Original subtitles

I'm so glad you arrived in time to film me

at the most humiliating low point imaginable of my entire existence.

I've spent 50 years drowning in pleasure,

more pleasure than most people ever experienced in a day,

and now that I'm like a monk trapped in a monastery,

here comes the film crew.

There is no way you can hear this.

No one knew my past.

I popped up out of nowhere,

and I was forever marked as like, you know,

a self-hating enemy to gay people.

- Great. - That's gonna come off.

All right. Don't!

I don't care. Butch. It's butch to be sloppy.

Don't film me smoking, 'cause I told my family I quit.

- Okay. - Fuck 'em.

I really don't feel comfortable telling you this.

I would make them get down on their knees and suck my di...

- I mean, I'm 51 years old, Daryl. - I know, I know.

- It's just, you know. - I know...

I can't think of anything more unsexual

than listening to some old fart

talk about how he got his dick sucked in 1979.

No, it's really interesting.

I really get under people's skin because I've broken every rule,

I've done everything my own way,

I've done everything you can do to kill yourself,

and I'm still standing.

Safe sex came about because of three people.

Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, who had the scientific background.

Michael Callen, who was a beloved activist, who really...

gay men connected to when he spoke

because he was so brutally honest.

And me, because I had the health and the anger

to stay on top of the two of them.

Joe, who was busy with patients.

Michael who was, you know, not in the best of health.

I had the energy and time

to make sure the words got on the page,

the writing got done, and the book got out.

It was Joe and Michael and Richard who walked in and said it.

They said directly to men that this was happening

and how to keep it from happening.

I think Richard and Michael knew what they were talking about.

They were speaking from the epicenter of the epidemic

and speaking truths that people didn't want to hear

and didn't want to listen to.

The idea that gay men would wear condoms was ludicrous in 1982.

They were using a...

...a vernacular, a vocabulary

that was very politically incorrect in terms of the moment.

No matter what, the idea of reducing exposure to fluids,

reducing exposure to fluids that may contain infectious agents,

both are really, you know, the cornerstones of safer sex.

I think people should know who Richard Berkowitz is,

and I should hope that Richard

will come out and say what it's done to his life.

What all of these people just, you know,

not wanting to accept what he had to say.

The frustration and how he dealt with it.

The first week that I had moved into my apartment,

you know, I suddenly felt like the kid in the proverbial candy store,

because I was 23 years old,

I had my own place in Manhattan,

and the city was exploding with sexual playgrounds.

I mean there were places to go and have sex

morning, noon, and night.

A lot of gay men who lived the lifestyle I did...

it was who they were, it was our identity.

It was what we lived for.

Gay liberation began about men loving men,

but it became about so many men, so little time.

And what that meant was, so much dick, so little time.

It got taken over by this explosion of commercial sex establishments

where the only thing that brought gay men together was sex.

One night, I was at the Rawhide Bar.

This was the beginning of the end.

And I met this really hot guy.

And we got it started.

We took one look at each other and we knew we were gonna walk out

and go home and have sex.

And just as we turned to leave the bar,

he said, "What is that bump under your ear?"

I had completely blocked it out of my mind.

And I could feel like the earth quaking all around me,

and I didn't know what to say.

And he said, "Listen, I think I'm gonna call it a night."

And I remember, like, leaning back on the Pac-Man machine

feeling like a fucking leper, like an abandoned leper,

and thinking, "Something's changing. Something bad is happening."

Atlanta, Georgia.

Doctors at the Center for Disease Control

sift through volumes of research data

as they close in the causes

of the mysterious and deadly epidemic known as AIDS.

Memphis, Tennessee.

A popular television evangelist preaches that the new epidemic

is a natural, inevitable result of sin.

incurable and, so far, 100 percent fatal

because of promiscuous homosexuality.

Washington, D.C.

20,000 gay men marched through the streets

to demand an increase in government spending

to fight the epidemic.

So far, over 800 people have died from the disease

and 70 percent of the victims have been homosexual or bisexual men.

At the very least, there should be a quarantine

of all homosexuals, drug abusers, and prostitutes

with the frank disease AIDS.

- Right now. - A quarantine?

A quarantine.

They should be confined to quarters or hospital if that is necessary.

AIDS was more complicated than just a new germ.

There may be a new germ. There may not be a new germ.

But there's a lot of things going on in an urban-gay-male lifestyle

that are bad for the immune system.

Let's look at what we know

and keep an open mind for what we have yet to discover.

But it was an indictment of urban promiscuity.

There is a new case and a half each day

in New York City alone.

Do you know what it's like to have 18 of your own friends

in a year and a half die?

Men who are at the height of their creative usefulness to society?

All men under 50 years old?

In one year, I am asked to live with the kind of problems...

or problems is the wrong word...

experiences that my mother, at 84 years old,

is now having to learn to live with when her friends are dying,

and I am only 47 years old.

Now, I don't think the straight community has any concept

of what it's like to be a gay man in this city.

It's like living in war time.

You don't know when the bomb is gonna fall.

Who's it gonna hit next?

A friend of mine that I had dinner with two months ago,

three weeks ago checks himself into the emergency room

at St. Vincent's Hospital

and in 10 days is dead.

He seemed perfectly healthy.

What is this mysterious thing that is in... who?

Do I have it?

This was a gay white man's disease,

and that straight people like myself didn't have to be bothered with it,

except with those of us who had loved ones who were dying.

There were a lot of gay men

who wanted the straight world and the media world

to believe that it was a virus that any of us could catch

and that it wasn't a direct reflection

on their sexual behavior or their lifestyle.

I do think it is gross irresponsibility

for homosexuals active who go to these bathhouses and the rest of it

to cry out that the government's got to do research to save us

when they continue indulging in the kind of activity

that spreads the disease.

It's the height of irresponsibility.

You've got to realize the atmosphere of the times.

You know, we were trying to get attention.

We were trying to get sympathy.

And you're not going to get sympathy easily by going out and saying,

"I've slept with 500 people.

That's why I've got it."

Well, I mean most people would say, "You deserve it," and, "Get lost!"

And that's what we were trying to prevent.

I was a pretty fucking angry 23-year-old.

I was politically angry.

I wanted America to accept gay rights overnight,

and I had absolutely no patience for the kind of time it takes

for social change to happen.

I grew in a family of Northeastern liberal Jewish Democrats,

and that provided very fertile ground

for my accepting of the whole gay-liberation movement,

because, you know, we were empathetic on social issues.

Someday, you'll see me on television.

