Dangerous Bedfellows, Ephen Glenn Colter - Policing Public Sex - Queer Politics and The Future of AIDS Activism-South End Press (1996)

Lisa Duggan
PROLOGUE
W e are living in a terrifying time of

crisis for progressive politics of all varieties. At the national level, we
are watching as conservative Republicans shred the already tattered
and inadequate welfare state, replacing health and education with
prisons and police. Globally, these efforts tie in with the international
retailing of low-wage economies and low-service states (for most of the
world's populations). In corollary cultural terms, public spaces for
political expression are shrinking dramatically. In the U.S., public
funding for the arts, the commitment to public broadcasting, and the
so far relatively unpoliced Internet are all at risk. Meanwhile, corporate
media, the most conglomerated undemocratic vehicles for culture and
politics, are expanding.
What's a queer activist to do? Familiar brands of political action,
whether liberal reformist (calls for inclusion of gays in the military) or
radical performative (kiss-ins at the mall), seem woefully inadequate.
Identity-based calls for group rights not only appear paltry in the current
climate, but continually fail to produce the alliances that seem crucial
to any effective politics. Radical alternatives to identity politics, whether
left-economist or anarcho-culturalist, have so far also failed to create
any kind of effective collective presence that might be called a "left."
Since the early 1980s, sexuality has circulated through this crisis of
progressive politics in a protean, insinuating way. As a wider and wider
range of political contests has been staged on the ground of sex,
progressive political forces have found themselves divided and stymied,
unable to mobilize coherent responses. Three examples may serve to
ix
X POIICING PUBLIC SEX
illustrate this point: the "sex wars" that divided feminist politics in the
1980s, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings that seriously
challenged African-American and civil rights politics in the early 1990s,
and the emerging sexual politics of HIV prevention that have now
shattered the once (relatively) united front of gay community AIDS
activism.
In all three sensational political conflicts focused on the arena of
sexuality, the identity categories underpinning liberal and progressive
organizing have exploded. During the 1980s, anti-pornography feminists'
insistence that "women" are uniformly subordinated by "pornography"
met with the furious rejoinder that these founding terms are funda-
mentally incoherent—^neither all "women" nor all "pxamography" are alike
enough to support the argument for state censorship. Opponents of anti-
pornography feminism also pointed out that the alliances constructed
on the ground of these terms—among moral conservatives, local economic
interests, and some feminists, all of whom seemed ready to agree that
"porn degrades women"—ultimately operated against the interests of
feminists, in an all-too-familiar melodramatic protectionist mode.
If the spectacle of conflict over the fate of pornography coincided
with and signalled feminist political stall and stagnation, then the
sensational portrayal of the Thomas-Hill hearings laid bare the impasses
of the civil rights politics of race before a politically prurient national
audience. Who could speak for African Americans? How could support
for the full participation of African Americans at every level of national
life be separated from support for this conservative Supreme Court
nominee? How could outrage at the trafficking in voyeuristic displays
of black sexual stereotypes be separated from support for Anita Hill,
or opposition to Clarence Thomas?
These political brushfires exposed the fractured categories of
"women" and "blacks," so that no one, no organization could now
speak easily on behalf of the groups designated in this way. Who, then,
could speak on the national stage on behalf of progressive politics of
any kind? Given that "labor" had been similarly fractured and disabled
since the 1970s, what actors would remain to speak for any "left" public
collectivity at all?
Now, in the mid-1990s, as "lesbian and gay" people and interests
have appeared openly on the national political stage for the first time.
lisa Duggan xi
we see another fracturing begin. In the debates over the policing of

public sex that are chronicled in this volume, we see "gay" spokesmen
(and they are all men), located primarily within the mainstream
commercial press, claim to represent the authentic interests of gay
people. These self-appointed representatives argue that state regulation
of public sexuality is the best protection for "our" health. The opponents
of this moralizing new gay politics, speaking eloquently in these pages,
make many of the same moves that the opponents of anti-porn politics
made a decade ago. They refuse to allow self-appointed protectors to
represent "gay" people, and they point out the dangerous alliances
constructed among real estate interests, reactionary politicians, and the
new proponents of respectable gay domesticity.
This focuses our attention on a crisis of representation, both
discursive and political. What do "gay" people want, and who can
represent us? If we fracaire into the multiplicity of identities and interests
invoked by the term "queer," what are the implications of this fracturing
for unified or coherent political action?
The editors of this volume address this central problem imagina-
tively, productively—not by trying to "save" identity politics, or by
imposing their own version of what's best for "gay" people, but by
struggling to rework the terms of representation, and thus of alliance
and intervention. Looking at the swirling debates in New York City and
elsewhere around questions of public sex, the editors have collected
provocative essays that ask us, whose interests are at stake here? They
offer us a look at the Times Square zoning controversy and its relation
to Disney's hostile takeover of 42nd Street, They ask us to consider the
situation of sex workers. They point our attention to the construction
of HIV identity categories and the emerging perceived opposition
between the interests of positives and negatives. And, most importantly,
they ask us to consider all these things together, in order to grasp our
local situation in as broad a frame as possible. What emerges from this
intellectual practice is the possibility of a reinvigorated politics—a politics
that can intervene without always already fracturing every interest into
the tiniest fragments, but that can still approach its task without invoking
bogus, homogenizing universals or monolithic, exclusive categories.
These are the imaginative yet concrete politics we now need.
Without them, we cannot proceed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dangerous Bedfellows would like to

thank several people for their support in putting this book together. This
anthology would not have been possible without their help. First, we
thank our friends at South End Press. Loie Hayes was wholeheartedly
behind this project from its inception, and Lynn Lu provided constant
and constaictive feedback throughout the book's production.
Of course, this collection would not have been possible without the
hard work of our contributors. They brought a world of new ideas,
unique perspectives, and expertise to this book. Special thanks also to
Loring McAlpin and John Lindell for their artistic insight and design
expertise, and for tirelessly scanning porn videos frame by frame.
This collective began to take shape at the Socialist Scholars Confer-
ence at Manhattan Borough College in April 1995. The panel we presented
brought the Dangerous Bedfellows together as a igroup, and we thank
Lynn Chancer and the Social Text Collective for their help in organizing
that appearance. In May 1995, we organized a conference at New York
University called "Policing Queers in the Public Sphere," This conference
ultimately served as the impetus for creating this book, and we are
grateful for all those who contributed their time and energy: Jose Munoz,
Mark Schoofs, Kendall Thomas, Carole S, Vance, and Michael Warner.
Several people assisted the Dangerous Bedfellows in a number of
capacities, going beyond the call of duty by giving their time and
advice generously: Allan Bembe, Gina Diaz, Bill Dobbs, Marc Elovitz,
Robert Fitch, Phillip Brian Harper, Alyssa Hepburn, Nan D, Hunter,
Iain Machell, Joe Neel, David Nimmons, Cindy Patton, Amy Randall,
vii
viii POLICING PUBLIC SEX
Eric Rofes, Tricia Rose, Norman Siegel, Chris Straayer, and Alan Wald,
as well as the AIDS Prevention Action League and Community AIDS
Prevention Activists. We are also grateful to Jeffrey Miller, Jonathan
Parsil, and all the folks at the fabulous Jefferson House in Miami Beach,
whose tropical hospitality kept us from having a collective nervous
breakdown.
In addition, we would like to thank our friends and family members
who helped us formulate our ideas and get our work done: Paul Amar,
Vincent Baine, Robert Bingham, Frank Browning, Jeffrey Buchsbaum,
Felicity Callard, Debbie Cohler, Robyn Dutra, Martin and Susan Hoff-
man, Shannon Holman, Janis Holzapfel, Bill Hood, Jeanette Hsu,
Ishmael Houston-Jones, Adrian C. Lawrence, D. Magrini, Gitanjali
Maharaj, Henry Montes, Russ Nordmeyer, Juok Pae, Christine Patterson,
George Patterson, James Pendleton, Cynthia Redick, Alexandra Ringe,
Dan Selcer, Amy Shore, Jennifer Silverman, Adair Smith, Mark Sullivan,
Rebecca Sumner-Burgos, Bill Wanderski, Bram Wessel, Sean Wiebersch,
Karen Williams, Steve Wolf, and Jonathan Wurtzel, as well as our
colleagues in the American Studies Program at New York University.
Finally, two people deserve special thanks: Lisa Duggan and Andrew
Ross. More than supportive mentors, these two have been integral to
this anthology from the outset. We couldn't have dreamed of putting
together this volume without their patience, wisdom, and valuable input.
In addition, Andrew's dry wit and Lisa's generosity at cocktail hour
helped to grease the wheels of our collective creative process.
Sex was not something one simply
judged; it was something to be administered. It was in the nature of a
public potential; it called for management procedures; it had to be
taken charge of by analytical discourse. In the eighteenth century, sex
became a "police" matter: not the repression of disorder, but an ordered
maximization of collective and individual forces.
'— Michel Foucault,
The History of Sexuality, Volume I
SOUTH END PRESS
SOUTH END PRESS is a nonprofit,

collectively mn book publisher with over 180 titles in print. Since our
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Other Titles ef Interest
Sex and Germs: The Politics ofAIDS
by Cindy Patton
Women, AIDS, and Activism
by the ACT UP/NY
Women and AIDS Book Group
Culture Clash:
The Making of Gay Sensibility
by Michael Bronski
"Policing Public Sex is a new map through unexplored territory. With wit,
scholarship, and sheer intellectual bravery, these writers take us through a
world in which old definitions are useless, standard references are pointless.
Engaging, enlightening, and engrossing, this collection makes us re-examine
not only what we have learned with our hearts and heads, but how we have
ordered our desires as well."
—Michael Bronski, author.
Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility
"Not only does this volume represent a crucial intervention in the current
debate on how best to prevent the spread of HIV infection in queer commu-
nities, it also constitutes a necessary challenge to the reliance on the putative
protections of 'privacy' that has long characterized the official lesbian and gay
rights movement in the United States. A vital and compelling instance of cultural
analysis and critical activism."
—Phillip Brian Harper, author.
Are We Not Men?Masculine Anxiety
and the Problem ofAfrican-American Identity
"Policing Public Sex is one of the most important books about sexual
politics to appear this year It's too bad we can't make this book required
reading for all the television news anchors who so gleefully whip up negative
public opinion about fraternal and open queer sex."
—Pat Califia, author.
Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex
"Sex at the end of the millenium is extraordinarily complex. Addressing

the debates about safe sex education, sex in bathhouses and parks, prostitution,
and media publicity of sex. Policing Public Sex provides a vital historical and
global context for today's sexual liberationists."
—Cindy Patton, author.
Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS
"During a time when anti-sex gay conservatism increasingly dominates the

queer public sphere, the authors in Policing Public Sex speak boldly and
brilliantly for sexual liberation.... and point in a hopeful (even Utopian) and
pragmatic direction towards a future where sexual freedom, political activism,
and disease prevention can work together in the same moment."
—Eric Rofes, author. Reviving the Tribe:
Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality
and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic
Dangerous Bedfellows
INTRODUCTION
wolicing Public Sex is a somewhat
misleading title. Some readers might assume a clear boundary between
public and private sex, but the writers here do not. In this day and age,
you can't avoid public sex even if you stay at home. From accidentally
catching your neighbors naked or fucking, to casually flipping channels
at two in the morning and catching a porn star sucking some voluptuous
young woman's tits or fondling some beefy young man's dick, you live
in a world filled with voyeurs, peeping toms, and sophisticated visual
consumers. In many of the places Americans call home, sex is neither
here nor there. It's always on the line.
In calling this book Policing Public Sex, we have intended to be
provocative. We want to expose the narrow-mindedness of critics on
the right, who dismiss public sex as sexvial libertarianism, but we also
want to reveal the presumptions of enthusiasts on the left, who may
consider public sex merely an entitlement or legacy of the "sexual
revolution," Thus we feel a need to warn the reader that we often use
terms like "public," "private," "sex," "safer sex," and "community" in an
improper sense, as flags of convenience. But it is the very definition of
these terms that provides both our point of departure and the question
to which we return: what is the future of AIDS activism?
This discussion is historically grounded in the early 1980s, Many
HIV prevention movements have since come into existence. As Cindy
Patton and Douglas Crimp have observed, it was a critical moment in
which gay identity became queer activist. While queer politics turned
the country's health care system into a battleground, AIDS cultural
13
14 POLICING PUBLIC SEX
criticism turned fertile new ground in gay and lesbian studies. As

Michael Warner, Walt Odets, and Eric Rofes have noted, the 1980s were
a crucial period in queer politics due to the development of AIDS
prevention activism. Yet the current debates have emerged as witness
to a rise in anxiety around AIDS.
This book was conceived as an introduction to the patterns and
strategies structuring current debates around public sex. Arguments
over sex and sexually transmitted disease have typically been con-
ducted in terms of debates between AIDS cultural criticism and
American identity politics. Since not all gays and lesbians define their
sexuality as political, the lives of most queers are probably informed
less by the agendas of gay organizations than by the social lives and
worlds they create for themselves. The essays in this anthology are not
simply a group of thematically related writings—they work together to
theorize historical movements and social change.
Because we are concerned with presenting arguments that depart
from the usual interpretations of public sex as counterintuitive to HIV
prevention, we have tried to present new working definitions of public
sex, AIDS activism, and queer politics. By bringing together essays that
consider public sex as homo-sex and public sex as paid sex, for
example, we are focusing on acts rather than identities; this approach
seems essential in order to make a meaningful intervention in the
policing of non-normative sexual behaviors. Many other queer political
projects traffic in well-worn identities that are useful in some instances,
but we feel that this approach would draw boundaries in the very places
where sexual practices break them down. We want to play with the
dividing line between public and private, screw with the notion of a
totalizing queer leadership class or gay "community," and fuck with the
false binary between regulation and education. Our approach is to
make connections among all of these issues and reveal their competing
interests.
In New York City, for example, public sexual culture includes peep
shows, porn theaters, backrooms, bathhouses, adult bookstores, topless
bars, strip clubs, lap dance clubs, sex clubs, and sex parties. Public
sexual culture also includes smiling marchers in the Gay Pride Parade
and sassy drag queens at Wigstock. If you count sex workers on street
corners, then you also have to account for the high-fashion models on
Dangerous B«df*llows 15
larger-than-life bus advertisements, or hunky centerfolds in pom at

newsstands. If public sex is about getting paid, then our inventory
must include not only those steamy sex scenes on daytime TV soaps
and those sex-scheming babes on prime-time, but also the male
mega-celebrities who bare their butts and female superstars who flash
their breasts on the big screen.
Late capitalism has a vested interest in seasonal debates about
hemlines and technical debates about generous new fabrics. So it has
more than a passing interest in shirtless men with nipple rings and
braless women in tight baby T-shirts. For queers especially, the late '90s
are not so much about identity coming out as about sex going public.
You are stepping into messy debates where Snoop Doggy Dogg's music.
Madonna's music videos, Mapplethorpe's art, and Holly Hughes's
performance art are all on the line,
A Brief History of 1995

