Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Safer sex emerged as a strategy to prevent the spread of disease with the advent of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, two gay New Yorkers, first outlined the theory and application of safer sex in their 1983 tract, “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic.” As an alternative to the confusing, all-or-nothing early approaches to HIV prevention, safer sex offered a practical strategy. People were going to have sex. As such, it was best to do it in a safe, mutually satisfying, caring manner. Berkowitz and Callen presented a harm-reduction approach now recognized around the world as a model that allows for both intimacy and protection. The third key inventor of safer sex was Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, a gay-friendly doctor working in a Greenwich Village health clinic who treated Berkowitz, who was working as a hustler at the time. In the course of frequent appointments for antibiotics to battle VD, Berkowitz and Sonnabend developed a frank relationship. When Berkowitz developed a case of hepatitis, swollen lymph nodes, and a bump behind his ear that got in the way of his cruising, Sonnabend counseled him to stop “screwing around.” It was not a welcome piece of advice for someone whose livelihood depended on sexual commerce. In 1982, as the health crisis mounted, Sonnabend engaged Berkowitz and another patient, the late Michael Callen, to write a call for gay ... log in or subscribe to read full text