St. Xavier High School in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, Ohio and was a

national merit scholar The National Merit Scholarship Program is a United States academic scholarship competition for recognition and university scholarships administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), a privately funded, not-for-profit organizati ...

. He attended

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

for a semester and then

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in history and master's degree in political science. He went on to become an aide to U.S. Representatives

Phillip Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...

and

Sala Burton Sala Burton (née Galante; April 1, 1925 – February 1, 1987) was a Polish-born American politician who served as a United States Representative from California from 1983 until her death from colon cancer in Washington, D. C., in 1987. Early ...

Political career and AIDS activist

Kraus moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in 1970 where he learned to practice politics from the Castro camera store owner and later City Supervisor

Harvey Milk Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in ...

, who was among the first openly

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

elected officials in the United States. After Milk's assassination in 1978, he helped

Harry Britt Harry Britt (June 8, 1938 – June 24, 2020) was an American political activist and politician in San Francisco. Britt was involved during the late-1960s in the civil rights movement when he was a Methodist minister in Chicago. He was first appoi ...

to be elected as Milk's successor on the City Council. Kraus later became president of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club. Kraus accepted a job as liaison to the gay community for US Congressman

Phillip Burton Phillip Burton (June 1, 1926 – April 10, 1983) was an American politician and attorney who served as a United States representative from California from 1964 until his death in 1983. A Democrat, he was instrumental in creating the Golden Gate ...

and, after Burton's death in 1983, to his widow

who was elected to succeed her husband. Together, they worked on legislation to authorize funding to fight the AIDS epidemic. Through the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, Kraus conducted a " safe sex" campaign, attempting to bring awareness to the gay community of the dangers of unsafe sexual practices. Part of his campaign was to urge the closing of San Francisco's

gay bathhouse A gay bathhouse, also known as a gay sauna or a gay steambath (uncommonly known as a gay spa), is a commercial space for gay, bisexual, and other men to have sex with men. In gay slang, a bathhouse may be called just "the baths", "the sauna", ...

s, a recommendation that was severely criticized by some in the city's gay community who called Kraus a "sexual Nazi" for viewing the bathhouses as a problem. Kraus was himself diagnosed with the disease in October 1984. He traveled to Paris to be treated with the drug HPA-23, believed at the time to boost the immune systems of AIDS patients. In Kraus' case, it proved useless. He was in Paris when actor

Rock Hudson Rock Hudson (born Roy Harold Scherer Jr.; November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) was an American actor. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. A prominent heartthrob in the Golde ...

arrived to pursue the same treatment. When it became clear the drug had failed, Kraus returned home to San Francisco where he died on January 11, 1986, at the age of 38. After his death, his mother worked to continue his activism and raise awareness about AIDS.

Media

Kraus appears in the 1984

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

The Times of Harvey Milk ''The Times of Harvey Milk'' is a 1984 American documentary film that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein, ...

''. He was also a central figure in

Randy Shilts Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both '' The Advocate'' and the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', as wel ...

' book ''

And the Band Played On ''And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic'' is a 1987 book by ''San Francisco Chronicle'' journalist Randy Shilts. The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immun ...

'' about the early response to the AIDS epidemic. In 1993, the book was adapted into the HBO film of the same name, with actor Ian McKellen playing Kraus. The film dramatized, with some artistic license, both the book and real events in the life of Kraus.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kraus, Bill LGBT rights activists from the United States HIV/AIDS activists 1947 births 1986 deaths AIDS-related deaths in California United States congressional aides St. Xavier High School (Ohio) alumni Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni LGBT people from Kentucky Radical Faeries members 20th-century LGBT people