In response to a projected increase in HIV infection among gay men,
which became linked to a perceived surge in new commercial sex
establishments, a public debate eriipted in New York City early in 1995.
In an attempt to prevent further HIV transmission, a group of gay
journalists and activists organized under the acronym GALHPA (Gay
and Lesbian HIV Prevention Activists), and called upon the city to
enforce existing health code regulations in public venues where men
have sex with other men. However, because the regulations forbid all
vaginal, oral, and anal penetration in "public" spaces (including private
clubs), regardless of whether or not condoms are used, they prohibit
not only unsafe sex, but all sex; this hardly constitutes a workable HIV
prevention strategy. In addition, making certain kinds of sex illegal
echoes sodomy laws, which continue to be used to persecute gay men
and lesbians. Even more disturbing is that these gay activists are
demanding that city inspectors enter gay spaces to police consensual
behavior between adults.
Several forums were held at the Gay and Lesbian Community
Services Center in Greenwich Village, which the editors of this volume
attended. These forums spurred other activists to form new coalitions,
including AIDS Prevention Action League (APAL) and Community AIDS
Prevention Activists (CAPA), to come up with new strategies in HIV
prevention that avoided the pitfalls of GALHPA's regulatory approach.
Not only have APAL and CAPA emphasized the importance of public
sex as an aspect of gay culture, but these activists also maintain the
importance of using public sex establishments as vital sites for dissemi-
nating safer sex education. Part of their project has been to highlight
the widely disregarded fact that there are no causal links between public
sex, promiscuous sex, and unsafe sex.
We feel it is crucial to further the sex-positive HIV prevention
strategies set forth by APAL and CAPA. However, in putting together
this volume. Dangerous Bedfellows also wanted to draw attention to
certain points that have been largely absent from this debate. First, it is
not coincidental that New York City is simultaneously mounting a
crusade to close all adult sex establishments under the rubric of new
zoning laws. Couched in the rhetoric of "family values," the tone of this
campaign has eclipsed the real issue involved: corporate interests in
real estate development and "gentrification." Second, the impulse to
regulate public sex venues under the sign of HIV prevention has serious
political implications for the future of AIDS activism. These implications
must be articulated in order to expose the false equation of public sex
with HIV transmission while preserving the culture of public sex as an
arena for disseminating safer sex information. The real link between
between public sex and HIV prevention is its potential to educate men
about the multiplicities of non-penetrative sex. Finally, it is crucial to
consider the historical precedents in debates concerning public health
and sexuality, including the sex wars over pornography and censorship,
the criminalization of prostitution, and the "first wave" of anti-public
sex crusades that shut down a number of gay bathhouses in New York
and San Francisco in the 1980s.
As we enter the second decade of the AIDS epidemic, the complex-
ity of safer sex education has resulted in the lack of a clear vision for
future prevention strategies. Some activists view the first generation of
HIV prevention efforts as a failure, citing recent studies suggesting a
possible resurgence of HIV transmission among men who have sex
with men. The mission of groups like GALHPA is to switch gears from
education to regulation, from responsibility to enforcement. Other
activists, like APAL and CAPA organizers, acknowledge that the potential
increase in HIV transmission poses serious questions, and seek solu-
tions in new forms of community activism and new methods of
Dangerous Bedfellows 17
education. As these activists debate what role the state should play in
regulating community behavior, they are considering whether the law
can be mobilized in new ways to protect public health while affirming
sexual freedom. This book was designed to further this political project.
The outcome of the current sex club debate that began in New York
City will surely bear significantly upon the next generation of AIDS
activism beyond its local context. Finding new methods of prevention
for the second decade of the epidemic and beyond has placed AIDS
activists at a crossroads. Media reports have generally accepted the
premise that New York sex club debates are abotit HIV prevention. We
argue that HIV prevention is not the sole, nor even the foremost, issue
in the minds of many of the parties involved, particularly the municipal
government. It seems to us that the rhetoric demonizing public sex
masks a deeper desire to represent gay people as anything other
than promiscuous and non-monogamous; these strategies betray a
conservatism that is extremely dangerous for AIDS activism. As some
activists advocate sexually conservative behavior, queer politics lurch
dangerously to the right. Confusing morality with public health, and
intertwining lifestyle with mortality, the new strain of AIDS activism
represented by GALHPA aligns "community" standards with anti-gay
rhetoric. When activists like Gabriel Rotello argue on national radio that
gay men need to enter a decades-long era of sexual conservatism, it
becomes clear that the central issue is public sex itself, and that the
discussion over public sex has merely manifested itself as a debate over
HIV prevention—not the other way around.
These discussions around safer sex and public sex indicate a crisis
concerning policing and the law. Regulatory laws collapse public sex
with unsafe sex, promiscuity with the spread of HIV, and legality with
public health. What role should the law play in regulating HIV
transmission and public health? Who, if anyone, should bear the burden
of policing—the community or the state? What are the ramifications of
inviting the state into community institutions to monitor sexual behav-
ior? Certainly, the past actions of police and the state—from Stonewall
to Colorado, from Ronald Reagan's silence in the early years of the AIDS
crisis to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's slashing of New York City's AIDS
budget—have earned them little trust among AIDS activists. But today
some maintain that police intervention is not only necessary but it is
justifiable "for our own good." This particular crisis over the role of the
state in regulating sexuality will help determine the willingness of
governmental institutions to respond appropriately to queer politics in
the future. In addition, this crisis will directly influence the ways in
which the law can be mobilized to defend (or attack) radical sexual
culture.
The essays collected here will explore many questions brought to
the fore by the debate oyer public sex and HIV prevention that
originated in New York City, a debate that resonates with many broader
issues for queer activists throughout the U.S. Specifically, who will be
privileged to speak on behalf of whom, through what venues, and with
whose approval? How will the the mainstream media be allowed to
frame discourse on public sex? How will the "gay community" be
defined: who will be included, who will assign blame, who will make
decisions? What alliances will be forged out of expedience, and how
will those alliances impact future political and cultural mobiliza-
tion? What place does public sex occupy in the gay imaginary? What is
the future of public sex institutions? How will the creeping conservatism
that permeates many facets of the American political landscape today
affect the future of the public sex debate, especially the relation of
queer politics to AIDS activism and HIV prevention strategies? Finally,
the interdependent crises in HIV prevention, public sex, and queer
politics lead us to ask: what will the future of AIDS activism look like?
Dangerous Bedfellows
When Dangerous Bedfellows first got together as a collective, we really
ran the gamut: from virgin to whore, from Michel Foucault to Ricki Lake,
and everything in between. We each brought our own queer back-
grounds to this project: a little drag, a little leather, a little stripping, and
a bit of hustling. Each of us had a vested interest in these debates, as
queer theorists or AIDS activists, sex workers or club patrons, but our
specific approaches were as different as our hairstyles. Over the course
of the project, we grew together. We shared vintage pornography and
poststructural theory. We took trips to academic conferences and seaside
resorts. We kept each other up to date on meetings, articles, and rumors.
We went to forums together and vented our frustrations as friends.
Just as our collective has changed over the last year, the sexual
landscape of the 1990s has changed as well. In the brief time since we
Dangerous Bedfellows 19
began this project, clubs and theaters have been shuttered across New
York City. Lawsuits have been filed to protest censorship of gay
television shows on local cable stations and censorship of pornography
in local newsstands. Times Square has been "cleaned up" to make way
for Disney. And similar debates around public sex, HIV prevention, and
governmental control have sprung up in San Francisco, Washington,
Boston, and Atlanta, to name a few cities.
We had originally meant for "Dangerous Bedfellows" to describe
the unsavory alliances between gay activists and the radical right,
between AIDS activists and homophobic politicians, between so-called
radicals and so-called conservatives. By the end of the project, however,
we could see that in the fever-pitch of sexual conservatism sweeping
the country, we were in fact the truly Dangerous Bedfellows.
Although the members of our editorial collective are all, technically
speaking, academics, each of us has a political stake in public sex that
reaches far beyond a mere research interest. We undertook this project
largely as a corrective to the sex-negative (and often hysterical) spin
found in most mainstream publications around the topic of AIDS and
public sex. Any kind of meaningful discussion of HIV prevention
requires interrogating assumptions about safety and risk, assumptions
that are inextricably linked to heteronormative conventions and bour-
geois moral codes. Unfortunately, anti-bathhouse crusaders interpret
many of these assumptions as indisputable facts, enabling a reactionary
politics of the highest order. It is this kind of anti-sex politics that we
find it imperative to resist.
As activists, we consciously chose our contributors as we imagined
our audience: across a range of identities, occupations, and geographical
locations. The writers in this volume are journalists, artists, independent
scholars, university professors, public sex practitioners, grassroots
activists, sex workers, and graduate students; some fall into several of
these categories. Because the essays range from scholarly works to
personal manifestoes, we hope that they will be read widely within
classrooms, and activist groups, and informally among friends. They
are not intended to give the last word on the issue of public sex, but
rather to provoke discussion and enable sex-positive AIDS activism.
The book is divided into four sections: Public Sex, AIDS Activism,
Policing Sexuality, and Queer Politics. These sections are general
2 0 POLICING PUBLIC SEX
categories for organizational purposes rather than absolute divisions

between topics; many of the essays could fit in either of a number of
sections. By looking at each crisis point separately, we do not mean to
imply that these discussions are mutually exclusive; in fact, they are
intertwined, overlapping, and interdependent. However, HIV preven-
tion, public sex, and policing have become so confused and collapsed
in public discourse that it is essential to explore the dilemmas particular
to each crisis separately, in order to better understand how these issues
fit together.
By examining these issues, we are drawing attention to the fact that
sex is still on the line. Sometimes it is a defensive line drawn in the
sand, sometimes it is a tightrope offering a giddy thrill, sometimes it is
an unraveling rope in a tug-of-war between safety and desire. Often,
it is a party line toed uncritically by concerned citizens. We envision it
as a line of departure from contentious public debate and reactionary
moralism toward more productive and informed discussions.
DANGEROUS BEDFELLOWS
NEW YORK CITY, 1996
Ephen Glenn Colter
Wayne Heffman
Eva Pendleton
Alison RedUk
David Serlin
Welcomes THE NEW V I
iri\
PART I:
PUBLIC SEX
PART I:
PUBLIC SEX
The essays in this section begin by
exploring the specifics of the 1995 public sex controversy in New York
City: the background, the players, the stakes, the crackdown, and the
ramifications. Beyond New York City, however, these questions of physical
protection, sexual expression, political intervention, and social interaction
are central to any discussion of public sex. By widening the lens beyond
this specific time and place, this section also takes on additional
questions of race, class, gender, and HIV status in exploring the role of
a public sexual culture. Contributors address how public sex functions,
whether it can survive, how it can be improved, and why it is important.
Sex club operators stand at the intersection of sexual desire,
community politics, and financial concerns that fuel this debate, yet
their voices are seldom heard. Jay Blotcher profiles four New York City
club owners in "Sex Club Owners: The Faek Suek Buck Stops Here."
They explain their mistrust of governmental regulation for sex estab-
lishments, since they were betrayed by sex regulators a decade ago
during the last round of crackdowns allegedly to prevent HIV transmis-
sion. Tliey detail the city's ongoing harassment of sex venues on any
number of charges designed to drive sex clubs out of business without
explicitly closing them for sex violations. And they tell how they
negotiate their own desire to protect customers while maintaining
personal freedoms and erotic adventure, struggling to persist in the face
of a regulatory onslaught.
23
The battle over public sex is not only about preventing HIV or
criminalizing certain sexual acts. As David Serlin describes in "The
Twilight (Zone) of Commercial Sex," this battle is also about real estate
and big business. Restricting sexual expression in public space is about
artificially inflating property values, "gentrifying" certain neighbor-
hoods while turning others into commercial dumping grounds, and
destroying the sexual culture that residents and tourists have built—
and governments have fought—for decades.
Tlie 1995 debates in New York arose after the opening of a new
bathhouse in Chelsea—a mostly white, gay male neighborhood—yet,
public sex is an issue that crosses lines of race and gender in complex
ways. In "Going Public," Kendall Thomas interviews sex club operators
Jocelyn Taylor and Lidell Jackson to discuss the specific importance of
public sexual culture to lesbians and gay men of color. Tliey explore
how race and gender influence the development, presentation, and
viability of sex clubs, and affect their relation to broader queer culture
and government policy.
John Lindell takes a look at the changing shape of public sex spaces
in the wake of recent governmental crackdowns. Architecture is a key
element in how sex spaces function, what kinds of attitudes and
mindsets they encourage, and what kind of socializing and activities
they permit. Over the past decade, he argues, sex spaces have become
less architecturally creative and diverse. Lindell uses graphics and
artwork to suggest possible improvements in sex club design that might
facilitate greater sexual creativity, better attitudes about sex, and safer
atmospheres for patrons.
Finally, Scott O'Hara points out the political importance of public
sex in his personal manifesto, "Talking with My Mouth Full." In addition
to l:>eing a vital form of sexual expression, he argues, public sex is also
an essential form of political resistance for gay men fighting societal
restrictions on sexual expression. O'Hara also speaks out as a Positive
and a Person With AIDS. Wliile debunking the dual myths of HIV-
positive men as either sexless, withering corpses or reckless sexual
predators, O'Hara maintains his position as a PWA who engages in
public sex as a political statement.
Jay Blotcher
SEX CLUB OWNERS:

THE FUCK SUCK BUCK
STOPS HERE
In a world of silent partners and

shadowy mob connections, solidarity would have seemed an improb-
ability only a decade ago for the people operating New York City's
network of gay male sex clubs and backrooms. Up to that point, clubs
tended to operate independently, weathering police harassment and
sporadic public disapproval by greasing palms or keeping a low
profile. City and state sanitation codes were enforced intermittently,
and clubs violating the arcane regulations were slapped on the wrist
or occasionally fined.
But adversity, in the form of city crackdowns and threatened
closures, has fostered a pragmatic fraternity in which proprietors are
working together against a common enemy of their livelihood. The first
onslaught against the clubs came in 1985, when AIDS panic saw the
city-directed shuttering of the legendary St, Marks Baths, (Even an
editorial in the venerable New York Times, arguing the importance of
public sex places for the distribution of safe sex information, had no
effect,) A handful of like-minded establishments, either unwilling or
unable to marshal the resources to fight City Hall (or more accurately,
the city and state Boards of Health), also faded into sex history. But
owners of other clubs formed a coalition that year, refusing to shut
down. Working with health department officials, they attempted to draft
new safe sex guidelines that reflected legitimate concerns about HIV
25
transmission, yet fought restrictions that merely reflected anti-sex

