Arnie Kantrowitz

Kantrowitz lived in New York City with his life partner, Lawrence D. Mass, a physician and writer. He died from complications of COVID-19 at a rehabilitation center in Manhattan on January 21, 2022, at the age of 81.

In 2009, Kantrowitz was elected grand marshal of the Staten Island Gay Pride parade and was awarded a testimonial citation from the New York State Assembly in recognition of his decades of gay activism. His personal papers for the years 1951 to 2008 are on deposit with the New York Public Library.

Kantrowitz' second book, a biography of poet Walt Whitman, called Walt Whitman: Gay and Lesbian Writers, appeared in 2005 as part of the Stonewall Inn Classics series on the lives of gay and lesbian writers published by Chelsea House Publishers/St. Martin's Press.

In October 1985, Kantrowitz joined Gregory Kolovakis, Darrell Yates-Rist, Vito Russo, Jim Owles, Allen Barnett and Barry Adkins in helping to form the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Defamation League, renamed the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). The organization's original purpose was to respond to the inaccurate and slanderous portrayals of gay and lesbian people that were widespread in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

Kantrowitz's autobiography Under the Rainbow was published in 1977 and reprinted in 1978; a new edition appeared in 1996. It was one of the first autobiographies by a gay rights activist.

He came out as gay in 1970. He was an early secretary and later vice-president of the pioneering New York City group Gay Activists Alliance.

In the early 1970s, he was one of the first openly gay individuals to appear on popular radio and television shows, including those of Jack Paar, Geraldo Rivera, Bill Boggs and Sally Jesse Raphael. He also appeared in several documentary films, including After Stonewall (1999), Positive (1990), Gay Sex in the 70s (2005), and Vito (2011).

He taught at the State University of New York College at Cortland from 1963 to 1965 and then at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York from 1965 until he retired in 2006. Kantrowitz was among the first to teach courses in gay literature, beginning in 1973 with "Homosexuals and Literature." He became chairman of the English department in 1999.

Kantrowitz was born in Newark, New Jersey, and graduated from Weequahic High School, before moving to nearby Elizabeth with his mother and siblings after his parents divorced. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University–Newark (1961); an M.A. in English Literature from New York University (1963); and completed coursework toward a Ph.D. at New York University.

Arnie Kantrowitz (November 26, 1940 – January 21, 2022) was an American LGBT activist and college professor. He authored two books and contributed articles, essays, poems and short fiction to magazines, newspapers and anthologies.