For my good looks and my shape.

Anything you want to know.

What do you want to know?

But he didn't tell me everything.

Richard was a delight growing up.

He gave me absolutely no problems, and I had three sons.

They weren't bad either.

We weren't particularly wealthy.

We were kinda working class,

and we were a family of five living in a 41/2-room apartment.

And as the '60s were on,

and the Civil Rights Movement started to emerge

and the anti-war movement against Vietnam happened,

all of this was just grist for the mill,

for, like, our family dinner.

We were compassionate about... concerned for poor people.

We were working class ourselves.

You know, we were for Humphrey and Johnson and Kennedy.

I mean, Kennedy was really the one, you know,

because for family values in the early 1960s,

we consider the Kennedy family "family values."

We loved everybody,

and we felt that's the way to live.

And if anybody didn't have a place to stay,

they came and stayed with me.

In between my grandmother's death

and Kennedy's assassination,

which suddenly made it seem as if the entire world was in mourning,

something happened that I didn't understand

but it seemed to forever change the course of my life.

My aunt started taking me to Puerto Rico and Miami

on school vacations.

Somehow, being a thousand miles away from home

with men I'd never see again

and didn't know my mother or my father or my congregation,

I suddenly felt like, you know, "I can do this. I won't be found out.

It's just another form of masturbation,

and I want the blow job."

I did not like Richard being gay.

I don't like any of my sons to be gay.

But once I found out, I'm getting used to it.

The whole world is gay. We must be getting gay.

I was fascinated by the scene.

I was fascinated by the whole cruising thing.

I mean, I was 15 years old.

I was innocent as can be.

They were all coming after me,

but I went with who I wanted to go with,

I did what I wanted to do,

and I walked away when I wanted.

Richard had a wonderful time when he went there,

But that's not the only place he went to.

He went to other places.

I remember that very first day pacing the driveway,

waiting for my father to get home from work

so I could take the station wagon and go to Howard Johnson's.

If you're going there every night and just not knowing what to do

and being completely soaked in sexual desire and yearning

and absolutely terrified of the consequences

of being discovered here,

you know, it still didn't stop me from going back.

And it was like this moment where I said, you know,

"All my life I've tried to be a good son, a good student, a good Jew,

a good American, a good brother, a good everything.

This is bad, and it feels good."

The transgression of doing something so forbidden

that had the potential for so much desire,

so much sexual desire, you know?

When I go to college,

I'm not going to end up like one of these guys

cruising seedy parking lots all night.

I had no idea there were any other options.

And there weren't many other options in 1973.

"I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna find myself a wife,

I'm gonna get married.

So you know something?

Until I go away to college in September,

let me have my nine months

where I get this gay stuff out of my system."

It was the first year

that they had completely overhauled the curriculum

and replaced it with all these radical theories

about social psychology and the social construction of reality.

What is reality? It's man-made.

And the question is, if reality is man-made

and values are man-made,

why can't every person change?

You know, it was a period of activism,

it was a period of extreme hopes that you have

when you are an undergraduate in college,

and he wanted to make a statement, and he did.

I got swept up

into this whole Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem political thing.

I'm writing political things for the paper,

and I'm organizing marches and protesting.

You know, I finally felt like I'd come home.

I mean, there was an activism among the gay community,

but I think it was more urban.

It was certainly not at a campus level.

And I think one of the things that Rich did

was that he indeed took that on as a banner.

And that continued on for the second and/or third year,

with increments.

And there were a lot of homophobic acts that occurred,

and Rich took them on,

took them up in a public forum,

which would have been writing in the campus newspaper

and becoming known for that.

When the gay league at school declared a Gay Day,

a National Gay Day,

and the Deke fraternity, which was the frat for jocks,

to protest the Gay Day thing,

they hung an effigy from a tree on their lawn on College Avenue

with a pool stick impaled through it.

And on the front of the effigy, it said, "Back to your closet, homos."

And an the other side, it said, "The only good gay is a dead gay."

And Rich was very disturbed about it

and wanted to write about what it meant and to take 'em on.

So I ran up to the school paper and I thought,

"You know, I can either get Walter and Trish

to go down and join the lesbians on the stoop,

or I could write something."

He was very active in organizing student groups

to lead a march in protest

of what this effigy that had been hung on College Hall...

which was the main drag of Rutgers College at the time.

Hundreds of people marched in front of these frat...

this fraternity for these jocks, took the effigy down,

marched in circles, humiliated them,

made them retreat inside their frat house.

It was an act of valor.

It's not easy to do that, and Rich did.

It really was the first gay-rights demonstration

in New Jersey.

Sparked by my article.

The first week that I moved to Manhattan,

I went to the baths twice.

But since the one time I'd gone to the baths in college,

when I missed the last bus back to Rutgers,

I ended up staying overnight in a bathhouse.

One guy sucked me, and two days later,

I was at the school infirmary with a case of penile gonorrhea.

So I remember, when I moved here, being a little gun shy.

So I gave oral sex, but I wouldn't receive it.

And sure enough,

three days later, I woke up with piercing stomach cramps

and just...

I knew something was really wrong.

So I ran like a maniac down to Sheridan Square

to the Gay Men's Health Project, which is now that Chase building.

And it was an SDT clinic run by gay men for gay men.

And it was just by chance matching walk-in patients

who didn't have appointments

with whatever doctor was available at the moment

that my chart ended up in the hands of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend.

I had no idea that at that moment

I was meeting the man who would turn out to be my personal Moses.

Sonnabend was a research scientist.

He had actually been trained as a virologist and a microbiologist,

none of which I knew

when I was running to him to get my antibiotics all these years.

He was a lab scientist.

He had a background that was absolutely perfect for AIDS.

I think that one of the things that has made Joe

a different kind of doctor

is that he grew up in what was then Rhodesia,

now is Zimbabwe.

His mother and his aunt were both physicians who worked in the bush

and the circumstances of disease and infection

were very different in that environment,

but in some ways,

not unlike the peculiar ecosystem of gay-male sexual culture

in the late '70s and early '80s.

People came to him in the city.

Not very many people treated the diseases

that were being seen at that time.

I think the first AIDS-related publication he founded,

the journal AIDS.

The first AIDS-related litigation over civil rights issue

was when they tried to kick him out of his office.

Joe early on questioned the "one bug, one drug" approach to it,

which was how most of the money was spent.

Most of the activism was focused on the idea

that there was a single agent

and that it didn't have anything to do with any other lifestyle factors

or anything else.