crusading. They were only partially successful.
The resulting City Health Code, Section 24,2,2, is narrow at best. It
states, "No establishment shall make facilities available for the purpose
of sexual activities where anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse or fellatio
take place. Such facilities shall constitute a threat to the public health,"
Such regulations make no distinction between sexual acts with or
without condoms, summarily forbidding everything across the board;
safe sex and unsafe sex alike are illegal in public in New York City,
For a few years following the first wave of closures. New York
allowed its gay sex palaces to operate autonomously, accepting that
in-house monitors would enforce the archaic guidelines. Many places
were able to slip under the radar with a simple charade: by issuing
membership cards, charging a prohibitive admission of $15 or more,
and calling themselves a private club, these places were beyond the
surveillance of the city- and state-appointed club inspectors. In the more
compliant businesses, usually jerk-off clubs, flashlights would cut
through the darkness every hour, followed by the stem warning, "Lips
above the hips, guys!" Violators would be warned, then ejected for
repeated offenses. In the emporiums designed for hardcore encounters,
managers would make safe sex brochures available and allow patrons
to set their own carnal boundaries.
The conflict grew more pointed as the epidemic continued, with
mounting AIDS cases providing a convenient, if irrational, argument
against the continued operation of sex clubs, Tlie moralistic equation
was a simplistic one: sex clubs meant unsafe sex meant AIDS, It was a
testament to the increased political capital of the gay community that
people were able to reason with the city and keep places open.
Sex clubs became the focus of the public debate again in May 1992,
Mary Civiello, a reporter from New York's WNBC-TV, filed a series of
reports on these establishments, infusing her commentary with enough
titillation to ensure a sweeps-week victory, Civiello had been alerted
to an alleged relaxation of safer-sex regulations in these clubs by a
friend named Darrell Yates Rist, a gay writer and co-founder of the Gay
and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), A contentious
personality, Rist had recently angered and divided the community with
an essay in The Nation which posited that too much time and energy
Jay Bletiher 27
had been funneled into AIDS, detracting from the twin epidemics of
lesbian and gay drug abuse and alcoholism. Working as Civiello's
undercover agent, Rist ventured into several gay-identified backrooms
with a video camera hidden in his knapsack. The resulting fuzzy images
yielded little in the way of damning evidence, but this did not prevent
Civiello from spouting hyperbole. (In one typical broadcast, the narra-
tion of a scene depicting two men huddled together—the image replete
with black censor bars for the fainthearted—^warned viewers with
feigned certainty that they might be viewing unprotected anal inter-
course.) Civiello's reports sparked a renewed furor. Once again, sex
establishments were under attack.
A series of meetings among AIDS activists, club owners, and the
Mayor's Office was called by Citywide AIDS Coordinator Ronald
Johnson, a self-identified gay man with AIDS. Johnson was on record
as stating that he felt club shutdowns would drive male-on-male sex
underground, further hampering safer sex education efforts. Attending
a June 2, 1996, meeting were owners and managers of sex clubs, bars,
and clubs with backrooms. Attendance was large, as delegates were
perhaps reassured by the meeting's location: the workspace of ACT
UP/New York. The well-known AIDS activist group was an ally of the
club owners; in its most recent meeting following the Civiello broadcast,
the organization had agreed to fight any attempt by city agencies to
limit sexual conduct in backrooms. Present this evening were repre-
sentatives from Cellblock 28, The Vault, Wonder Bar, J's Hangout, Meat,
Squirt Farm, The Comeback, The Prism, and Boyztown—half of which
no longer operate. According to minutes from the meeting, Johnson
"indicated that the city had no choice but to enforce the laws but that
the Administration would prefer that the community empower itself by
making a good faith effort to minimize those sex practices that are
thought to be most correlated with the spread of the AIDS virus."
Efforts were made to negotiate with the city and state Health
Departments, but while a citywide shutting of sex clubs and backrooms
was avoided, little came of the momentary panic. Clubowners looked
over their shoulders more often for city inspectors, condoms and lube
materialized in a few more places, and gay newspapers trumpeted the
opening of new sex establishments.
28 POIICING PUBLIC SEX
The panic seemed to die down until three years later, when another
furor erupted, this time coming from within the gay community. There
was fertile ground for it: in addition to new sex clubs, medical experts
were observing increased seroconversion rates among gay men,
indicating a failure in safer sex education. There was frantic speculation
of the epidemic's second wave, and a frantic search for a scapegoat.
Into the fray came a group calling itself the Gay and Lesbian HIV
Prevention Activists (GALHPA) with a succinct ultimatum: all male sex
establishments must enforce the city's safer sex regulations (that is,
forbid all sex, safe or unsafe, in public) or be closed down. The New
York Daily News took up the cause, echoing GALHPA's overheated
rhetoric and painting club owners as heartless entrepreneurs making a
buck on the lives of gay men. Well-meaning but wrongheaded activists
had another handy equation: close down sex clubs, and you will halt
transmission, a logic which presumes that most unsafe encounters occur
in public places. The first casualties of 1995 were the Earle Theatre in
Queens and the veteran New David Cinema in Manhattan, The Mayfair
Theater in Queens and the New King Cinema in Manhattan soon
followed,
Demonization of club owners made for good copy. A June 12,1995,
Daily News editorial excoriated Uri Zohar, the owner or operator of four
gay movie theaters closed within the first six months of the year. In an
unexpected burst of reason, the editorial noted, "For sure, Zohar and
his crew are not spreading AIDS, The young men who are increas-
ingly—and foolishly—engaging in unprotected sex are doing that," But
it concluded by exhorting, "When owners and patrons thumb their
noses at tsafer sex] messages, the establishments become virtual killing
fields. Until that stops. City Hall should continue its crackdowns."
In the world according to GALHPA, the battle over sex clubs and
HIV transmission involves good and evil people. Sex club owners fall
within the darker region, portrayed as amoral people whose pockets
are far deeper than their sense of solidarity with the community. The
truth is far less damning. When the sex club controversy became the
subject of mainstream debate in 1995, several club owners became
involved again in improving their image and their adherence to
safer-sex regulations. After being harangued by GALHPA, several found
it more palatable to deal with the subsequently formed AIDS Prevention
Jay Blotcher 29
Action League (APAL) or Community AIDS Prevention Activists (CAPA).

They opened their doors to GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis), who
suggested making condoms, lubrication, and towels available to
patrons, as well as offering safer sex information and demonstrations.
By the end of 1995, several more porn theaters had closed. Many
others had brought up the lights, closed down orgy rooms, and hired
more emphatic monitors. In the following profiles, the owners of four
gay-identified sex establishments—Club Hellfire, The Attic, The West
Side Club, and He's Gotta Have It—agreed to talk about their involve-
ment during the year-long firestorm over HIV and sex clubs. Three of
the men are gay; one is bisexual. They spoke about the community
debate in 1995, the requirements thaist upon them by city regulations,
and harassment by the police. They also discussed their obligation to
their patrons, their role in promoting safe sex, and the futures of their
businesses. As gay- and bi-identified men, they resent being branded
as profiteers who pay attention only to the bottom line. As entrepre-
neurs, they point out that keeping customers alive is not just good
public health, it's good business.
LENNY WALLER / HELLFIRE

At New York's circuit of S/M clubs, safer-sex enforcement is a moot
point. The caliber of fantasy peddled involves cat o' nine tails and
mindfucks, not insertive sex and bodily fluids. At Hellfire, located in
the Triangle Building at the intersection of Hudson and I4th Streets in
Manhattan, Lenny Waller runs a safe house for gay men. With a bald
pate, gentle green eyes, and an expansive grey-white beard. Waller
resembles an Indian yogi; his measured, kind voice underscores the
guai parallel. Only a leather vest, jacket, and pants disrupt the Eastern
vision. Tonight, Hellfire is open to S/M straights. Lenny sits in a booth
at the entrance, whips and ropes on the wall behind him, and collects
the $30 admission fee. On the wall in the main room, above a pile of
safe sex brochures, is a 1994 letter from the New York City Department
of Health which underscores the absurdity of safer sex regulations. The
letter, responding to a query, states that the licking of scrotums should
be banned, as this act could lead to fellatio, a higher-risk activity. Waller
cordially tells callers that tonight's theme is Schoolgid Uniforms.
3 0 POLICINO PUBLIC SEX
"Bobby SOX, saddle shoes, and cotton panties for all little girls over 21."
The age disclaimer is for undercover agents who may be looking for
pedophiles. In the adjoining room known as Manhole, the slings have
been hung with care for a fistfucking party. The cubicles are all doorless.
An early crowd has gathered, but the fun has not yet commenced; a
knot of leather-clad men chats amiably at the bar.
Waller has been in the S/M club business for three decades, starting
in 1968 with a gay S/M club called The Catacombs, Subsequent
incarnations were called The Toilet and The Sewer. "There was no limit
back then on sex," Waller says, "Just no children, no animals, no hard
drugs. Fucking and sucking were fine," It was an era when leather
enthusiasts earned each piece as they ascended through the ranks, a
time when people into electric shock and mummification would take
a break and discuss the latest diva at the Met. More inclined to flash an
ironic smile than to raise his voice, even at the rampant moralism
surrounding sex clubs. Waller explains the key difference between the
1985 crackdown and its counterpart a decade later. While the '85 laws
were enacted in an effort to curb the transmission of a virus the
Department of Health understood little about, he says, the most recent
crackdown was more political posturing, "Now we understand the
disease. But there are so many other political and moral issues at stake."
When the city closed down clubs in 1985, Waller took an interest
in the political ramifications of the conflict, educating himself on city
laws to avoid being bulldozed by city officials spouting arcane regula-
tions. He voluntarily shuttered Hellfire for a short time, took part in the
battle to keep the St, Marks Baths operating, and attended the trial after
the Mineshaft was closed. He points out that sex clubs of that era were
a boon to men seeking sex with men, not only for convenience but for
safety's sake, "In the era before the Mineshaft, guys had sex on the
piers, or in the back of meat trucks. When the Mineshaft opened, at
least they were playing in a supervised environment—not at the mercy
of fagbashers and maniacs," If any politician had been so imprudent as
to close every sex club in the name of HIV prevention, he says, we'd
be thrown back to the early days when unsafe sex literally meant risking
your life by having sex in out-of-the-way public places. "If you closed
every club of every type, you would not eliminate it. You would drive
it underground,"
JoyBlotcher 31
Waller learned well; even now, he quotes court transcripts by heart,

pointing out the particular absurdities of the law that are used as a
smokescreen for a pointedly anti-sex agenda. He retains an abiding
anger for those who organized the citywide crackdown, ostensibly in
the name of fighting AIDS. "At that point, they had destroyed the gay
culture, as far as I was concerned. Fucking is part of the gay culture."
By late 1985, Waller plunged in to fight the more restrictive and
nonsensical sex club laws. "It was a three-year fight, banging my head
against the wall," he says. His one salient victory, he adds, was in
convincing blue-nosed health officials to exempt anal penetration with a
dildo from their laws because, aesthetic objections aside, the act does not
transmit HIV. In recent meetings with the Board of Health, Waller says he
has challenged statistics cited as scare tactics, scoffing at a trumped-up
charge that an increase in unsafe homo sex has caused a 75 percent rise
in Hrv transmission. Wliile pom theaters were closed down last year,
Waller's club remained undisturbed. "They all left me alone. I've been in
the business 30 years. I don't endanger anybody's life."
Waller has followed the GALHPA-APAL debates and listened to the
GMHC drill on safer sex regulations in clubs. He cites AIDS Czar Ron
Johnson as an ally in the fight to keep clubs open and in urging club
owners to police themselves. He complies freely with guidelines that
protect against HIV transmission. How could there be an alternative, he
asks with a mournful smile. "I buded one lover and have been to too many
funerals. I'm not going to be responsible for more funerals." A stringent
safer sex policy has its downside, however. "I take a financial beating
for prohibiting safe sex. For ten dollars you can go somewhere else and
be unsafe." But he refuses to blame other clubowners for allowing unsafe
sex, disagreeing with the GALHPA credo that clubowners are wholly
responsible for their patrons. "Who forced these people to go to these
places?" he snorts. He says no club owners have lost their businesses by
adhering to city-imposed safer sex guidelines. "Others who have had
problems [with the rules] have had problems with other tilings. When you
get greedy and try to shortcut things, that's when you have problems."
Surprise inspections by health department personnel occasionally occur.
About three months ago, a pair of plainclothes cops dropped in on Waller
to monitor sexual activity. But amid the S/M regulars, they blew their
cover by refusing to separate and join in the fun.
Asked whether he has attempted to reason with other clubowners

who allow unsafe sex. Waller shrugs. "It's like pissing in the wind." He
pauses and fiashes an embarrassed grin. "Maybe that was a bad
analogy." Those establishments which allow unsafe sex, he offers, are
probably not operated by gay people. He stays in communication with
other gay sex club owners and says that community solidarity keeps
people honest. "Lots of clubs are owned by the community; they're
looking out for their own. When straight money is involved, then you
have to watch out." Waller advocates keeping clubs open, so that they
can serve to educate patrons and constantly emphasize safer sex. "Clubs
serve a viable purpose. You're not going to wipe out sex. If you can
have it in a viable and safe space, then you've accomplished some-
thing." The current furor over sex clubs. Waller believes, will only die
down when city officials find a way to get their names in the
newspapers besides posing as crusaders for morality. Until then, at
Hellfire and Manhole, Waller will continue to brandish paddles and
pronounce them the safest sex of all.
WALLY WALLACE / THE ATTIC

