John Lauritsen

John Lauritsen in 2019

John Lauritsen (5 March 1939 – 5 March 2022) was a gay rights activist, journalist and author.[1][2][3][4][5]

Lauritsen was born and raised in Nebraska.[6] He received a baccalaureate degree from Harvard College in 1963, and spent most of his life as a market research analyst. Following his retirement, he became a full-time writer and publisher.[7] In 1982, he founded his own imprint, Pagan Press.[8][9][6]

With the emergence of the global AIDS pandemic in the early 1980s, Lauritsen became a prominent AIDS denialist.[10][11][12][13] He was an ardent critic of early anti-viral treatments for HIV, including azidothymidine (AZT). His column in the newspaper New York Native urged those with HIV or AIDS not to use AZT. He penned the book Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story which falsely claims AZT causes cancer in humans.[14][15]

His articles appeared in the New York Native, Gay Books Bulletin, Gay News (London), Civil Liberties Review, The Freethinker (London), Journal of Homosexuality, Christopher Street, Gay & Lesbian Humanist, and Gay & Lesbian Review.[6]

Lauritsen gained scholarly prominence by his claim, in the book The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, and academic articles, that the novel Frankenstein had been underrated and misinterpreted; that its central theme was male love; and that the real author was Percy Bysshe Shelley.[7] The claim was supported by Camille Paglia.[16]

He also believed biographers had falsified the lives of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and those of their circle (Thomas Medwin, Edward John Trelawny and Edward Ellerker Williams); that the group had been drawn together by their sexual affinities, and their homosexuality had been historically suppressed.[17][18] This theory he outlined in his book The Shelley-Byron Men: Lost Angels of a Ruined Paradise.

Lauritsen died suddenly on his 83rd birthday at his home in Dorchester, Massachusetts.[9][19]

Bibliography

  • The Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935). (1974)[20][21]
  • The AIDS War: Propaganda, profiteering, and genocide from the medical industrial complex. (1993)[22]
  • Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story. Foreword by Peter Duesberg. (1990)[23]
  • The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis. Edited with Ian Young. (1997)
  • Death Rush:Poppers & AIDS. (1998)[24]
  • A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love. (1998)
  • A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous. (2014)
  • The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein. (2007)[25][26][27]
  • Don Leon & Leon to Annabella. (2017)[28]
  • The Shelley-Byron Men: Lost Angels of a Ruined Paradise. (2017)

References

  1. ↑ "Gay Men and AIDS: Programmed to Die". Seattle Gay News. January 21, 1994. p. 19.
  2. ↑ "The AIDS dissidents". The Daily Telegraph. November 20, 1993.
  3. ↑ "The Growing Gay Backlash is Here". Daily News. October 7, 1980.
  4. ↑ Monteagudo, Jesse (August 11, 2017). "John Lauritsen: The Shelley-Byron Men". Seattle Gay News. p. 3.
  5. ↑ Bernadicou, August. "John Lauritsen: Interview". The LGBTQ History Project. The LGBTQ History Project. Retrieved February 5, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 https://web.archive.org/web/20240712202255/https://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/BIO.HTM
  7. 1 2 John Lauritsen, 'The True Author of Frankenstein', Academic Questions, National Association of Scholars (NAS) New York, Winter 2018,
  8. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240324194853/https://paganpressbooks.com/
  9. 1 2 Boston Writers SIG
  10. ↑ Jarry, Jonathan. "HIV/AIDS Denialism Is Back, Courtesy of Joe Rogan". Office for Science and Society. McGill University.
  11. ↑ "Dr. Anthony S. Fauci Should be Celebrated as a Public Health Hero, Not Harassed and Persecuted by Anti-Science Bigots". Treatmentactiongroup.org. Treatment action group.
  12. ↑ Murphy, Tim (March 29, 2023). "HIV/AIDS Activists Sound the Alarm About the Latest Book to Deny that HIV Causes AIDS". TheBody.com.
  13. ↑ "HIV Denialism and African Genocide - The Gay & Lesbian Review". glreview.org. The Gay and Lesbian Review.
  14. ↑ "Fact Sheet: Correcting the Record on HIV/AIDS Misinformation Online GLAAD". December 2, 2024.
  15. ↑ Garfield, Simon (May 1, 1993). "The rise and fall of AZT: It was the drug that had to work". The Independent.
  16. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110101040437/http://paganpressbooks.com/PAGLIA.HTM
  17. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20231214213859/http://paganpressbooks.com/BOOKLIST.HTM
  18. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240712211813/https://paganpressbooks.com/JESSESBM.HTM
  19. ↑ Hayekian, 'Tribute to John Lauritsen', Medium, 19 March 2022;
  20. ↑ Young, Allen (1974). "Book Review: The Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), by John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, 14 pp., published by the authors, 50¢". Insurgent Sociologist. 4 (4): 99–100. doi:10.1177/089692057400400419. ISSN 0047-0384.
  21. ↑ Weeks, Jeffrey (1976). "Review The Early Homosexual Rights Movement By John Lauritsen and David Thorstad". Gay Left. 2.
  22. ↑ Chappelle, Mike (January 1994). "'The AIDS War; Propaganda, profiteering and genocide from the medical-industrial complex'. John Lauritsen. Asklepious Press USA 1993, ISBN 0-943742-08-0". The Bloomsbury Review.
  23. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20230408202330/http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/POISON.PDF
  24. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240222203142/http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/POPBOOK.HTM
  25. ↑ Sadownick, Douglas (2007). "The Man Who Loved Frankenstein". The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. 14 (6).
  26. ↑ Greer, Germaine (April 9, 2007). "Yes, Frankenstein really was written by Mary Shelley. It's obvious - because the book is so bad". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved February 11, 2025.
  27. ↑ Paglia, Camille (March 14, 2007). "Hillary vs. Obama: It's a drawl!". Salon. Retrieved February 11, 2025.
  28. ↑ Endres, Nikolai (2019). "Don Leon & Leon to Annabella ed. by John Lauritsen". Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature. 135 (1): 105–107. doi:10.1353/vct.2019.0006. ISSN 2475-6741.
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