It became necessary to say,

"Why is this disease new in all these different groups?"

And of course, I suppose the most simplistic

and easiest way to view this

is that there was a new biological agent

that was being transmitted from group to group.

Do you believe that?

No, of course not. I mean, it's absurd.

It's just totally absurd.

And it's based on a whole superstructure of conjecture.

You know, Sonnabend's idea that it's not a one-shot deal...

He said, "I don't know if there's a new virus.

There may be and there may not be.

But I can tell you this... this lifestyle, it's killing people."

Medical researchers seem to agree

that AIDS transmission in gay men

could be related to a sexually promiscuous lifestyle.

Is it a lifestyle issue?

I believe so, yes.

I think it's undoubted.

The disease in homosexual men

is the result of a cumulative process resulting from lifestyle exposures.

The one characteristic of this lifestyle is in fact

the promiscuous nature, the sexually promiscuous nature of it.

Promiscuity was a bad... not a bad...

it was a dangerous activity.

No judgment. It was no moral judgment.

It was just simply unhealthy under the circumstances.

Joe early on argued that it was multiple factors

that made someone sick.

Getting gonorrhea, getting syphilis, getting hepatitis,

getting all these things was a bad idea

because they could end up giving you this new disease.

Joe was saying that everything from multiple exposures

to sexually transmitted diseases, to sleep, to diet, to drug use,

all these things were influencing someone's susceptibility to disease.

And over time, that's been born out in all sorts of different ways.

Gay men that were into oral sex,

their immune systems were fine.

Gay men who were tops, their immune systems were fine.

Cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus,

all these sexually-transmitted virus infections...

these are not good for your health.

Running in here, getting antibiotics to go back to the baths...

this is not good for your health.

The drugs people are doing to have this amount of sex,

this kind of sex... this is not good for your health.

How much more do you need to know

to know that this lifestyle has become toxic?

I got fucked at the baths, and I'm sure that in New York City,

that's what put me at risk.

I mean, when you ask me to say, you know, where I got HIV,

you know, it could have been anywhere

between New York and Florida.

You know, I don't think anybody can say.

Probably the most important information

we have about AIDS is this...

we know who gets it, we think we know why,

and we think that we can keep people from getting it

by asking them to change their behavior.

Now, if you think that sounds simple, it does.

But, of course, getting people to change their lifestyles

is just about the most difficult thing you can ever try to do.

For now, there is no cure, though,

and prevention remains the only hope we have

in keeping AIDS in check.

This lifestyle that these people

have been promoting all these years is killing us.

How could I be so smart

and not understand something that was right in front of my face?

I said to him,

"Look, I have a background in writing and journalism.

I majored in journalism in college.

He said, "God, do I need help."

He said, "I've got an office full of dying patients,

and no one is writing about what people need to be saying.

They're throwing theme parties

like it's something happening on the other side of the world.

Like they don't understand this is gonna kill them.

There needs to be an alternative, rational, sensible explanation

of what's going on

that you are not going to see in The Native

and you're not going to hear from Gay Men's Health Crisis.

Something that's critical of the community that created this.

For gay men. For gay men."

So he fills my arms with all these articles, and then he said,

"Oh, by the way," he said,

"I have another patient that might be interested

in writing this article with you."

I'm like, "Where is he? What's his name?

Give me his phone number."

I could swear, about an hour or two later,

one of my phones started to ring, and it was Dr. Sonnabend saying,

"Um, I didn't give him your phone number,

but I spoke to Michael Callen.

The patient wants to write.

Here's his phone number."

He said, "You should call him at work."

28-year-old Michael Callen is a singer

and accomplished pianist.

Like other ambitious artists,

he moved from the Midwest to New York... a musician's Mecca...

to find work.

But it wasn't only music he found here.

By the age of 27, after being out for 10 years,

I had had hepatitis A, B, non-B, herpes simplex types I & II, Shigella,

Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia, nonspecific urethritis,

gonorrhea, syphilis, um...

I could go on.

When I stepped back,

the question for me wasn't, "Why am I sick?"

but, "How did I remain standing on two feet so long?"

My getting sick has something to do with my lifestyle.

And if I want to live, I'm going to have to change.

Michael came home at some point

telling me that he'd met this amazing guy

and that Joe had said they ought to meet

and they'd been to a support group together.

And most of the guys in the group were all gloom and doom,

and this was the one guy besides Mike

that seemed to have some hope about surviving.

We decided to write an article

explaining Sonnabend's theory,

which became, "We know who we are."

I think there was no perception of them

because they didn't exist as public figures at that point.

That was sort of the opening salvo,

was the beginning of their careers, if you will, as AIDS activists.

At the twelfth hour, as the article was going to press,

the publisher, Charles Ortleb,

had subtitled "We Know Who We Are:

Two Gay Men Declare War On Promiscuity."

And the minute I heard that, I said,

"You know, no one's even gonna read a word of our article."

Richard's arrival on the scene... and Michael's...

with that article was...

...unpleasant and a shock and cold water in the face,

and I think most people chose to disregard it.

I thought it was incredibly powerful,

and I frankly was shocked that people accused them

of sex negativity.

It seemed to me that the two of them were the last people in the world

to be accused of sex negativity.

They were the paragons of sex positivity

who were simply saying,

"We've seen what actually happened, and it happened to us."

We were called the Jerry Falwells of the gay community.

We were attacked over and over again in The Native.

And Michael and I kept responding to the attacks,

and The Native wouldn't publish them.

So if you don't respond or you're not able to respond

to attacks against what you've written and what you've said,

people just assume that you're wrong.

We also hear some more hysterical voices.

They come from a tiny group of men, some of whom have AIDS.

AIDS patients I know from my work with the Gay Men's Health Crisis

don't agree with them.

They say the only responsible alternative to monogamy

is virtual celibacy.

We who don't have lovers are told that we have to give up sex

because of a new brand of ethics

invented by this self-appointed group.

Who are these men?

I don't think their names are important, but their histories are.

For example, one is a former hustler,

an S&M hustler who provided pain for a price.

This man probably had more sexual contacts in 1 year than I did in 10.

He's not someone who's going to lay down

the ethical agenda for my future.

I just, you know...

I understand your interest in the whole hustling thing,

which is, like, the last thing I want to be thinking about now.

It's the one thing I'm trying to block out of my mind.

And it makes me uncomfortable because it's so stigmatized

that not to put my life into a context of meaningful relationships...

not with clients,

but with men that I had long term monogamous relationships with...

it just feels like an Enquirer version of my life

that I feel very uncomfortable with.