By the end of the week, the snowfall now covering West I4th Street in
New York City will be hyped as The Blizzard of 1996. Right now it is
merely a steady fall of large fiakes, which has cleared this area of its
usual population of leathermen, drag queens, and fiercely independent
sex workers. Two feet of snow are expected tonight, and most shop
owners have pulled down their gates for the evening. But behind one
nondescript door, two men are sweeping up and plugging in the space
heaters to warm a maze of plywood cubicles, slings, and inelegantly
carved glory holes. This establishment is a sex club called The Attic,
and even during a record snowstorm, the faithful will still come.
A short man is piling things into a freight elevator. In a leather jacket
and jeans, with a shaved head and Fu Manchu, he appears menacing.
But a bright smile curls the edges of his moustache as he introduces
himself as Squeaky. Supervising his actions and admonishing him from
time to time is a larger man, white and pale. The two snipe at one
another with the blend of affection and resentment that springs from a
years-long relationship. The older man has a large, fieshy face and the
guileless eyes of a child. His leather jacket covers a red plaid shirt,
which vainly covers a belly that hangs generously over his pants. Wally
Joy Bletiher 33
Wallace, 57, has been running The Attic since the late '70s, while doing
double duty as manager of the famed Mineshaft. He is eager to talk
and tends to ramble, more amused than angered by the recent efforts
to monitor backrooms and sex clubs. The hoary arguments remain the
same, he says, conveying the certainty that this particular squall will
also disappear.
When the Mineshaft was closed in 1985, Wallace recalls, AIDS fever
was in full foment. But the Mineshaft was ultimately shuttered due to
tax problems, despite reams of vague court testimony that recounted
Health Department officials hearing "moans and deep kissing" within
the walls of the notorious den of dreams. "They never saw anything,"
Wallace guffaws. Moreover, the place had ben complying with newly
imposed rules, supplying condoms and installing monitors in the newly
lit space. To no avail. The St. Marks Baths had also just been shuttered.
"The places that complied [with the safer sex rules] were the ones who
closed," Wallace says, "because they acknowledged things going on."
The high-toned East Side Club and Wall Street Sauna survived, he adds,
because they looked city officials in the eye and insisted that men were
not using their facilities for a quick lunchtime fuck.
Wallace's account underscores the distaist that exists between city
officials and club owners. Wallace and other veteran club owners
remember the city's punitive measures against owners who cooperated
in good faith a decade ago, and they're not eager to make the same
mistake again by letting the city in the door. Since health officials draw
no distinction between illegal sex and unsafe sex, pillorying club
owners for both, it's no wonder that club owners prefer self-policing.
In one incarnation or another. The Attic has endured. It began in the
landmark Triangle Building, upstairs from Hellfire, as a private club "for
friends, friends of friends, and fuck buddies." When the state and city
began enforcing rules on sexual practices, Wally had little cause to worry.
"Basically, our guys are cocksuckers. There's no fucking." Not that oral
sex is permitted in the city sanitation code, but this seems to be Wallace's
wishful measure of calculated risk. He remains skeptical of the ban on
oral sex, citing a dearth of proof of transmission, but complies with the
ban on anal sex. Above all, he says, with pride, he holds himself to a
personal standard for taking care of customers. He corrects himself.
"Customers aren't just customers; they're kind of friends."
In the last four years, when public scrutiny settled on sex clubs and
bathhouses, Wallace agreed to attend Ron Johnson's 1992 meetings in
the wake of the WNBC report. But he feels that the priority among club
owners should have been solidarity—and a vow of silence. He decries
the media-grabbing tactics of club promoter Marc Berkley, who es-
corted reporters through the Limelight in what Wallace sneeringly refers
to as "the White House tour," to prove that unsafe sex was not
conducted on his premises, despite a backroom—^the Lick It! Lounge—
located on the top floor of the church-turned-disco. "It was a very stupid
thing to do," says Wallace. It did nothing to pacify health officials or
prevent another wave of sex club crackdowns after a short respite. In
the end, it didn't even protect Limelight, whose 1995 drug bust
coincided with that year's backroom closures.
Private clubs like the Attic have thus far enjoyed a greater degree
of immunity; establishments such as movie theaters, where the film on
the screen was less exciting than the action in the seats, were soon
closed. "Some of these places should have been closed down," Wallace
adds, without irony. Solidarity has its limits.
Wallace shrugs at the gauntlet of rules imposed upon the clubs; for
the most part, he feels they are not unreasonable. And those rules that
he does think are too invasive—like the ban on oral sex—he simply
ignores. Meetings with the city and later meetings with GALHPA were,
for the most part, an exercise in moderation. Despite occasional
moralizing, Wallace never felt that the city was hell-bent on closing
down all gay sex establishments. GALHPA's agenda was a bit more
extreme, he says, calling their memorable town meeting at New York
City's Gay and Lesbian Community Center a farce. "I found that GALHPA
was out to crucify anyone who had anything to do with sex in public."
Meetings with members of the sex-positive APAL were more effective
for Wallace. As for GMHC, which initiated a series of meetings to request
standardized sex club features—everything from better lighting to safer
sex instruction—^Wallace waxes critical, citing months-long delays in
production of their proposed brochure of new sex club guidelines.
"GMHC is worse than the bureaucracy they were created to fight."
Wallace dismisses apocalyptic notions of the city closing down every
last gay sex establishment, redefining the argument: "they have an
interest in not having any other places spring up." The more tangible
JoyBlohhcr 35
danger to his livelihood, he says, is fiscal; city, state, and federal taxes
have bled the profits from the bar and club businesses. Wallace has his
own perspective on the latest rezoning law, which would remove peep
shows and porn bookstores from most residential areas and exile them
to the fringes of Manhattan, like the meat-packing district, where the
Attic now operates. Wallace doesn't want these fugitive businesses as
neighbors on I4th Street. Perhaps competition is one concern, but
Wallace insists his chief complaint is that turf wars among transvestites
and prostitutes are already a major headache on this strip.
Installing club monitors is an exercise in futility, he says; the tribe
protects itself. Regulars look after one another and pretty much turn
down somebody who wants to play unsafe. The thankless task of
playing sex cop falls to Squeaky, who recounts a typical evening of
catching a violator in the act and throwing him out on the third warning.
"You don't want to be a bad guy, but you also want them to play safe."
Guys who are obviously drunk or drugged are turned away at the door.
Squeaky prefers customers to negotiate sex practices on their own,
reasoning that the guy who insists on foregoing a condom will find
himself ostracized from the group—unless he finds a risk-taker. "I can't
enforce it—it's impossible. He'll go to another place and get thrown
out again, so he'll go to the park and do it there." Even in the wake of
the perceived crackdown, Wallace sees no appreciable drop in atten-
dance. Places like the Attic, he says, will weather momentary shifts in
public policy and always emerge with a core clientele. "People will
always be drawn to sex clubs."
PAUL GALUCCIO / WEST SIDE CLUB

Fresh out of the closet in the 1970s after a divorce from his wife,
businessman Paul Galuccio began exploring the scores of sex clubs
and bathhouses which then flourished in New York City. He was
unprepared for both the heady liberation of these places and their
casual approach to hygiene. He vowed one day to create gay estab-
lishments which were upscale, clean, and safe. Galuccio eventually
established a small empire, running successful businesses that ranged
from printing firms to real estate, travel bureaus to restaurants, including
the venerable Upper East Side suit-and-frond bar. The Townhouse.
Galuccio, 58, was prepared for a new venture. When the West Side
Club opened its doors in February 1995, he and business partner David
Moyal, publisher of Next magazine, told city and state inspectors it was
"a private gay men's club," Exercise equipment in one of the club's
rooms suggested a gym. But a 24-hour operating schedule and 48
private, locked cubicles, coyly billed in gay magazine ads as "resting
cabins," which suggested to the well-seasoned another familiar land-
mark of gay culture, "[It's] a bathhouse like the legendary bathhouses
of old," fulminated columnist Gabriel Rotello, a member of GALHPA,
in New York Newsday, upon the club's opening, "those bustling hives
of contagion that helped spread death throughout the gay male world,"
In the wake of anti-sex-club furor, the opening of a new bathhouse—the
first since the 1985 closing of the St, Marks Baths—tripped sex police
alarms. But Galuccio was within the law; he had already run the usual
gauntlet of city regulations required to open such an establishment.
Bathhouses did not fall within the definition of sex-related businesses,
and thus were not affected by the Building Commission's moratorium.
The clean but rather unremarkable facilities on West 20th Street opened
without incident.
Then, a first-person piece by DflZ/jyAfems reporter Jonathan Capehart
appeared in the February 6, 1995, edition of the newspaper. Titled
"Getting Undressed, Going Undercover," it was a breathless eyewitness
account of a typical night at the West Side Club, Capehart, a gay man
who omits that salient detail in his tongue-clucking piece, writes: "Time
stands still in the West Side Club, It is windowless. There are no clocks.
But for someone, it could trigger the countdown to the end of his life,
I did not see unsafe sex during my two-and-a-half-hour visit—meaning
anal or oral sex without a condom. But there's little doubt that unsafe
sex will take place there,"
Galuccio's headaches soon began, A task force headed by Police
Commissioner William Bratton notified Galuccio that the block was not
zoned for a health club, an odd pronouncement since the Molly Fox
Studio, an aerobics club, had been its predecessor, Bratton warned there
would be repercussions; the next month, he kept his word, A phalanx
of ten police barged in without a warrant and interrupted a group of
patrons. The lights came up. Name-calling ensued; customers talked
back, "It was almost like Stonewall," says Galuccio, When he called the
police department to report the event, Galuccio was told there was no
record of the invasion ever taking place. Word of the raid raced through
Jay Bletiher 37
the community, and people stayed away, he claims, resulting in lost

business.
Four weeks later, at nine in the morning, the police returned,
ejecting patrons and employees, snipping telephone lines, and pad-
locking the doors. Galuccio's complaint was initially dismissed by a
judge, but an appellate judge forced the first judge to hear the case.
Representatives from GMHC, Lambda Legal Defense, and the Gay and
Lesbian Community Services Center also attended in support of the
West Side Club. The city revisited their charge that the area was not
zoned for a health club. Galuccio offered to remove the exercise
equipment. At that point, the attorney for the city pointed out that there
were private rooms in the club, clearly designed for sexual encounters.
But Galuccio's attorney pointed out that this new charge could not be
introduced. The city lost the case, and Galuccio removed most of the
equipment and reopened. He then countersued the city for lost business
in a case which is still pending. By October 1995, the West Side Club
had met all city regulations.
Galuccio prevaricates in explaining the nature of his private men's
club,finallyadmitting that sex takes place on the premises, but adding,
"We're not promoting AIDS; we're promoting a club for gay people to
meet." The demographics of the club vary from professionals to
weekend partiers. Galuccio dismisses GALHPA's most heated rhetoric.
"People say we're nothing but bloodsuckers in the community." But he
points to his support of the Community Center and GMHC, plus the
many gay men on his payroll. "I didn't give someone AIDS; AIDS started
long before I was in the business."
Sex between men is an inevitability, Galuccio says several times in
different ways. A pragmatic businessman, he says he is merely
providing a desired service, installing measures of safety which are
cost-effective and also soothe his conscience. The West Side Club
provides safer sex information, condoms, and lubrication. GMHC
volunteers come in occasionally to provide safer sex demonstrations.
Monitors verbally admonish couples who choose to cavort in the open,
directing them to private rooms. Beyond those policing measures,
Galuccio allows patrons to make their own decisions about safer sex,
adding that, at this juncture in the epidemic, blame now lies with the
individual, "If I were to get AIDS today, it's my own fucking fault, I
deserve it,"
Galuccio has a basic sense of the political landscape of the sex club
controversy. He feels the instigators are not city officials, but the "gay
rabblerousers" of GALHPA, whose manifesto he knows well enough to
be able to identify them as the group lobbying to remove all cubicle
doors. Working with GMHC has been more productive; Galuccio complies
with suggestions ranging from warning signs in showers and bathrooms
to condoms and literature in cruising areas. The Carrie Nation fervor
seems to have abated, he adds, in part because the city, shrewdly
weighing public sentiment, realized the anti-sex-club sentiment was not
unanimous in the gay community,
Galuccio hopes the conflict of the past year will bring a reformation
to sex clubs, with an emphasis on cleaner, safer facilities. For his part,
he proudly points out that owners of gay male sex establishments are
no longer looked upon as pushovers, "I don't think the police will
harass us anymore. The City will be very careful how they move [from
now on]. We didn't take this lying down,"
MICHAEL WAKEFIELD / HE'S GOTTA HAVE IT
Just before the Christmas holiday in 1995, Michael Wakefield spent a
day bagging leaves in Tompkins Square Park, a slab of green staked
out by the East Village's punks, anarchists, and homeless. This was not
an act of civic pride for Wakefield, whose walk-up apartment is a stone's
throw from the park; this was a plea bargain, Wakefield, founder of a
popular monthly jerk-off party called He's Gotta Have It, had been
busted a few weeks earlier for serving beer without a license at his
popular gatherings. In addition to raking the park, he paid a $90 fine.
How the cops found the place is no mystery; Wakefield's parties have
been listed in the weekly Homo Xtra since they began in January 1992,
Whether the license bust provided a smokescreen for another agenda,
one can only speculate. But this was a season of sex club and backroom
raids, and the city was apparently using any excuse necessary to harass
sex spaces. In the same way that the Mineshaft was finally targeted a
decade earlier for tax violations, other sex clubs fell victim to the city
regulators for any number of non-sexual violations. He's Gotta Have It
was no exception.
Jay Blotiher 39
A disarmingly gentle man in his early 30s with a boyish face and
braces, Wakefield recounts the night New York's Finest came to call. It
is neady 4 a.m. one Sunday morning in mid-October, and tonight's
winner of the traditional Big Dick Contest is still basking in the
adulation. His organ is impressive, but so is his self-esteem: when he
stripped down for the contest, revealing a pair of leg braces, he blithely
secured his crutch at the coatcheck. Most people have finished frater-
nizing; some stragglers are trying to scare up some after-hours action.
Suddenly, a troop of ten cops, dressed in quilted blue jackets, barrels
through the front door of the building on I4th Street, east of Seventh
Avenue, ignoring Wakefield's protests that he is in charge. They proceed
knowingly to the second-fioor loft space, which is a dance studio by
day, and with military precision bring up the lights, turn off the music,
and command people to stay put. One cop barks, "Okay, this is my
house now!" Wakefield recalls, "It seemed that they were trying to create
chaos so that people would not have their wits about them." People
are given time to don their clothes and hustled out. Then Wakefield
and his coatcheck attendant are handcuffed and told they have been
charged with selling alcohol without a license. (Ken Palmer, who
co-founded the party with Wakefield, has slipped out just as the raid
commences.) Two cases of beer and the tip money are confiscated.
Before leaving, the officers take one last piece of evidence: the Big
Dick Contest sign. An acquaintance who has stayed late attempts to
intervene, and demands to know where the pair will be booked. After
threatening to arrest the man and bullying him verbally, the cops give
him an incorrect precinct number and spirit away Wakefield and the
coatcheck man. After an hour in a holding cell, the pair are photo-
graphed, fingerprinted, and given a court date.
Wakefield is reluctant to connect the bust to the general sex club
crackdown, for evidence is thin; there were no snide officer remarks
about the establishment being a sex club, nor any homophobic
comments, a common trapping of police raids. But the doubts persist.
"What makes them choose one place over another if everybody is
doing the same stuff?" Wakefield wonders. And in the end, it doesn't
much matter. A sex club is a precarious business in New York these
days, and even though Wakefield's violation was serving alcohol, the
bust—coupled with threats from community activists in GALHPA—has