I'm 50 years old, I'm all alone, and I'm broke.

You know, and I don't wanna be sitting around

talking about being a hustler.

I don't.

I was never sure if it was meant to discredit them

or to give them more authority,

but people talked about how promiscuous they were, you know?

And Michael talked about his promiscuity.

And Richard, initially more in private,

but in time, became more public

and talked about his work as a sex worker,

specifically as an S&M top.

He was pretty up-front about his life,

including his hustling,

which in the beginning of our knowing each other,

was not a full-time thing.

I'm pretty sure he was still going to school.

There was a national gay newspaper called The Advocate,

which was extremely influential in my coming of age and coming out,

not just for the politics, but also for the classified section,

which was really an incredible mirror

on to what was happening with gay men sexually.

So I placed an ad in The Advocate.

It took, like, a month or two to come out.

So when the ad finally hit the stand and the phone started ringing,

I was absolutely terrified.

Because of my fear of violence,

I would be very forceful in getting them to talk about sex.

It kind of tapped into something inside me

that I wasn't fully aware of,

but the guys who were calling my ads were.

I didn't realize that I exuded a quality

that was the essence of a dominant S&M top.

They would start teaching me how to be an S&M top.

They would start buying me leather chaps

and cock rings and boots

and all these accoutrements,

and before I knew it, my apartment started to look like a sex shop.

You know, guys would build these homemade stockades

from the Pilgrims' times and leave them here.

You know, with this well of anger that I had as an activist and...

as the country started moving towards the right

with the ascent of Ronald Reagan,

my anger only deepened.

And somehow, there was something about S&M sex

that it became a channel for me to release the anger

in a creative way, a sexual way,

that was liberating and electrifying and...

...very lucrative.

What?

Say, "Fuck my hole."

I can't hear you.

Say it.

Say it, please.

Say, "Fuck my hole."

I can't hear you.

Say it louder.

We worked together a few times.

Yeah, he had this client Larry,

and Larry used to like to watch him beat me up.

And he would bring loads of drugs.

Richard could get very aggressive.

Richard could get... I think Richard went into this place

where he could be this macho hustler, you know,

where he's a really sweet, gentle guy.

Because I know it happens for me.

He seemed to feel that the ease with which it all happened

and the money it generated

was without a price to be paid.

I had enough ethical standards not to hurt anybody,

but the more I did it, the better I got.

In a matter of months,

I changed the ad to "Experienced S&M Italian Top Man,"

and when I ran it by a client, he said,

"You know what you should add? 'Who gets off on using you."'

And I said, "Is that what I do?"

And the minute that ad appeared, it was...

Business boomed!

Pretty soon, I started to describe it to friends

as like like a priest with his own congregation

who came one at a time.

I had to put in a second phone.

I had to start keeping a log

so I could keep track of all the people I spoke to,

the ones I saw,

and I started keeping a very intricate log of every single client.

There actually was something very intimate about S&M.

You had to talk, you had to communicate.

You had to...

You know, it wasn't just like, you know, a quickie fuck in the dark.

I mean, it was like a journey that you had to take people on.

Each person ignited a different response in me

that would take me on a unique path.

Whatever they told me they didn't want me to do

became the one thing I had to do.

You know? 'Cause for a lot of guys, it was, "I don't get fucked."

So the minute I had them spread-eagled standing up, I'd say,

"You're gonna get fucked."

These hooks were for spreading a bondage.

This was my favorite place in the house

because there was room to, like, walk around.

So I think even as gay men were becoming liberated

and forming communities

and creating this very sexualized community,

I think we kind of realized that we were bringing a lot of self loathing,

a lot of insecurity, and a lot of the culture's contempt to it,

that we were also smart enough to realize

that while we were acting out

these domination, submission, bondage,

humiliation, leather fantasies in our sex,

that it didn't diminish who we were as people,

that we were taking tensions from the culture that we had absorbed.

We were using them as fodder or grist for sexual play,

and when the play was over and the curtain came down,

we hugged and kissed and shook hands

and it was understood that this was about sexual fantasy

and it wasn't about who we were as people.

One day, somebody calls me up and says,

"Mrs. Berkowitz, your son was in Washington.

Did you hear?

A pin couldn't drop when he started to speak.

He spoke, and then not a soul moved.

A leaf didn't move. He was so good."

This evening on "Freeman Reports,"

we are discussing Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

It is referred to as AIDS.

We are going to meet two victims of AIDS.

First, meet Philip Lanzarotta and then Richard Berkowitz.

Mr. Berkowitz is also co-founder of the organization

Gay Men With AIDS.

And also meet Larry Kramer.

He's the co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis, Incorporated.

So in December, 1982,

I got a phone call from Lynne Hare,

a producer at CNN,

who asked me to appear on a live broadcast for 40 minutes

discussing, you know, AIDS.

And I didn't want to it.

I was nervous, but Michael had a singing engagement,

so I couldn't have him take my place, so I had to do it.

So when I got down to the CNN studios,

I was really nervous because I knew that what I had to say,

gay men would find painful to hear.

And I was trying to stay calm, and I had all these pages of notes,

and Larry Kramer came marching up to me

the minute he saw me and said,

"I hope you're not going on national television

and talking about gay promiscuity in front of the whole country."

And I remember thinking, "Of course I am."

I mean... and the idea that someone

would tell me not to talk about something...

it made me so angry

that as soon as the cameras started rolling,

I suddenly couldn't construct a single sentence

without the word "promiscuity."

You had mentioned earlier

it just happened to the gay community.

It could have happened to anyone.

Why do you think it happened to the gay community?

"No idea."

Mr. Berkowitz, do you have any thoughts on that?

Yes, I do.

It's very difficult to talk about promiscuity because as a gay man,

I am immediately accused of being sex negative,

but my personal belief is that promiscuity...

that homophobia and sex negativity in America

is at the heart of promiscuity.

I don't believe that promiscuity

is really as liberating as I thought it was

while I was being promiscuous.

I think it's really a response to the fact that gay people

cannot be openly affectionate in public.

And that kind of stigmatization that we've all grown up with

has kind of led to a kind of ghettoization of gay life,

especially among gay men.

And the urban promiscuity of the last 15 years to me

seems rather unprecedented, but...

Yes, go ahead, Mr. Berkowitz.

I just believe that we're not fooling anyone

if we say that we're just a community like anybody else,

and we just happened to get a bug in our community,

so, you know, "We didn't do this to ourselves.