changed the sexual atmosphere at his parties.
When GALHPAfiredits initial salvo, Wakefield understood its intent
to enforce safer sex, but disagreed with the group's more extreme rules,
such as removing the doors to all cubicles to facilitate sex monitoring.
Attempting to attend a GALHPA meeting, Wakefield was turned away
by someone who explained it was a closed event; they later mailed
him their recommendations for sex club safety guidelines. Wakefield
found a more comfortable ally in APAL, whose manifesto—sometimes
precious in exhorting gay men to take care of one another—seemed
to echo his own philosophy. "I felt GALHPA was misguided," he
explains. "I think APAL is doing a good job. I've been to their meetings
with sex club owners. I agree with most of their politics." While some
guidelines are a financial hardship—^Wakefield complains that his
modest bottom line allows for condoms, but not the required lubrication
packets—he attempts to enforce safer sex, feeling a host's sense of
responsibility. Since the bust, however, Wakefield is taking no chances.
Anal sex occurs rarely at his events, but since even oral sex is grounds
for another police invasion, he remains firm on a no-fellatio policy,
having posted signs and offering a gentle tap on the shoulder for
offenders. However, APAL and GMHC recently issued guidelines
approving oral sex without condoms as safe, adding to Wakefield's
confusion; is his primary goal to keep patrons safe, or keep his club
within the law?
Michael Wakefield is an atypical sex club entrepreneur. He started
the monthly parties to supplement a modest freelance career as a
photographer for gay magazines, including OutWeek. "There was no
agenda; I needed money, and sex sells, so I opened it. Two months
into it, I realized I could pay my bills." Wakefield's wide-eyed. Hall-
mark-grade sincerity often borders on the comical. In addition to the
parties, he hosts a weekly cable TV show. "It's A Wonderful Life" is an
earnest lavender turn on Saturday Night Line's Stuart Smalley self-af-
firmation show. Wakefield skewers gay-on-gay emotional cruelty and
ends each show with the credo, "Do you know you are loved? Have a
gay day." Similarly, He's Gotta Have It is a humanistic alternative to
other private j.o. parties with body-fascist door policies. Wakefield,
taunted by elementary schoolmates who called him ugly, drafted a
Jay Blotchsr 41
statement for HGHI which satisfied both his conscience and New York
State health department regulations. It reads: "He's Gotta Have It is a
safer sex j,o, party for men of all colors, sizes, and ages. We choose not
to discriminate at the door because our community is already oppressed
enough from the outside. Tastes vary, and so does the look of our
clientele,"
Wakefield's populist philosophy attracted the likeminded: 120 peo-
ple crowded in the second evening, which was held at a porn
moviespace called Bijou 82, (Wakefield may be all-inclusive, but he is
no patsy, adding, "It's not being only p.c. It's smarter financially not to
turn people away,") Subsequent parties grew so expansive that Wake-
field and Palmer were asked by nervous sublessors to find another
space. He's Gotta Have It reveled in its corniness, holding parties to
coincide with major holidays, HGHI's anniversary falls each year on
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, (One year, the event prompted a
classical Wakefield move: a palm card advertising the party depicted
the civil rights leader saying, "I have a dream,,, where men roam naked
and fulfill their sexual desires, "Above his head floated a thought bubble
depicting two men having sex,) Wakefield's touchy-feely perspective
sometimes astounds; at the start of each Big Dick Contest, as men work
themselves into tumescence, he actually reminds them that personality,
not size, ultimately matters, Wakefield's parties attract a 95 percent
gay-identified clientele, a greater percentage than most sex clubs, which
may account for their more frequent compliance with safer sex
guidelines.
Having just celebrated its fourth year of operation in January 1996,
He's Gotta Have It continues, minus the beer (only sodas, pretzels, and
chips). Wakefield toes the safer sex line and still chafes over what limits
he should employ in policing patrons, as opposed to respecting their
personal sexual choices, "If someone came to my party and contracted
AIDS, how would I feel? I do my best to monitor it, but it's still an
individual choice. If they choose to have unsafe sex at my party,
chances are they're doing it elsewhere,"
Attending meetings with city officials to standardize self-policing
has reawakened the activism Wakefield took part in during the ACT UP
days of the late '80s. He has been invited to discuss the controversy on
talk shows, specifically by the producers of the now-cancelled "Charles
Perez Show" and "Rolonda." But he rejected both offers, certain that
the scandal-for-ratings format would preclude any edifying debate. "I
don't mind being an activist-spokesperson for sex clubs," he says, "but
it made me wonder how important sex clubs are for me." He adds, with
conviction, "But you can't be involved in sex clubs and not be political."
Conclusions
These days, sex club owners can no longer be mere businessmen. They
have been forced to defend themselves at community forums and in
the media. As the epidemic lumbers on, they are looked upon with
distrust by certain members of the gay community,.even as their venues
stay crowded night after night with queers who gladly avail themselves
of the clubs' services. In the past few years, as public and municipal
attacks have grown in tenor, sex club owners have become more
effective in coping with their detractors. And the debate persists: Should
club owners be penalized for an individual's unsafe practices? Is it more
effective to keep sex clubs open, allowing them to serve as venues for
safer sex education, or merely close them down? To what extent will
sexual practices go underground, or will people merely accept that an
era has ended and alter their practices?
Each club owner interviewed holds to a personal code of promoting
safer sex and encouraging personal responsibility. But each man also
sees through the smokescreen of safe sex rhetoric put forward by
GALHPA and the city. Many owners are veterans of the last wave of
sex club closures and understand the politics behind the media reports;
many are wary of cooperating with health officials after being betrayed
a decade ago. They hope that by working with community groups
genuinely interested in promoting safe sex, they can escape the worst
of the city's reprisals and weather this new wave of closures.
The proposed rezoning of New York City's sex-related businesses
in 1996, however, promises a new wrinkle in the debate typical of the
hyper-moral, anti-sex furor currently propounded by the Giuliani
administration. Building Department inspectors will determine whether
a store is a sex-related business and accordingly remove it from within
500 feet of residential zones, schools, houses of worship, or other
sex-related businesses. Whether private sex clubs fall within this legal
purview remains to be seen; several private parties—like Harlem's
Afro-deeziak—were raided by police in 1995. Those owners inter-
Joy Bletcher 43
viewed see this latest anti-sex crusade as a passing phase; they vow to
survive this trying period unscathed. Whether this is a measure of naive
denial will be determined as the rezoning laws take effect. Each of the
four owners interviewed operates a business that could conceivably fall
within the purview of the new zoning restrictions, and each venue
could be shut by the city for zoning reasons alone by the end of
1996—assuming, of course, that they are not shut down for liquor
violations, illegal sexual activity, or any number of red herrings the city
may bring up.
No matter what the result, sex club owners will continue to perform
a precarious balancing act as entrepreneurs and activists, sexual
hedonists and legal crusaders.
Postscript
Four weeks after he was interviewed for this piece, Wally Wallace
announced the closing of his club, The Attic. On the club's final night,
February 18, 1996, Wallace distributed a letter to patrons explaining
why he had closed his doors. The following is an excerpt:
Dear Members:
"Where are the Activists?" is the bold headline on the free tabloid
I picked up on my way home to write this letter.
The question is a good one. On February 8th we received a late
afternoon hand-delivered letter from the New York City Health Depart-
ment. The content was a clear threat of closure for permitting fellatio
on premises. This was based on the observations of their unnamed
observers on unspecified dates. Although this communication was
signed by an acknowledged authority, the letter had no proper address
or phone number on the letterhead with which to respond.
We called GMHC and spoke to one of the main liaisons to the clubs
who advised us to have guys check their pants before entering. As
inspectors are not allowed to check their pants, this could solve the
problem. At first it seemed to be a likely solution. Then the landlord
received similar letters, so that solution was blown to the wind.
Attic members and others who have attended our events should
be well aware that we have worked with the good activists at APAL,
organizations such as GMHC, and the other sex clubs. We have
attended every policy meeting and forum we have been invited to by
them or city agencies. We have followed all the GMHC-approved
guidelines and passed out all required literature. We even distributed
an advance text of a GMHC pamphlet claiming extreme low risk to
HIV infection through cocksucking, (A pamphlet, which I might add,

they seem to procrastinate in publishing,),,, Now it does appear that
all our efforts to run a safe, sane facility have been in vain. Big Brother
is here and we must obey rather than face unpleasant consequences,,,
We've been around for a long time and in no way do we regret
having provided many good times and fine facilities for you to exercise
the natural urges of your gay male libidos.
David Serlin
THE TWILIGHT (ZONE)

OF COMMERCIAL SEX
from fashion dictates to fascist
dictators, it's all part of The Times.
—bus stop advertisement
for The New York Times, Fall 1995
Few people were terribly surprised when, in the fall of 1995, a wave
of consumer opprobrium persuaded Calvin Klein to withdraw his latest
underwear advertising campaign from television and print media. The
campaign consisted of photographer Steven Meisel's cheesy images of
youthful models, which self-consciously imitated the style of 1970s
suburban child pornography. Many were unaware of intended irony of
the images and detected only the prurient whiff of exploited teenage
sexuality. At what point, pundits were left to ponder, does sex stop
selling, and merely infuriate? Around the same time, in October 1995,
the New York City Council passed a zoning ordinance that would forbid
"X-rated businesses" from operating within 500 feet of residential
districts, schools, houses of worship, or each other. Under the ordi-
nance, which drew the protests of a number of political organizations,
legal funds, and grassroots activists from New York's queer community,
only 28 of the present 177 commercial sex establishments would be
allowed to stay in their current locations. The remaining 149 would
have one year, until October 1996, to change the nature of their
business, close down, or move to sites approved by the Planning
45
Commission in areas where such businesses can operate legally: mostly

industrial and manufacturing zones outside the borough of Manhattan.
Despite their many differences, the debates surrounding Calvin
Klein's advertisements and the zoning ordinance both clearly illustrate
the paradoxical relationship between censorship and capitalism in
public discourse. Like debates about child pornography in advertising,
any discussion of public sex or sexual consumption in commercial sex
establishments takes place more broadly in the large and complex realm
of a commercial economy that is by no means exclusively about sex.
Whether high-fashion spectacle or low-brow parody, whether high-
traffic sex club or low-rent pom theatre, commercialized sexuality exists
at the inscmtable juncture of free-market economics and community
standards, the tricky negotiation of which directly influences how
individuals, corporations, and even whole nations want to represent
themselves to their competitors, consumers, and citizens. What forces
permit, for example, 90-foot billboards with suggestive lingerie adver-
tisements to loom over Times Square, while the zoning ordinance closes
nearby commercial sex establishments? One possible answer may be
the difference between representation and reality, but the real answer
is more likely about real estate. In this essay, I will suggest that the
recent zoning ordinance has much more to do with New York City's
unscrupulous tradition of increasing property values and real estate
opportunities than with "improving" neighborhoods or "quality-of-life"
issues, or even "protecting" children from commercial sexual activity,'
Anyone who has followed the typical pattern of urban renewal
projects in large metropolitan cities like New York knows that, during
certain historical moments, city governments take enormous liberties
in coercing and ultimately displacing undesired businesses or peoples
from desirable locations,^ Yet what is particularly incendiary about New
York's new zoning ordinance is that, possibly for the first time in the
city's history, it was state intervention—not grassroots organizations,
philanthropic agencies, or religious groups—^that resulted in the prohi-
bition of commercial sex. The City Council proposed similar legislation
to restrict adult businesses in New York City in the late 1970s, but the
mobilization of liberal sentiment, in tandem with strong community
opposition, summarily forced the plans to be abandoned. Community-
driven campaigns empower the people most directly affected and
David Serlin 47
encourage them to decide, by democratic mandate, how to deal with

a particular issue or problem. During the heyday of ACT UP in the late
1980s, for example, gay groups worked in alliance with the city—and,
in particular, the Department of Public Health—to implement successful
HIV prevention campaigns whose strategies did not include the closing
of commercial sex spaces. But, as political activists know only too well,
when the rhetoric of "community" is manipulated by federal, state, or
municipal authorities, it becomes a dangerous exercise of power that
can only foreshadow more Draconian measures on the horizon.
Since the late 1970s, sexual conservatives, policymakers, and the
city's corporate elite have envisioned a future for New York more akin
to "Fantasy Island" than anything anyone might reasonably recognize
as part of New York's familiar and famous historical or cultural identity.
In 1994, Councilman Charles Millard commented, "Twenty years ago,
it would have been considered prudish to try to control [commercial
sex establishments]." But now, according to the best minds of our
generation, "That's no longer true."' Those who endorse the City
Council's zoning ordinance want to replace reality with a re-made vision
of New York City as a homogenous hive of family-centered leisure and
entertainment institutions—a New York City, in short, that has never
existed. The zoning ordinance may persuade its advocates that it is
preserving New York's reputation as a "world-class" international city,
but their regressive notions of culture evoke the safe, sanitized world
of the suburbs—itself a mirage.
One would be hard-pressed to find a less gay-friendly or more
financially obsessed municipal government than Mayor Rudy Giuliani's
current administration. Giuliani has distinguished himself, even among
loyal Republican supporters, as a political tyrant, and his minions in
the worlds of high finance and real estate want to transform formerly
industrial or poor neighborhoods into elite high-tech or high-income
residential districts. Despite the claims to fiscal austerity that Giuliani
has used consistently to justify cuts to municipal, educational, and social
services throughout the city, enormous chunks of New York City's budget
have been earmarked to subsidize the conversion of empty office
buildings in downtown Manhattan into luxury high-rise condominiums,
shopping districts, and digital cyberstations in preparation for Alvin and
Heidi Toffier's vision of the "Third Wave.""* In light of their economic
and political imperatives to reshape the city in their own interests,

should anyone be surprised if city government and CEOs work together
to conduct a strategic campaign against commercial sex establishments?
From the standpoint of multibillion-doUar real estate development,
especially in Times Square, the closing of clubs, theaters, and shops is
an economic wet dream of unparalleled erotic appeal. This is particularly
true of large gentrification projects like the 42nd Street Redevelopment
Corporation, whose interests—despite its rhetoric regarding "quality-of-
life issues"—are really about quantity of income from real estate
investment. Malcolm Gladwell reports that developers asked "the state
to use its power to condemn all the buildings along [42nd Street], driving
out all the sex shops in a single stroke. Then a new subway station
would be built and the theaters renovated with $200 million put up by
private developers, who in return for their investment would win the
right to build a huge set of four office towers at one end of the block."'
One need only consider the recent invasion of Times Square by the Disney
Corporation, lured by the smell of money, to observe the zeal with
which City Hall is prepared to rezone, redistrict, and redistribute commer-
cial sex out of Manhattan altogether. Like the cryptic quotes by artists
Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kaiger that adorned old theatre marquees and
facades along 42nd Street as part of an urban art project, "redevelop-
ment" and "gentrification" are simply buzzwords meant to distract
citizens and conceal what's really behind the "facelift" of Times Square.
One of the most persuasive pieces of support for the zoning
ordinance came from 42nd Street itself, in the form of a survey
conducted by the Times Square Business Improvement District, or BID.
BIDs themselves are a disturbing phenomenon, as they have virtually
redefined the nature of commercial and residential relationships in large
(and small) urban centers. As Tom Gallagher has pointed out, BIDs have
actually been quietly and modestly eating away at the nation's demo-
cratic underpinnings in urban commercial neighborhoods for more than
twenty years, to the point that there are now some 1,000 of these
districts—from New Orleans to Kalamazoo—in which the usual Ameri-
can standards of government and taxation no longer apply... BIDs have
offered a way out of this distasteful aspect of democracy.^
By creating their own guidelines (and, as in the case of the Grand
Central Partnership BID, hiring homeless people to beat up other
David Serlin 49
homeless people), BIDs have encouraged residents and tenants to

believe that corporate muscle, backed by investment capital, will not
only protect property values, but also rid their spaces of unsavory social
elements.
The Times Square survey compared adjacent city blocks along
Broadway and Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Avenues, all within the Times
Square BID, The areas studied included blocks with some commercial
sex establishments, blocks with just a few, and blocks with none at all.
The goal of the study was to show what impact the "secondary effects"
(loijering, urination, and daig and alcohol use) that occur outside of
sexually oriented businesses have on both property values and a
neighborhood's "quality of life," For, as Councilman Millard explained,
"The goal is not to keep pornography out of the city. The goal is to
keep the negative effects out of our neighborhoods,"' This putatively
"objective" attitude allowed the study's organizers to view their task
as all BIDs tend to do: to identify the "problem" sites within an
otherwise privatized neighborhood that ultimately acts as its own
municipality, A portion of the information from the Times Square BID
study has remained undisclosed, primarily because the data have
proven inconclusive. For example, certain blocks with no commercial
sex establishments had more incidents of crime and "secondary effects"
than those with commercial sexual activity. In some cases, the property
values of blocks with commercial sexual activity actually increased
rather than decreased over the period of the study. Since no one has
undertaken a comparative study of the "secondary effects" of bars,
off-track betting parlors, fast-food restaurants, and the like in a given
community, the survey's results cannot be used as an indicator of the
greater "destructiveness" of commercial sex establishments.
Despite these unconvincing conclusions, the City Council has rallied
around the results of the Times Square BID study to support its fight
against commercial sex establishments. But the superficial rhetoric of
the zoning ordinance is also based on other forms of disinformation,
the evidentiary logic of which exposes the Council's shoddy thinking
more than the BID survey itself. Throughout the zoning hearings,
council members cited other communities around the nation that
ostensibly have improved under similar zoning ordinances, "This is a
quality-of-life issue that is of real concern in communities across the
city," argued Joseph Rose, head of the Department of City Planning. In

this regard, he declared, "New York is way behind the rest of the
country."* Yet the cities to which the Council has referred are, by
comparison, tiny, suburban communities of about 30,000 people whose
histories do not in any way resemble New York's rich legacy as a center
of commercial sexual activity. According to Norman Siegel of the New
York Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that has aggressively
challenged the rezoning plan as an affront to First Amendment rights,
the City Planning Commission cited two communities: Renton, a suburb
of Seattle, Washington, and Islip, Long Island. As Siegel noted, both of
these towns are comprised of populations smaller "than the Inumber
of] people on [a] block on the Upper West Side lof Manhattan]."' But it
is not simply the size of these communities that prohibits a meaningful
comparison with New York City. Both of these communities voted to
rezone parts of their cities to develop large, unused chunks of property
and encourage all kinds of commercial and manufacturing activity in
order to stimulate economic growth.
• This is decidedly not the reason why New York City approved its
own zoning ordinance. As anyone who has followed policy decisions
in the city for the past few decades will affirm. New York markets itself
as the "Global City" par excellence, and has become an information-
based economy that pushes the atavistic materialismo of industry and
manufacturing out of Manhattan and into the lowly, ethnic, blue-collar
outer boroughs and suburbs. This trend harkens back to the 1950s and
1960s, when the City Council endorsed the displacement of hundreds
of thousands of blacks and Hispanics to make way for residential
housing and projects like Parks Commissioner and planning tyrant
Robert Moses's Major Deegan Expressway and the Rockefellers' Lincoln
Center complex. Since New York City doesn't actually produce anything
anymore, the FIRE industries (finance, insurance, and real estate) are
the only remaining outlets that can assure city elites any control over
a city that, because it is no longer deemed a viable port or a viable
industrial or manufacturing center, is literally dying before their very
eyes. What can we expect from a city whose designated and celebrated
movers and shakers—such as Donald Taimp, George Soros, William
Zeckendorf, Jr., Sam Lefrak, Douglas Durst, and George Klein—are
made up of real estate moguls? As one broker recently said of Klein,
David Serlin 51
"George wants to be known for putting up Class A office buildings in

Class B neighborhoods, and he sees retail as a real comedown.""* Real
estate speculation and development, then, represent the last desperate
gasp for financial elites, and city government responds to their every
beck and call with gratuitous cash subsidies in the hope that neglected
or abandoned neighborhoods will be gussied up by the sleek glass-
and-steel of corporate business. Thus, the rezoning of commercial sex
resonates loudly with the larger goals of New York City politicians. Both
strategies—rezoning the commercial sex industry and rezoning indus-
trial and manufacturing operations—tend to target areas where minority
groups live and work, converting these neighborhoods into purified,
gentrified zones.
Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude that elevates real estate interests
above all other concerns has its adherents among a growing proportion
of queer people as well. The conservative element in certain middle-class
gay sectors regards an open, liberated, accessible sexual culture as an
affront to hard-won "respectability," But "respectability," "domesticity,"
and "monogamy" are only meaningful rhetorical tools when you're a
professional with positive cashflow and you live in a neighborhood
surrounded by people exactly like you. This is why only rich, white gay
folk can afford to live in the apocryphally identified "gay ghettoes" of
Chelsea, Clinton, and the West Village in New York City, Since the
geographical proximity of one's workplace and one's home is one of
the fundamental cornerstones of community empowerment, this may
explain why the Chelsea neighborhood seems tight-knit and loyal. But
what of queers who live in Corona, Queens, or Bay Ridge, Brooklyn?
Upwardly mobile gay people, like their professional straight counter-
parts, tend to have greater allegiance to the service industries and
corporate sectors—and, increasingly, to the "information technologies"
of entertainment, media, advertising, etc.—than to the political and
economic struggles of their less affluent gay brothers and sisters. Their
interest is not in community values per se, but in values that are symbolized
and mediated by property—the property that imparts authority only to
those who can afford it, maintain it, and ultimately protect it from
anyone who deviates from the sanitized, monogamous, bourgeois
homosexual norm sanctioned by local or federal governments.
52 POLICING PUBIIC SEX
Gay reactionaries who advocate the redistricting or outright eradi-

cation of commercial sex venues exploit the visibility and power
conferred upon all gay people after Stonewall, in order to disaggregate
sexuality from gay community. As a consequence, those of us without
property, whose dream does not include domestic partnership, adoption,
or military service, are perfunctorily excluded from the "community" and
from the discussion. This exclusion is based not only on our sexual
"insolence," but on our insistence on sexuality as an inextricable part
of gay identity, by virtue of our very contempt for the confining limits
of a community based on conformity. And community is what it's all
about. The almost insurmountable divide between queer public spaces
and domestic spaces retards the potential for mobilization among
people whose experience, knowledge, and economic status would
foment alternative visions of community. In this sense, commercial
establishments for public sex play an important role not merely in
affirming the right to consume porn or patronize sex clubs, but in
supporting the construction of an alternative economy that encourages
the desire for sexual and political liberation.
NOTES
1. Thanks to my student Janis Holzapfel for permitting me to use research from
her unpublished manuscript, "Rejuvenating Times Square," in this essay.
2. For a useful overview of this tendency by the city's elites, see Robert Fitch, The
Assassination of New Kor/b (New York; Verso, 1994).
3. Millard, quoted in Tom Redburn, "Putting Sex in its Place," Netv York Times,
September 12, 1994; B4.
4. See Alvin Toffier, Tbe Third Wave(êw York; Morrow, 1980).
5. Malcolm Gladwell, "Bringing Back Times Square in a Big Way; Is it the Best
Way?" Washington Post, February 21, 1995: Al.
6. Tom Gallagher, "Trespa.sser on Main St. (You!)," The Nation (December 18,
1995): 787.
7. Millard, quoted in Redburn, "Putting Sex in its Place"; B4. For a concise overview,
see also Robin Pogrebin, "Sex Zone Rules; A Roundup," New York Times, June
11, 1995, B6.
8. Rose, quoted in Redburn, "Putting Sex in its Place"; Bl.
9. Siegel's comments were part of a roundtable discussion, "Adult Rezoning in
New York City; Improvement in the Community or Infringement of the First
Amendment?" sponsored by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public
Service at New York University, December 8, 1995.
10. Unnamed source quoted in Claudia H. Deutsch, "Around Times Square, New
Faces at Street Level," Neiv York Times, October 22, 1995; RU.
Kendall Thomas
GOING PUBLIC
A Conversation
with Lidoli Jackson
and Jocelyn Taylor
the practice of "public sex" is insepa-

rable Jrom the institutional J'ields in which it takes place, tisually
ponrayed as white, working-class, and male. In the conversation that
follows, Lidellfackson, co-creator of the monthly sexparty Jacks of Color,
and Jocelyn Taylor, co-creator (with fidle Tolentino) of the Clit Cltib,
talk with Kendall Tbomas about the origins and enduring imponance
oftwo ofthe most mbrant venties in New York City'spublic sexiial culture.
The I.:>ecemher 1995 discussion took place in the midst of a successful effort
by New York's public officials to dismantle the city's saxtial public sphere.
The repressive campaign against the public sexi.ial institutions thatfackson
and Taylor have played sttch a crucial role inforging invests this discussion
of the meaning and purpose of public sex with a special urgency.
KENDALL; I thought I'd Ijegin by asking you for your thoughts on an

argtiment from a well-known essay by Pat Califia, The essay is called
"Public Sex," and it was published in 1982.' Califia entreats queers not
to make unwise concessions or be forced into a narrow interpretation
of our demands as a group struggling for sexual freedom, She says that
we should reject a formulation of our right to sexual freedom that
focuses .solely on what takes place in private. She writes that a nairow
definition of privacy could leave us with little or no right to be visibly
gay, That is, to meet each other in public spaces or participate in sex
outside of monogamous, closeted relationships. I'm curious to know if
you think this article—written four years before Bowers v. Hardwick^
53
the Supreme Court decision that gay men and lesbians do not have a
Constitutional right of sexual privacy—was right on with its insistence that
we not frame our demands as a "sexual minority'" in the language of
privacy, but tliat we talk about and insist upon our right to public sex?
JOCELYN: Well, ultimately, even though Califra's essay is framed

within a lesbian/gay erotic context, I think it really speaks to the sexual
body in general. We are talking about sex and the limitations placed
on us as lesbian and gay people, when and where we can have it, as
well as when and where we can talk about it. Lesbian and gay
conservatives would rather divorce the discussion of sex from our move
toward liberation, erasing all possibilities to recognize and confront
sexual privilege granted to people who conform to the repressive norm
of opposite-sex relations. I think the essay speaks to a larger sexual
reality that incorporates all people, and includes all practices and
possibilities. That sort of discussion doesn't necessarily lend itself
toward talking about lesbian and gay preferences; it really is more about
a sexual body, a sexual expression, a dis.solving of the ideas about what
sex itself is, what sex is supposed to be, or how It's supposed to be
described in our language.
UDELL: I agree. I think that Pat's article, as well as any article at any
time that decides to address the issue of freedom of sexual expression,
is really an article that is timely. After so many centuries of sexual
oppression, it makes tremendous sense for us to shed light on p)ersonal
sexual expression oflesbians, gays, heterosexuals, liisexuals, or trans-
gendered people—private, public, or communal. Any focus on sex at
this point is timely in our society since genders, as it were, are becoming
segregated and demarcated to play out separatism in negative ways. A
lot of negativity is based on a lack of being in touch with the physicality
of existence, Iwhich plays! out in incest, rape, and subjugation. Unfor-
tunately, you have to wade through years of negative conditioning
about sexLial expression to get people lo hear you.
I sometimes find myself in political discussions or meetings where
sexuality comes up, and since I speak very freely about sex, everyone
clutches pearls and goes, "How can you say that?" And I'm like, don't
you understand, we have to talk freely about the sex that we have and
the sex tliat we do as individuals so that we can start to talk freely as
Tfaomat 55
a society. Other societies are much freer about their sexual expression
and aren't pent up in a puritanical ethic that lells you sex is terrible and
awful.
It's only coincidental that Pat's article was published in 1982,
because the discussion could happen at any time. And it's only
coincidental that it comes from a lesbian and gay focus. As a community,
I think we're luckier than most .segments of our society because we're
able to step outside ourselves, our shells, and examine what il is that
we do and what it represents. I think that's a fortunate thing and we
should hold on to that.
KENDALL: Is it true that freedom of sexual expression has to include

a public comf>onent? Is that what I hear you saying?
JOCELYN: Yeah, I think it definitely has to include a public compo-
nent. I wanted to respond to Udell and maybe tie in this question too.
I would say that it's quite appropriate tliat the lesbian and gay
community is talking about public and private sex. To take on the
indicator or the name lesbian or gay is already being sexual in a public
way. We make a public pronouncement every time we take on labels
of lesbian or gay to talk about sexual practices. It took a long time for
lesbiaas to call themselves lesbians. If you look at the history of what
we call ourselves, at the levels of politicization within each of those
labels, you'll begin to map a trajectory of increasing visibility within the
public sphere for lesbian identity. Women t^gan calling themselves gay
women, then lesbians, then dykes. This is a certain radicality around
political belief and sexuality that is constantly growing. Like Urvashi
Vaid's recent book Virtual Equality,^ Pat's article shows that there's a
need to discuss the mainstreaming of the lesbian and gay movement.
Pat's article about broadening liberation is still incredibly timely because
it syncs up well with Urvashi's critique of assimilation. I include myself
and my work as a part of the clashes described in Pat's essay and in
Urvashi's book. So when we talk about public in terms of your question,
Kendall—"Is public sex really necessary?"—it is strongly tied to my ideas
of lesbian visibility. Calling a club "The Clit Club" is an example of
public sex because that level of visibility, that level of sexualized
visibility, was highly political. Using the word "clit" was key.
LIDELL: II was son of a first, wasn't it? I don't rememiêr having seen
it before.
JOCELYN: Yeah, it was the first time. It wasn't as if the things that
took place in the Clit Club had never taken place before. I mean, things
like girls getting together have been taking place in discreet parties
uptown in Harlem, in the East/West Village, or wherever. But for a
sexual location to actually come out—out as a place being called the
Clit Club—had never been done.
UDELL: It's a public word. Making sex public is as simple as having
someone's name come up and saying, "Oh yeah, we've had sex three
or four times." I really enjoy that, People say, "You can't do that!" But
listen, people who know me know that I am very open and very proud
of the sex that I have. It's an expression of my physicallty that I am
very much in touch with from years of being a dancer. Sex is just another
extension of physicality, so I don't see it as this dark secretive thing
that I have to be quiet about. The men who know me and know that
about me know that at any point, anywhere, their name might come
up. The men who know me go, "That's Lidell." I'm very honest about
the sex I have and I expect anyone who has sexual doings with me to
be as honest as I am.
At any time I might out someone about the littlest sexual thing
because I want them to be as proud of sex as I am, To me, that's public
sex. And that's not even having sex. That's just talking about having
sex in a positive and proactive way. It's negative for people to take sex
and hold on to it, not talk about it, be afraid to leap into it for fear of
social perception, societal conditioning, religion, or whatever. To tne,
this leads to dysfunctional physical situations. I'm on somewhat of a
one-man campaign to get society to address that sort of stuff, to cut
down on the rape, incest, and subjugation by being honest and
intelligent about sex, expression, and feelings. It really rails me to see
people mystify and mythologize sex, as if it were this secret thing that
you really can't talk alx)ut. In fact, it's this big old public thing that we
could be doing in conference rooms everywhere. And when someone
comes in, say, "Wait. We'll be through in five minutes."
JOCEL'YN: That leads me to wonder about the performativiiy around
sex. The relationship between two people when they're having sex is
Ktndoll Thomaf 57
something we really need to talk more about. People want the

publicness of sex, of being seen or watching, so when we talk about
stigmas around sex, people forget that there's a real element of
performance attached to sex. Don't you think that there's a connection?
It's not so much that people aren't comfortable with the fact that they
have public sex or they've had sex with you, but that there's a whole
bunch of expectations and assumptions about it. It's interesting to talk
about this because I don't out people the way you do, Udell.
LIDELL: And I don't really expect everyone to do the things I do. I
kind of wish that they did, but I do think that when I'm being open,
honest, and outing people, I'm making a particular point, I'm taking
sex out of the realm of performance, with all that performance anxiety
attached to it, and out of the realm of exhibitioni.sm, with all those
notions of the Other. I'm very much about taking away the performance
aspect. Sex only has that patina because we place it there. It doesn't
exist that way. When you're feeling hot for someone and your loins get
al! excited, you don't suddenly feel you've got on this sign that anyone
who looks can see. If you're lucky, you get a chance to express your
feeling, if you're not lucky, you don't.
To me, "I had lunch with him earlier today," and "I had sex with
him last night," carry the same weight. If I can't say "I had sex with him
last night" without people going crazy, I sliouldn't be able to say "I had
lunch with him" without them going, "(gasp)you had lunch with him??\"
Why is having lunch so much different than having sex? Eating and
fucking are both body functions. They can both be done in public.
Sometimes they both have a price on them. They're both satisfying and
gratifying, they both feed the soul, but suddenly, because of our
conditioning, one has this sociable aspect to it and the other is hidden
in the comer.
KENDALL: Now, how do you both try to give expression to your
ethos, which are recognizably different, in contexts like the Clit Club
or Jacks of Color? How have they been sites for the construction of a
sexual public sphere? i
I
LIDELL: Well, I Started Jacks of Color as a political statement more