Some virus is doing it to us."

As a victim of AIDS who's recovering,

I think there's nothing more important

than taking a little responsibility for the state of my health

so then I can figure out what I can do to get better.

Where we had difficulty with what they were saying

was that they were tarring and feathering everybody

with promiscuity,

and that was very hard for people to take

and it made people very angry,

because we had fought so long and so hard

to have the freedom that we won.

And suddenly it was killing us,

and that was very hard for people to deal with.

It's not promiscuity that's causing it.

It's promiscuity that's allowing it to spread.

I hate to hear the word "promiscuity" used in all of this

because it's a very, very loaded word.

This is 1983.

Everybody in a major urban area like New York and Los Angeles

and London and Paris leads a life of more than one partner.

Now, can you say that everybody?

- Can you truly say that? - An awful lot of people.

But you can't say "everybody."

No, I can't say everybody,

but I can say a great many people.

And what constitutes promiscuity?

Where do you draw your number?

We now have evidence. It's not promiscuity...

Well, I think some of the numbers

that have been quoted in a lot of the articles

and the numbers that came out in that study from the CDC,

although it is several years old,

I mean, 1,000 partners? 1,100 partners?

The new CDC figures are 200 and 300.

They have been reduced down to that.

200 and 300? That's still a lot of sexual partners.

It's a lot of sexual partners,

but I think that occurs in the straight communities.

The swinging singles in New York

would have 200 or 300 sexual partners.

I realized many years later, many, many years later,

that Larry was just trying to be protective of gay men.

I mean, AIDS had started, people were dying, nobody cared,

the community didn't want to hear about it,

the media wasn't reporting on it,

and Larry was just trying to be protective of gay men.

"Promiscuity" is a very loaded word.

What constitutes promiscuity, you know?

One, two, three, four, five?

I mean, Richard came out with these astronomical figures

which applied to Richard.

It didn't apply to other people who were also getting sick and dying.

We believe that AIDS are basically diseases

associated with poverty

and that through urban promiscuity,

certain urban gay men

have managed to recreate the disease setting

of Third World Nations and junkies.

Um...

How does that make you feel?

I can't worry about how it makes me feel.

I'm more concerned about the health of gay men.

I'm more worried about disseminating information.

I don't believe that anyone can defend promiscuity

in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York City today.

Promiscuity in Des Moines may be another story.

But right now in New York City,

the bottom line has to be life and death.

It can't be a question of politics or emotions

or public relations concerns.

We're talking about life and death.

I think the errors of the government and the media...

Well, particularly the government with the lack of attention

and the lack of support and just the huge profound silence

and also,

a very in-your-face, like, "We're not even gonna deal with it."

Before the media woke up to AIDS

and before the country woke up to AIDS,

me and Michael and Sonnabend knew what was coming.

I mean, we worked together for an entire year

trying to wake up the community

before the country woke up to the epidemic.

Probable cause of AIDS has been found.

A variant of a known human cancer virus.

The Federal Government announced

that it found what it was looking for.

A virus. A virus that caused AIDS.

AIDS disappeared from the news reports,

and people began to assume

that AIDS was finished in this country.

But the problem of AIDS is not over.

When people have been told something definitive

such that the cause of the disease has been found,

then I think it's all over.

It's a question of time.

We know what causes it

and therefore, it's a question of time before the cure is found.

But AIDS isn't all over.

No, certainly not.

Nor have we found the cause necessarily.

One problem has been that the virus

many people thought was the single cause of AIDS

may not be that at all.

AIDS is a complex disease that may have more than one cause.

The perception of the way diseases come about

is such that I think people prefer simple disease models.

AIDS isn't simple.

No, I'm sure it's not.

Research progress has been slow.

Rich and Sonnabend and Michael Callen's camp

was very small.

It was like a pup tent compared to the big camp.

I think you might be hard-pressed to even say

there were two camps in terms of that.

There was sort of the gay community

and then there was Michael and Joe and Richard...

on the other side.

And that's basically how it seemed for a while.

They were hated

as my recollection of Rich's stories at that time

was how they weren't even accepted as, you know,

one possible thought or explanation.

What is the concept that people deserve disease?

I mean, let's assume for a second

that AIDS is a direct result of promiscuity

and the diseases associated with it.

Are we suggesting then

that we don't deserve increased federal funding

because we've been bad boys?

It's unfortunate because promiscuity

did become the dogma of gay-male liberation.

It's where all the money is.

That part of the reason why the bath houses

have not really responded to the health crisis,

because money is money, and that's the bottom line.

Suddenly, we're thrust into national visibility,

and we're just corroborating

a lot of the fears and a lot of the prejudice

that people have about gay men.

It's because every time we're on television,

we get to talk about our sex lives.

A light bulb went off in my head,

and I realized that there was a lot of ways to have pleasure

that wouldn't involve any kind of risk for infections.

We started having this heated discussion.

I mean, Michael said, "Oh, isn't that great?

You can whip and beat people without spreading AIDS."

But Sonnabend said, "Wait a second.

There are ways to have sex that interrupt disease transmission."

And I remember thinking, "Interrupt disease transmission."

I mean, it was visual, it was captivating,

and it just completely propelled me.

I plopped down at my typewriter,

and I remember typing How to Have Sex in an Epidemic.

And I remember thinking, "That's a little arrogant."

And, you know, I am too arrogant,

so I put a colon, One Approach.

And Sonnabend said, "This is more than an article.

This should be a booklet."

From my understanding,

the first document advocating safer sex

as a way of preventing the syndrome that looked like AIDS

was in a publication by Mr. Callen and Mr. Berkowitz.

I believe, if I remember, the name was

How to Have Safe Sex in an Epidemic.

To me, it's the pamphlet that is often cited,

and, you know, is cited in the literature, as well,

as sort of the first community-driven...

and really, only...

first document advocating safer sex.

And my recollection is '82? So it was really early on.

So it's before there was a lot of information

on why people were dying.

How to Have Sex in an Epidemic

just made such perfect sense.

You know, it said you don't have to go to this monastic life

even if you thought that might be feasible for you.

There is a way of rationally having relationships

and protecting oneself.

So, tell me, Richard, what is the theory behind this book?

Well, the prevailing opinion about the cause of AIDS

appears to be that there's a new AIDS agent,

presumably a virus,

that it's spreading from group to group

and that one contact with this putative agent

can cause the disease.

The real risk for developing AIDS or CMV infection

is getting sperm up your ass.