than anything else, I liked ihe safe sex clubs that gay men had been
enjoying since the early '80s. The New York Jacks started in 1979, even
before there was an epidemic. Men who liked to jack olTsaid, let's have
a jack-off club. But in the mid-'80s it dismayed me to go to sex clubs
[like New York Jacks], see such a wonderful feeling of camaraderie,
sociability, and sex going on, and see it be all white. Not predominantly
white—all white. So I decided to stan Jacks of Color to create tliat same
proud environment, but make it a place specifically for men of color.
Not only would it be a conducive environment for camaraderie and
sociability, and safe sex, but it would also be a space for men of color
to feel safe in. I thought, it's my club, it can be my political .statement.
Why not create something that embraces freedom of sexual expression
as a positive political act? Why not create something that provides a
safe sex environment for our community?
My thinking was, men of color who don't come to Jacks of Color
don't go anywhere else. I knew they weren't going to other places. I
knew that Black, Latino, Asian, and Native men were not going to New
York Jacks, because all the men there were white. Instead, they were
going to the park, the gym, and the truck stop, where they weren't
having tlie safest sex possible. When you go to the Ramble [in Central
Park], you're not going to find condoms hanging on trees for you to
pick off and use. It was very important to create an environment that
would be particularly targeted to men of color in order to increase safe
sex behavior among them. For a lot of men of color at that time, the
AIDS service organizations, which provided safe sex lectures and
demonstrations, didn't seem to reach to them. They weren't feeling
included by the clubs that existed, so they weren't feeling part of the
sex arena. Yet sex was still going on.
I opened jacks of Color up to men of color and their friends every
once in a while, because 1 knew many white men who felt comfortable
in multiracial environments. These were men who had done their own
Racistn 101, who had consistently worked to eradicate racism whenever
they experienced it. Oftentimes these are white men who go, "That's
racist" to other white people—and people of color go, "All right, you
work!" And so we don't always have to say it, because they say it too.
I thought these kinds of men needed a multiracial environment to be
sexual in, so every once in a wliile I've opened Jacks of Color to be
inclusive of white men.
Kvndall Thomai 59
I still had to deal with 'white men coming to my party and feeling
rhreaiened by a Black man running the show and feeling no qualms
about saying so. Suddenly 1 was seen as a dub owner in this position
of responsibility and authority. Tlie minute that a white person begins
to see me in this position they have to shift their dynamic perception
of what Black people mean in their own paradigm. Many white men
would hang loose, but some just walked in and said, "Do you really
know what you're doing?" You could hear the undertone: "Can you do
this, Black boy?" You have to have a forceful identity and an aggressive
personality. Like a lot of Black men, I used to have a fear that if I
stepped up to a position of authority, at any point any white man could
say, "I disagree with you," and then I'd crumble, because we're not
used to being questioned. Black people just aren't used to having
authority and then having it questioned. The minute anyone decides
that they're not going to be overpcjwered by you, they can take your
privilege away. You know you really have power when you can
withstand the questioning of that power. Jacks of Color was informed
by my being a person of color and having to deal with the oppression
of being a person of color.
Creatingjacks of Color changed that bastion of white male authority
from what it had been. Tm not going to say I was the first person to
do it, but I was the loudest one to do it. And rather than prove to them
that I could run a sex club, I realized the important thing to do was to
take the high road and not deal with it: You've paid your money to be
in my space. I'm running this space and as long as you're in this space,
you do exactly as I say. You're in my world, and if I don't like what
you're doing, my workers will kick you out. This was threatening and
frightening to them, but, after a while, intoxicating. They'd never
experienced this Iêfore. They d never experienced the authority of
someone who represents a community of people they're used to seeing
in subservient positions. Suddenly they're reduced to a level they're
used to seeing the other person at. That freaked them out, but it also
excited them.
JOCELYN: I wanted to add an interesting thing about the Clit Club.

For the first couple of years, it was frequented by a lot of women of
color because Julie and I are women of color. Lidell, what you're talking
alxjut, in terms of negotiating power, was often something Julie and I
had to deal with, too. We were always dealing with it- As women, we're
always dealing with finding a foothold within a power staicture that
doesn't recognize women as l>eing equally responsible or capable. So
here we were doing the Clit Club, doing something really new and
different, and doing it as women of color. It was really profound for
our communities. Women really responded to it. We never had the kind
of interaction with white women that you described having with white
men, because we were all searching for a place that was, number one,
exclusively women, and number two, highly sexualized. Tliat was so
elating that those sorts of disputes didn't really take place at the time.
LIDELL; if you think about it in a larger sense, a lot of the safe sex
stuff that sex clubs are doing is helping to save people's lives. If there
were no Jacks of Color, many of the guys who come to my parties and
have safe sex would probably go someplace else and still have sex, but
have it unsafely.
JOCELYN: You don't think they're having unsafe sex outside of the
parties?
LIDELL: As well as Jacks of Color? I don't think as much. One of the
things that happens when men come to my parties is that they see safe
sex being done and they see that it's still hot—because the assumption
is that it's not hot, that it's really actually dry. They tend to incorporate
it more, which means they actually do more of it. I'm sure they still
have unsafe sex every once in a while, especially since I only have
parties once a month; within the month, they're like, "Where do I go
tonight? Oh, let's go to the tearooms."
KENDALL; So your motivations were not just political, but pedagogi-
cal, professor. You wanted to be the professor of desire or of the public
expression of sexual desire?
LIDELL: That's a little lofty. I didn't necessarily see it that way. I just
saw that when I started my club, I started it as a political ad. And then,
as it started to happen, I began to see it as having more of a pedagogical
impact upon me, because, as the guys come, they tell their friends, and
their friends come. Suddenly the cultic thing starts to happen, and there
you are in the middle of it. And I'm sure It's happened to you too,
Jocelyn. when people go, "(gasp) you're the person who runs the Clit
Tbomaf 61
Club?" There's this aura about you, and they're genuflecting. Tliat isn't
why I started it, though. When 1 started Jacks of Color, I was the only
sex club owner who was also a political activist. The way I ran my club
made people see that it wasn t just Lidell making money (especially
since I didn't make money for four years), it was Udell being political.
I started my club as .something concrete and significant because, of all
the communities 1 belong to, the community I feel the most for is gay
men of color. More than heterosexual men of color, more than lesbians
of color, more than gay white men. Gay men of color is the community
I feel the strongest about and want to do the most with and for
KENDALL: Jocelyn, what spurred you to start the Clit Club?
JOCELYN: Lidell talks about his experiences coming from a place
where there was a sexualized space. The problem was that there
weren't many men of color who were able to participate. Tlie problem
for the lesbian community was no space at all. Period. Since public
sexualized space for lesbians was pretty nonexistent, the Clit Club was
really an unprecedented experiment. We decided to employ tactics that
we knew already worked, like having go-go dancers, erotic lesbian
slides, and lesbian porn. Although the pom wasn't always made by
women for women, it was imagery about women together that we
incorporated into our space, and it was amazing. Altiiough I'm not
involved with it right now, the Clit Club is still going on. It's not like a
bona fide bar or anything, it's a club night, like an event, and it's been
going on for five years now. I really think that that's significant, It's
probably the longest running club night. The first night that we opened,
we did incredibly well for a lesbian night. It was really because of word
of mouth, calling all of our friends, making little cards and plastering
the city with them. Like I said earlier, the name was attractive enough.
People thought this was something new, something bold, something
that might fill the lack of what women had been looking for in terms
of .sexual social interaction with other women.
KENDAU: Who came up with the name?

JOCELYN: Julie [Tolentino] and I came up with it together I decided
that it had to be a body part, and Julie said clit, and then we came up
with Clit Club. It just seemed to work.
62 POLICING PUBLIC SiX
LIDELL: That and LUST are two of my favorite names.

JOCHLYN; Lesbians Undoing Sexual Taboos. Yeah. The Clit Club
employed all these elements and eventually we got to the point where
we thought that we would further the experiment by putting in a back
room, which we added with all sorts of accoutrements, like shackles
and safer sex stuff all over the place. It was darkly lit... (grin).
LIDELL: There was a lot of horizontal stuff, too, right? I was told by
a number of my lesbian friends that if you're going to do a lesbian sex
club, make sure there's a lot of horizontal space to play.
JOCELYN: You know, that actually didn't happen at the Clit Club,
that happened at LUST. When Lesbians Undoing Sexual Talxjos had
their conference about sex in Novemh>er of 1992, we had a party
afterwards where I set up a backroom. I had foam mattresses and
candles and safer sex items, condoms and lube and all this stuff around.
Women played at the afterhours party at the LUST conference, but
women did not play in the backroom at the Clit Club. 1 think the reason
was that the backroom was all vertical surfaces and standing room only.
See, that's a really interesting observation, that when women had to
stand up, they didn't like sex as much. (Laughter.)
LIDELL: And lots of men don't like to go horizontal, they're like, "I
could stand upside down and do this." (More laughter.)
JOCELYN: I don't want to generalize and say that women like to do
it lying down, but I do think that the comfort of the place in which
folks play has a lot to do with what's likely to happen. The thing about
the Clit Club was that it appealed to very diverse sexual appetites. At
the time that I was part of the Clit Club there was a very active lesbian
S/M community, which was about just doing it: lying down, standing
up, public or private. It's a whole other sort of conversation when it
comes to lesbian S/M. Public sex is at another level in the lesbian S/M
community.
KENDALL; So the backroom didn't take off at the Clit Club?
JOCELYN; No, it didn't take off. It's not that people weren't having
sex in the space—girls were having sex in the bathroom and behind
the bar—tliey just weren't doing it in what I would call a performative
Thomas 63
arena. It wasn't the kind of situation like a lot of gay male backrooms,
where it might lê completely dark or where you're just sort of feeling
your way around. The backroom at the Clit Club was more about
someone going in and enjoying themselves, with other people watching
the proceedings. That'swhzt happened at the LUST conference. I went
back there and here was this mound of women fucking. There was a
whole other group of women watching and clapping or stroking or
whatever. It was a completely interactive situation. It was great.
LIDELL: From a gay male point of view, I can see your gay male
layperson saying, "Isn't that exhibitionism?" But I can understand what
was happening Lhere. To the women who were watching, the sexual
expression being portrayed was political. Now, tliey may not have been
saying, "Yo, yo, politics, politics," but they were saying, "Finally, here
are women who feel free enough to express what they want to express,
and finally there's a space to do it."
Men, even men of color, don't often realize that male space is a
privilege. There's a difference between sex dubs and backrooms in the
gay male community. Backrocjms have a bar attached to them. A
backroom you can sneak into and sneak out of. They usually don't
have safe sex stuff around because the bar has liquor and the state
liquor authority will not condone sex in a place that has liquor. So many
backrooms don't usually liave condoms, lube, and itiformation, and the
people that go to them usually don't bring condoms themselves. Sex
clubs are completely different. They're usually liquor-free, except for
the beer that you bring in, because they don't have a license, There's
no space for dancing, there's minimal space for socializing, and there's
very little darkness. There's a comer here or a comer there, but there's
a lot of light around, and a lot of honesty about what you want. This
is a sex club. My club draws an older crowd—.some thirties, but mostly
a forties crowd of guys who have gone through two decades of sexual
expression before there was an epidemic and know what sexual
expression is about. j
JOCELYN: The thing that I wanted to say alx>ut women and public
sex is that there is a serious issue of safety. Whereas men have sort of
ihe permission to go about their sexuality in a public way, outside or
out of doors, this is not something that is as easily available or
permissible for women. When I think about what Iiappened at the LUST
conference, this interactive, performative, voyeuristic thing—^women
doing and women watching—there's an element of safety there that
doesn't exist in many other situations. If I were to draw parallels,
women's public sexuality right now tends to happen more indoors. It
doesn't happen that much outdoors. Indoors could be a public bath-
room, but it's still not in a public park.
LIDELL; And you're .saying that's good or bad?
JOCELYN; I'm just saying that's the state of the movement right now.
KENDALL: So the culture of public sex is definitely gendered; even
within the queer world, the possibilities are not identical, and therefore
the efforts to create a public sexual space for women must be
qualitatively different. Although it would be important not to exaggerate
the degree of safety that gay men have, one must meet needs that simply
aren t present in the culture in which men can move freely, through
the night, in and out of doors.
I wanted to direct your thoughts to the new zoning law that's been
adopted in New York City. The law will effectively crush what has
become, and has long been, a very vibrant, easily accessible public
sexual culture in the form of theaters, book.stores, video stores, sex
clubs, and the like. What are your thoughts alx)ut what the zoning law
will likely mean for the kind of spaces you've been talking about, and
the kind of practices that you've been describing?
JOCELYN: The Clit Club is going to suffer tremendously. It's basically
going to put a cap on a burgeoning public lesbian sexual culture. What
will happen is events like it will retreat and become more of an
underground culture. It's interesting how the Clit Club i.s very c:iutiously
on this line already, between visibility and underground. Its duality is
tricky.
LIDELL: But it does both so well.

KENDALL; Why this liminality? Is It because of concerns about what
too much visibility' would mean?
JOCELYN; Again, it's definitely the safety factor In the lieginning,
we were thinking all kinds of weirdos would show up at our door
Ktndall Thomas 65
because of the name Clit Club. I mentioned earlier how liberating it

was for us to use the name at that time, and still is, but then, we were
also aware of the possibility of confronting real danger for being a really
out lesbian club. I'm not even sure how far this new zoning law goes,
but would the club have to change its name? Would it no longer exist?
Would there be monthly parties that no one would know abxjut? It
would be changed significantly.
As an artist, it's going to be really difficult to continue to work within
areas of public and private sexuality. Depending on how we talk about
these issues, it could be either really difficult or really liberating. I mean,
it's not until things shut down that people tend to analyze situations
more critically. So as a filmmaker, this might all be a real boon for me
and other artists. Unfortunately, a lot of lesbians and gay men are
whitewashing our public representation. If the clubs shut down, then
the community can say that we're legitimate citizens of respectable
culture, that we have family values and all this other stupid crap that
the religious right is not going to buy anyway.
UDELL: Well, some in the community seem to subscribe to the notion
that if we desexualize ourselves by erasing our most visible and public
expressions of erotic affinities, then we'll find acceptance. It's important
to communicate to the city at every step that if you close sex clubs, be
forewarned: tlie men who come to these places will not stop having
sex. They'll continue to have it, and in the same quantity that they have
it in our places. They'll just have sex in other environments that are less
safe, which will increase the level of HIV transmission and increase the
level of risk that's happening everywhere. Places like sex clubs have a
responsibility to provide safe environments. Without those environ-
ments, as you desexualize the movement, it simply metamorphoses into
other modes of sexuality—sexual expression of another type in another
way. I have these conversations with someone in the Division of AIDS
Policy, He's in every meeting that happens with the Commissioner of
Health and all the other people about the zoning law. He always says
to me—and one thing that our lesbian and gay community doesn't seem
to understand—85 percent of the places being targeted are heterosex-
ual. We're only a soupgon of what they're really going after. The
heterosexual places they're going after have a very different fate. If this
law goes through and decides to take over everything, a Jacks of Color
will still run. a New York Jacks will still run, a J's Hangout will still ain.
The places that heterosexual people depend upon for public sex are
going to be relocated. A Christopher Street Bookstore obviously is going
to be relocated too, but I think many of the sex clubs that exist in the
gay male community will continue to exist, because they've t>een
underground anyway and will continue to stay underground.
JOCEIYN; I think that scenario might be similar for the Clit Club as
well. Since they aren't protected by some sort of legal statutes, places
like it live tieyond the law already. It's never easy to pinpoint who the
owner is or when the event happens. The Clit Club might just change
its night or change its location, but after all it's an idea, and It could
happen anywhere.
LIDELL: It's a practice rather than a place.
KENDALL: But don't you two think that historically, there has been
a relationship between the underground sex club phenomenon and the
legal, constitutionally protected bookstore? The existence of the legal
bookstore or the legal video store creates a soil that fertilizes the
possibility for more informal, improvised, loose, episodic, public sexual
culture, like a Jacks of Color or a Clit Club, Won't the disappearance of
these places remove a zone of safety that people from all over the world
know how to find? It may be that clubs like Jacks of Color will survive,
but they will not do so in an environment that is part of a queer sexual
culture anchored in the life of an identifiable community or area of
town. It may be true that the zoning law will strike most harshly at
straight establishments, but it is also true that the institutions of public
sexual culture in our community have a very different meaning in the
total fabric of our lives. Even if there were no official laws against the
kind of sex we have, sex places or erotic establishments in the straight
community have a different meaning for the maintenance of hetero-
sexuality because, after all, they represent "normal" in a way that ours
do not. So I think the idea that these places will survive is completely
right, but they will not survive in the shadow that was thrown by these
legitimate businesses. In fact, they will now be reduced in number,
forced into dangerous places, so that tliere will be more unsafe sex
going on.
Ktiidall Thomas 67
LIDELL; That is a very important point, especially since many of the