It's avoiding the exchange of certain bodily fluids

which could potentially be infectious.

The strange thing is that in attempting to counter

the claims of their opponents

that they were being sex negative,

they attempted to come up with a regimen for safer sex

that essentially said that you can continue the gay sexual revolution

in the midst of a fatal sexually transmitted epidemic

by simply resorting to a technological fix,

which is a condom.

There was nobody else promoting condom use.

Absolutely not. That I'm aware of.

I can't say there wasn't.

There may have been, but I don't know of anybody else.

One thing that if you were gay,

well, at least you didn't have to use condoms, you know?

If nothing else.

And condoms were basically completely foreign

to 99 percent of gay men.

Um...

So, yeah, the idea that people would...

gay men would have sex using condoms

was revolutionary.

We barely had any official recognition.

The gay community as such tried to actually buy us out.

After the book had been out for a year

and was garnering a lot of praise in the press,

Gay Men's Health Crisis had to do something about it.

GMHC emerged

because the government wasn't doing enough.

Or it wasn't doing hardly anything.

And, you know, it grew out of just a handful of gay men

who were mostly from Chelsea and Fire Island Pines,

who got together and said, "We gotta start something."

It was like a church group.

It was like the Red Cross or whatever.

It was not a political group at all.

We had people dying,

and we were trying to know what to do with these people.

And the city wasn't helping and the country wasn't helping

and how do you get 'em into hospitals that don't want to take 'em

and how do you get wills drawn

and all of the actual practical stuff of dying?

You know, we didn't have time

to go out and pass out safe-sex things

when nobody knew what safe sex was.

And unfortunately,

the Board of Directors of GMHC was very conservative,

and they did not want to say anything they couldn't prove.

So they made us an offer to buy all our booklets

with one condition,

that the multifactorial theory be deleted from the copy

so they could then distribute it without raising the issue

of lifestyle factors contributing to AIDS.

Tragedy is a great source of public advancement,

and there are people who get into the tragedy game

because it suits them.

It makes them famous or it gives them money.

And we were the competition, basically.

We were doing good for people,

but doing good for people, we were doing it for nothing,

basically speaking.

There were people who like to be seen doing good for people,

and so they took our work that did good, like safe sex, for example.

The CDC was attributed to inventing safe sex.

Well, they did everything they could to stop us, actually.

I thought for sure that even though the community

hated what we said in We Know Who We Are,

that somehow they'd bite the bullet and give us some money

to turn How to Have Sex in an Epidemic

into safe-sex campaigns.

Year after year, we kept applying for grants, applying for funding,

and everyone kept rejecting us.

So by the time 1985 came about,

our book had been out for two years,

and there was still no safe sex education being done

in New York City.

I mean, it was just infuriating

that personality conflicts and political conflicts

could get in the way of getting the message out to gay men

that there was a way to prevent AIDS.

So a friend of mine, a former client, said,

"You're beating your head against the wall.

You're not getting anywhere.

Come live with me for a year in Florida

and just do safe-sex education in Miami."

So, I was kind of pissed off, but I did.

I moved away.

I didn't want to adopt an identity of a disease.

I wanted to forget about it.

I wasn't I couldn't undo what I did before safe sex,

and I felt like I was gonna be all right for a decade or two afterwards.

So my focus was just on safe sex.

While Michael went off and worked on all these other issues,

I wanted to focus on the "sluts."

Michael Callen was a founder

of The People with AIDS Coalition,

the Community Research Initiative,

the People with AIDS Health Group.

He served on the New York State AIDS Advisory Council.

He was the founding editor of the People with AIDS Coalition Newsline.

Michael, because he was dying of this disease,

you know, couldn't walk away from it.

And by the late '80s, he was singing at rallies,

he was singing at, you know, national marches,

and, you know, he kind of became a celebrated hero.

I have tried to sing my song right

I have tried to sing my song right

I have tried to sing my song right

Be sure to let me hear...

...from you

After a year in Florida,

I came back to New York City

because I... I don't know.

I kind of felt like, you know,

how can I walk away from a war that's killing my community?

I put the first escort ad in the Advocate promoting safe sex,

and soon after a lot of other ads started mentioning safe sex, too.

I just was mesmerized by Rich's...

by Rich's knowledge and his quest for more knowledge.

Oh, he was impeccably safe. Impeccably.

And I learned that you have to clean off the dildo and what to use.

And what he really did

was he made safe sex sexy.

I felt safe sex was the one thing that could save my friends.

You know?

I felt it was the one thing that could save the community.

And because unlike what gay men were being told,

that once you got exposed to the virus,

there was no more hope,

Sonnabend said to me, "Even if you're exposed to the virus,

safe sex will still prolong your life.

Safe sex will still protect your partners.

Safe sex will still protect your health.

And no one else was saying that.

And I think what was radical about what Rich did

was to promote safe sex without giving up on sex.

I mean, to promote safe sex,

but still believe that one could have

a varied, exciting, satisfying sex life

was a really radical thing

because the two camps, you know,

kind of formed themselves along

what many people thought was these hard lines.

Like, you were either pro sex, 100 percent,

in all of its unsafe forms,

or you were anti-sex if you believed in safe sex.

And Rich always fought for there to be a middle ground

where safe sex could still be fun sex and satisfying sex.

Well, I tried to come out and say bluntly

it is caused by having sex.

Please try and stop.

And is that what you've done yourself?

Indeed, yes indeed.

I think I would be terrified at this point

with that sort of Damocles hanging over my head,

especially in New York City.

I don't have anybody...

I don't know how anybody,

how any gay man could have sex in New York City.

Mr. Callen?

I just...

It's just so incredible to me that people cling to this myth

that you can get AIDS from a single contact.

I think we have a case here of,

"What difference does it make?"

It's caused by either your way or my way or both ways.

And either way, it can kill you.

And it really is irrelevant if it's many contacts or one contact.

Either way,

you're playing Russian Roulette every time you have sex,

and that's the issue.

Well, I think it's important, Larry.

It's not giving up sex.

It's modifying the kinds of sex you have

to avoid the potential transmission of bodily fluids

thought to be infectious.

They keep talking about this disease like it's a virus,

but... and it's Russian Roulette,

and once you get the virus, you die.

But cut down on your partners?

Cut down on your partners? What is that?

You know, play Russian Roulette,

but put the bullet in the gun less often?

And if they're advising people to cut down

when they believe one sexual contact can kill you,

you know, who the hell are they talking to?

Who the hell needs advice like that?

What are these people...?

Where are their minds?

Where are their ethics?

Where are their brains?

As it turns out,

it's better to have safe sex with 40 people in a back room

than to have unsafe sex with your lover in the bedroom.

But nobody in America was prepared to say that or even think that.

I mean, I think people prefer simple answers

to complicated questions,

even when they're wrong.

I mean, that's one thing I've learned from AIDS.

It kind of astounds me.

But Joe's theory was...

And in that light, Joe's theory was much more complicated

than just saying, "There's a new AIDS virus.

If you catch it, you die. If you don't catch it, you're okay."

I have heard of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, yes.

I would say his belief was possible to hold

in the early '80s,

but not in the very late '80s and through the '90s

and certainly not possible at all today.

There could be lots of multifactorial things,

but at the end of the day,

at least from my perspective

and probably the perspective of most folks

who sort of do allopathic medicine in the United States...

most...

HIV is the cause of AIDS and the syndromes associated with AIDS,

but there could be a lot of cofactors.

Like 100 percent.

Cofactors can absolutely exist.

Are there some that are infectious? Probably.

Do we know all of them? No.

There is incontrovertible evidence

that HIV is the cause and the only cause for AIDS.

And those people who maintain belief to the contrary

are fantasists or they have a political agenda.

In the corporate community, it either is or it isn't.

In the scientific community...

and most of the activists that I work with...

it's a matter of degree,

and it seems to be different in different people,

which we are finding out more about now

as genetic factors and so on.

There are all sorts of things

that influence how nasty the virus is in any given person.

I think there are probably lots of people

who are walking around with HIV, and they're never gonna get sick.

And other people get it and within two or three years, they're dead.

So, other things are going on.

I certainly still believe that cytomegalovirus

plays a role in AIDS.

And, in fact,

the most respected scientific journal in Europe,

The Lancet,

posted an editorial by all the editors

about a year ago during the summer

saying that cytomegalovirus was necessary with HIV to cause AIDS.

So, I'm still a multifactorialist.

I just learned the hard way, you know, not to rule out HIV...

as I so arrogantly did for many years.

Now, I would say with what we know

and a lot of clinical studies and a lot of clinical data,

I and most folks believe that HIV is the infectious particle

that causes the syndrome that we call AIDS.

If you go on the Internet and do a search,

a Google search on me,

I'm tied in with all these lunatics,

and I just wish I...

I'm just glad to have the opportunity to say that, you know,

the HIV is absolutely essential to AIDS.

The AIDS drugs have saved my life.

I think that they were prescribed...

based on what I've seen with a lot of people,

I think they're prescribed way too early and in way too high doses.

I mean, the great thing that Sonnabend did with me was

he didn't start me on any AIDS drugs

until I absolutely needed them.

Every single drug is there

because we went, and we fought like tooth and nail.

We made the government study what we wanted,

made the clinical trials reflect what we needed.

When I was at the peak of my questioning

whether or not HIV had any kind of role in AIDS,

I came down with AIDS in 1995.

And Sonnabend got me hooked up

with a protease inhibitor study in Philadelphia in 1995,

and I had lost all hope.

I figured, "I'm covered with lesions,

I've got molluscum contagiosum all over my body,

I've got 5 T-cells, I'm a dead man."

The drug companies are giving horrible misinformation.

Horrible misinformation.

And they're avoiding a class of people like myself who are dying,

who are in agony, in horrible pain.

Under the Bush administration,

they are co-conspirators, if you will, with public health officials,

because someone who is treated is vastly less infectious.

So, they're trying to prevent new infections

by treating everybody who has HIV,

regardless of whether they need it or not.

It's independent of whether they need or not.

And they don't quite officially say everything,

but particularly for people who are already marginalized,

people who are poor, people of color,

when they go into their clinic, and they find out they're positive,

they're not left really with,

"You have a decision to make whether to go on treatment."

They're all told they've got to begin treatment,

you know, often with tremendous urgency.

You know, they're really anxious about it.

Well, the most important thing to say

about the AIDS drugs

is that we're still tabulating their side effects,

and it's a pretty long list, and it grows longer by the year.

So the idea that all you have to do is pop these pills...

You know, these AIDS drugs are not like smoking something in a pipe.

This is serious chemo, and it's a part-time job.

You know, running to doctors, getting your blood tested,

going to the pharmacy, getting the prescriptions,

filling out the insurance forms.

You don't want this. I'm telling you.

Taking all those drugs.

I take 18 to 20 different drugs

besides the herbs that I take and supplements.

I mean, I'm always taking damn pills, and it's ruining my body.

There are an awful lot of gay men

who are being responsible and safe,

but there are also a lot of gay men who aren't.

And they're young, and they're in their 20s.

I think youth are dealing with, you know,

particularly in urban areas,

a lot of stigma and silencing

around HIV, sexuality, desire in general.

But I think certainly

we need to start looking at how we address homophobia

and racism and those sort of cultural disparities

that are impacting this community

and these communities which are now disproportionately affected.

Fear is the thing that motivates people

to make any difficult behavior change,

whether it's quitting smoking or losing weight or whatever.

You're afraid of the consequences of what's gonna happen

if you don't change your behavior.

It's very difficult to imagine how any safer-sex idea

can even get promulgated in the gay community now.

If you're not afraid, you don't even read publications.

You don't read the pamphlets that they print,

because you're not afraid anymore.

So why even bother to read it?

If I get infected, I'll take some pills.

I know a million guys that are infected.

They all look great.

They're getting steroids. They're pumped up.

They look terrific.

You know, what's the big deal?

They, of course, had fear on their side back then.

Unfortunately, right now, we don't have much talk about AIDS.

A lot of people think that it's over.

Older people think that it's not a big issue any longer,

and so a lot of young people have this fatigue and desire

to have sex without condoms

because yes, it feels good.

You know, it feels more real.

If Richard began his crusade again today,

if Michael Callen came back from the dead and called a rally,

I'm afraid no one would come.

I think activism is dead.

I was an activist.

The activists that are alive, some of us are in horrible condition.

You know, we're tired, and the rest died.

I thought it was all gonna change.

There was something beautiful about the time

when everybody was dying.

We all came so close to each other.

We took care of people.

Why wasn't Richard more of an activist?

Michael started these organizations,

a couple of them, two or three of them.

Did Richard participate in those?

Richard was lost for a few years

to crack and God-knows-what.

And he was just thoroughly useless

to the extent that Michael Callen walked out on him

and just wouldn't talk to him.

Then he went off to Florida,

you know, this sexual craziness.

He's a very fetching...

you know, very appealing and all of this,

but it sort of hides a kind of terrible reality in a way

because you know, as fun-loving as it is,

it's a totally horrible profession,

sex for money.

It's degrading.

I'm sorry. I'm not gonna say that to Richard.

And I think it's a miracle that Richard

has come through all of this, you know,

with his wits about him and with some insight.

I smoked crack. I mean...

- I can't just say it. - No, but...

I can't list it like a grocery list.

I've gotta put it into some kind of human context

to explain why I did the drugs.

I went away to Florida for a year,

and when I came back to resume hustling

after AIDS was really in full force,

I thought I could do it without the drugs,

but I didn't expect to be having clients coming in

with lesions and signs of illness and...

I mean, I felt so in control of what I was doing safe-sexwise,

but it was like death kept entering into the scenes

and into the erotic moments.

I mean, before AIDS,

the use of drugs was about the inability of gay men

to be intimate with each other.

And so the drugs was the way to, you know,

to numb our vulnerability

and our fear of being intimate with one another

and a kind of self-hatred that we absorbed from the culture

that made it difficult for us to express affection with each other.

So sex became a drug in itself,

because we would have all of this physical pleasure,

but it was like we were afraid to get to know who each other was.

So we hid behind these fantasies of what we wanted

because, you know, the sensitive, vulnerable gay men

that most of us were,

most of us didn't want for sex, you know?

After AIDS, I think drugs were about numbing the pain

of what was happening.

Do you expect me to say

that Richard was rendered incapable by his use of crack?

I can't. I can't do that.

Was that why, though, he didn't do more?

Of course that's why! Yes!

Throughout the '80s,

I did an awful lot of work for no pay trying to promote safe sex

against this huge tidal wave of, you know, the gay community

just really not liking what I was saying

and really not wanting me to be heard.

And it was really hard to get published.

I mean, I spent years writing articles that never saw the light of print.

And I spent years carrying booklets around,

going to conferences,

you know, helping journalists,

and I never got paid for any of that.

I just have great admiration for Richard Berkowitz.

And part of me has some anger that he didn't get that out earlier.

His book.

Michael had always felt that...

from the conversations that we had where we just talked about our lives

and growing up and how a nice Jewish boy ended up hustling

that it was my...

it was destiny for me to write the book

about how the three of us came together and invented safe sex

from the point of view of a sex worker.

Because I mean, who better to write about, you know, sex

and how safe sex came about

than someone who was a professional.

Anyway, so...

I think it should definitely win an award

for the ugliest cover ever created.

But, I, you know, I love it.

I mean, writing this book was an absolute joy.

For 11 months, I got up every morning,

went to my computer,

and just knowing that everything that I was writing

was gonna end up published in a hardcover book with a glossy jacket,

after spending so many years writing articles that never got published

or got butchered or got watered down

and censored and whitewashed,

to know that what I was writing

was absolutely gonna end up in a book

was, as a writer, it was the pinnacle of all my years of writing.

He put an awful lot into that book.

But I don't think it was enough sex.

That's what sells books.

And good-looking women.

How do I make money?

I'm on disability.

I'm completely entitled to it, and I'm not ashamed to take my check.

It's $710 a month.

400 and something goes to rent,

100 goes to Con Ed,

100 goes to cable,

and I've got about $60-70 to live with a month.

But I still have former clients who help me out here and there,

just send me money, put it in my account, you know,

when I need some spending money,

you know, for an emergency or stuff.

And, you know, my family's there when I need something,

but basically I'm impoverished.

The biggest impact, I think,

that the years of AIDS had on Rich

was seeing so many of his friends die

and being a really close friend and witness to their illness and death

and feeling that for so many people who died,

even well beyond his friends,

it was avoidable.

It could have been avoidable,

and I think he feels a great sense of personal failure

at not having been able

to communicate his beliefs well enough to more people

so that they would have taken more care

in terms of their, you know, sexual lives

and be alive.

All three of the men I had long-term relationships with

ended up committing suicide.

I understand it.

I do. I understand it.

I understand...

I understand, as a gay man,

especially in the age of AIDS,

that people reach a point where they don't wanna go on living.

It's too painful.

It's too unendurable.

No, no. I haven't heard of Richard Berkowitz.

Have you heard of Michael Callen?

Oh, actually, yes. Michael Callen.

I knew Michael Callen.

We were friends.

I've never heard of Richard Berkowitz.

I think I've heard about Richard Berkowitz.

The name sounds familiar.

I don't... I cannot comment much.

I've never heard of Richard Berkowitz.

Have you ever heard of Michael Callen?

Yes. I've heard of Michael Callen.

I think it's a testament to how important

the work we did together was

that 25 years later,

probably the biggest and most important

gay and lesbian health center in the city

is named for Michael Callen.

My name is Richard Berkowitz.

I wrote this book about how safe sex began,

and half of the book is about Michael Callen.

Okay.

So, they're not gonna film people.

They just want to get the shot of him on the wall.

Okay. As long as it stays...

They were best friends.

- Okay. - Okay.

As long as there's not a patient involved.

Right.

But in the future, if you ever want to do something,

there's a... on our Internet site, there's a communications guide,

because normally, it's very intimidating for patients.

I understand. I'm gay, so I understand.

- They want their privacy. - Right.

Especially in a place like this.

- Yeah. - I understand that.

- Okay. - Okay.

"In the end, for each individual,

it is as rational to it believe he or she will be among the survivors

as it is to assume that he or she won't.

We must fix our hearts and minds

on a clear image of the day when AIDS is no longer... is no more.

Make no mistake about it.

That day will come."

I mean, Michael's whole message was about hope.

And I think that was the one thing

that Sonnabend gave to me and Michael

that most gay men, in terms of AIDS, never got.

I hope that this movie helps to promote safe sex

and to know the people

and how they struggled to get people to believe

that safe sex was the only thing that was gonna save us.

I think no one's ever taken a moment

in the 25-plus years since AIDS started

to ever pat gay men on the back and say,

"You know something?

There are still people getting infected,

but you've done an incredible job and you should be proud of yourself."

No one's ever said that.

Everyone's always looking at,

there's a 1 percent infection rate, there's a 2 percent infection rate.

But what about the infection rate that isn't, you know?

I think gay men have been extraordinarily responsible

in protecting themselves and their partners

for a very long time,

and no one's ever once taken a moment to say,

"You know something? You've done a good job."