sexual places that exist in the gay male community aren't aware of the
symbiosis that exists among them. I mean neither the legal ones, the
bookstores and video stores, nor the underground ones, the sex parties
and the backrooms. I think some sex club owners in New York City
are aware of the connection we all have with each other.
These sex club owners go to and support each other's clubs. They
are constantly showing up and saying, "Well, the way we do it here
is..." It's almost like quality control, making sure that everything is up
to snuff. I'd love to have a meeting where all the sex club and backroom
owners get together and say, "This is what we do," so that we feel a
stronger connection. I don't think enough owners feel the connection
with other sex-oriented environments. Dare I .say that a Christopher
Street Bookstore does not speak to a Unicorn, who does not speak to
a Les Hommes Bookshop? I know they don't.
KENDALL; Why?
LIDELL: They see each other as competitors. They see each other as
tapping into the same crowd. The places that are open all the time
probably feel even more like competitors. They forget that there are
logistical differences in the system so that we are not all competing
every night, or even every week. A gay man in New York City can go
to the Attic on a Tuesday, the Manliole on Wednesday, New York Jacks
on Thursday, and Hands On on Friday, supporting every .sex club that's
in the gay male community and still have a day off to rest. You could
support all of us because we're not banging against each other.
KENDALL; Let me shift to another subject. To what extent is your
view about public sexual culture informed by the fact that you inhabit
the site of an intersection of sexuality and race, and, in your case
Jocelyn, of sexuality, race, and gender?
LIDELL: That's in my case too, because being male is being
gendered, too.
KENDALL: That's tnJC I
JOCELYN; But sexuality in this culture, where we're living right now,
is mostly defined by men. Look at the focus on penetration in sexuality.
68 POLICING PUBLIC SIX
for all women, not just lesbians. That's how we define sex. Losing your
virginity means that you've had sex.
KENDALL: Losing your virginity to a man.
JOCELYN: To a man, exactly.
KENDALL: Yeah, but we do it against a backdrop of history in which
both Black people and queer people have always faced a risk in
asserting our right to be sexual. There's always been a danger that we
will l)e reduced to our sex, or seen as nothing but our sex. How do
you negotiate the vexed question of claiming your right to be sexual
and resisting a reduction of who you are to your sexuality?
JOCELYN: To be able to express oneself sexually, fully, as a human
being, one has to take up the position oflK)th the subject and the object.
Feel free to be able to do that. It's been really difficult for women to
say, "I'm going to be the object of someone else's desire." For Black
women, it's doubly difficult to see oneself as the object. For a feminist,
the whole discussion of the objectification of women is tainted because
it's always connected to the male gaze. I think that being a Black lesbian
has been about looking at myself wholly as a sexual person—not just
a Black lesbian, but being myself, as part of my own .sexual decoloni-
zation, not closeting myself into an idea of what the correct political
position is supposed to be. So I can say, "Yeah, I was looking at her
ass." That language isn't encouraged. Not only is that not encouraged,
it's looked upon as being a mimicry of male expression of projection
onto women. That's one of the things that the Clit Club was really
successful in doing, constaicting the idea of how women could talk
about ourselves, how we could use language as a political tool.
I think I'm getting away from your question a little bit. Identifying
as a Black lesbian, all kinds of questions approach you as you are
coming out, moving toward being a completely uncloseted sexual
person. Tliere are all these taboos involved that you have to deal with
in order to reconstruct and re-analyze. You begin to realize how all
these taboos have been attached to this Black body, from tlie time that
we came over the Middle Passage and even before. Think about Saartje
Baarttman and her experience with Europe as an object, as a spectacle,•*
Her body as a spectacle, That's historic memory that we're dealing with.
Kendall Thomas 69
KENDALL: Where would you like to see the culture of public sex go
by the year 2000? What do you imagine public sexual culture in the
21st century to be? j
LIDELL; By the year 2000, first of all I'd like to see the sex clubs
proliferate. I think they're doing a very good job. I would particularly
like to see heterosexual safe sex clubs where safe sex is actually done,
monitored, and able to address issues of power that necessarily come
up between men and women—issues of men having to give up power
and women having to take power. That's a hard thing to do. Second,
I thought that [former Surgeon General] Joycelyn Elders was really on
the right track when she talked about masturbation. When she talked
about anything, really. I would love to see classes about masturbation
and sexual identity taught to children in school.
One day in the year 2000 I would love for there to be an hour in
the school curriculum when sexual mores are taught, because I am
convinced tliat a lot of our truly fucked-upness around sex comes from
our childhood, particularly from our teenage years. When our Iwdies
are changing and things are going on, no one is willing to explain
anything to us. For example, I grew up in an environment where
everyone was circumcised—and I'm uncircumcised. Nobody explained
that to me until I got to Brown University. But by 18 1 was fucked up
about it. It would have made so much of a difference for somebody to
sit down and say, "It's just different, and this is why it's different."
I think that we have a responsibility to inform the children of our
future about their bodies. Because it happens to every body, every
single human being. Because it was so hard for us and nolxxiy told us,
we're going to make it hard for them too? No. Tell them about
masturbation, tell them how to be sexually active, tell tliem about all
the things that could happen to them and how to avoid those things,
explain to tliem that this isn't just about "sex means love" and give them
a condom if they think they're going to be sexually active. Let them
know that sometimes sex means physical expre.ssion, but don't go crazy
about it, because there are all .sorts of things to think about—that they
have a personal responsibility.
There's all sorts of ways we can do it, but we err with the sin of
omission. We say nothing and we throw kids into sex to figure it out
themselves. That's a real mistake. If nothing else happened by the year
2000, as a society I would wish that we would be able to find a way to

educate the generations that come after us about freedom of sexual
expression, or they're going to continue to perpetuate our dysfunctionality.
JOCELYN: I'd like the 21st century to ojDen up public sexual culture
for women a whole lot more. The thing with the Clit Club is that we
had to allow ourselves one level of permission to step into a place
called the Clit, another level of permission to watch the erotic dancers
that performed, and yet another level of p>ermission to look into the
backroom. Tliat wasn't true for all women, but these levels of permis-
sion that women challenged in order to feel comfortable in the space
happened over a period of time. So what I would like to see by the
year 2000 is that we're further along in terms of what we allow ourselves
to do when we are sexually visible. As queers sitting here at this table,
we all know it's dangerous to be visibly sexual, which is why we are
working for lesbian and gay civil rights. I see these things hand in hand.
I feel horrified by the potential power of right-wing queers set on
presenting us all as exactly like you. (Mocking,) "We're just the same,
but we have a same-sex lover." That's bullshit.
KENDALL: It's a bid for respectability, which is willing to trade off

respect for the rest of us.
JOCELYN: And respect on whose terms? It isn't a radical position to
say, "I want to belong to the status quo."
LIDEU: Put that on a T-shirt! (Laughter.)
People say to me, "How can you be so politically involved, you do
so much stufi?" I say, "It's because I have a lot of sex." And they go,
"Wait a minute. I don't see the connection. I know—everybody in the
world knows—you have a lot of sex, Lidell. It's been in Newsday, but
what's the connection?" And I say, "My freedom of sexual expression
is directly proportional to the amount of political activity that I engage
in. If I weren't sexually active, as well as free and positive about the
sex that I have, I would probably just go to work, come home, eat
dinner, watch "Laveme and Shirley," and go to bed. I'm sure I wouldn't
have any yearning to be politically aware of my community. The two
go hand in hand for me, and it's taken a lot for me to understand how
they do. You're going against a sex-phobic society when you decide to
go to a sex club, when you decide to walk in the door, let alone have
Thomof 71
a good time there. When you make that decision, you can make other
decisions too.
Your T-shirt was about the status quo, Jocelyn, how wanting to be
part of the status quo is not a revolutionary act. My T-shirt would say,
"Freedom of sexual expression is a political act." Because expressing
myself positively and freely becomes a political act. I never want my
sexual expression to become a compulsive thing that I have no control
over, a thing where expressing sex is the only way of having my ideas
heard. I want sexual expression to exist within a continuum of
everything else I do, but I don't want to negate its importance, either.
JOCELYN: The thing about "sexual expression" is, it's such a liberal
phrase. It's so connected to control, to systems of domination that
control individuality. The itistitutional rhetoric (church, state, school)
used to teach what we call respect is simply inadequate. Young people
are not taught to deeply ponder or develop questions about difference.
They grow into adults who still can't deal with the world's diversity and
chaos, who rely on stereotypes to draw conclusions, who become
perfect citizens bound to the nation and caught up in perpetuating the
cycle of racism, homophobia, and sexism. Therefore, a move toward
more tolerance for lesbian and gay "lifestyle" is a defeatist strategy that
will never break the chains that bind all of us.
I think there's a better connection to be made between sexual
expression, creativity, and revolution. If young people learned a wide
spectrum of sexual possibilities and were able to make choices, there
are all kinds of other choices that would be made, all kinds of other
decisions about how one lives one's life. I believe our responsibility
and respect for one another would blossom.
NOTES
I. Pat Califia, PublicSex: The Cutttirv of Radical Sex (Plnsburgh; Clels Press, 1994),
71-82.
J. Boivers v. Hardwick 478 U.S. 186 C1986). \
3. Urvashi Vaid, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian
Liberation Wew York: Anchor/Doubieday, 1995).
4. Saanje Baarttman. better known as the "Iloiteniot Venus," was brought to
Europe from South Africa during the 19th century to travel with circus sideshows,
where her buttocks and genitalia were on public display as examples of
excessive African sexuality.
5OCIAL STRUCTURE-7 Nagllne Device
Movable screen with openings for foce and crotch.
John Liiidell
PUBLIC SPACE
FOR PUBLIC SEX
The role of architecture in shaping
behavior is rarely mentioned in the current debate about public sex
spaces in New York City, specifically in relation to safer sex practices.
Although the design of these spaces cannot completely control or
determine behavior, it is important to consider these spaces as a "stage"
where the action happens in order to think about what kinds of settings
would lead to better roles. If we (gay men and .sex club patrons) weren't
under attack (by AIDS and conservatives), what would we want these
spaces to become, instead of simply trying to reconfigure them to inhibit
unsafe sexual behavior? By encouraging a sex-positive atmosphere for
the exploration of public sex, patrons' .self-respect, an essential co-factor
in encouraging safer sex practices, can be reinforced.
Beyond the function of facilitating sex, we need to consider what
kinds of societal messages about sexually active gay men are revealed
and constructed by the architecture of sex clubs. Tlie fears and attitudes
expressed by various gay institutions (businesses, media, political
activists) and individuals toward public sex are part of the bedrock of
their attitudes toward all sexual activity as well as the sexual identity
of HIV-positive men. The value that gay institutions and sex club
patrons place on public, promiscuous, anonymous sex is central to any
serious campaign for HIV prevention.
Darkly painted and poorly lit, public sex spaces can be seen as
projection rooms where actLial people function as screens for our
73
SOCIAL STRUaURM Posing Horse
imaginations, allowing us to interpret and embellish information

gleaned from appearance. Maybe this limbo-like atmosphere would be
altered if the look of the space were normalized and the actions in them
more openly social. People uncomfortable with sex may prefer a sex
club because it is outside their everyday environment. But while some
people may feel more comfortable having sex in a dark basement or
warehouse, others might feel transgressive having sex in a space styled
as a copy of the family room. The faux-paneted look of the rec rooms
in the photographs of Larry Clark, or their latest interpretation in the
controversial Calvin Klein ads by Steven Meisel, come to mind as
obvious choices of everyday spaces with erotic histories, real or
imagined. If our attitudes about sex club spaces are indicative of how
sexually aaive gay men see our sex lives, perhaps we should pay closer
attention to our expectations of these spaces, not only what they look
like, but also how they might facilitate better sex.
John Lindall 75
The notion of drift is essential to the experience of a sex club, where

fluidity facilitates passing to an aimless, "let's see what happens" frame
of mind. A person must feel able to amble, to move on to a possible
adventure. In this way, the sex club is a space similar to that of the
supermarket or shopping mall; one browses, in search of something
vaguely determined, In architectural terminology this is called the
Gruen Transfer, where a shopper converts from a destination-oriented
mentality to one that allows impressions and desires to direct his/her
attention.' In the course of wandering, one may allow fate to present
other possible desires. Moreover, in the case of sex clubs, the patron
himself simultaneously becomes the advertised adventure, both Jlcitieur
and passant, constantly aware that one's appearance advertises one's
interests. In an environment where verbal language is usually absent
from initial contact, the signs of and on one's body become more
significant.
In gay culture, bathhouses have a long history as spaces in which
to meet and have anonymous sex." A bathhouse is usually a space with
private rooms and group areas, It might include a sauna, a steam room, a
whirlpool, or gym equipment. In a bathhouse, everyone is usually
undressed, with most people opting to wrap towels around tlieir waists.
Bathhouse facilities are typically nothing more than a legal cover, fronts
for the illegitimate business of providing space for sex, and are treated as
such by many bathhouse owners. By contrast, sex clubs provide spaces
that function as a hybrid of bars and bathhouses. Unlike a bar, people go
to a sex club expeaing to liave sex; unlike a bathliouse, in most cases
patrons remain fully dressed. Unless they are dressed to satisfy a specific
sexual taste or the club is hosting a special night, sex club patrons do not
look much different from the people found in gay bars.
In the sex club's role as a hybrid of bar and bathhouse, the rest area
is the spot for social interaction. Seating performs double duty as a way
to get near someone and strike up a conversation. Areas for rest are
essential to sex clubs because they combine relaxation with the ability
to observe the passing scene. One is always able to pursue an
encounter, if so inclined. Tliis social space is essential to patrons' ability
to integrate the sex club into their lives by visiting or making friends,
and not feeling ashamed of being "caught" there. Although casual
plan
J
SOCIAL STRUCTURE-8 {qty. 4} Pin-wheel of Oeod Ends
chit-chat and cruising (looking for a sex partner) often do not go hand
in hand, they can if confined to a specifically designed social area.
As various bathhouses, sex clubs, and porn theaters in New York
were closed down in the early '80s, underground sex clubs took off,
and roving sex parties consolidated into real businesses. Because we
have so few venues for public .sex, it can be argued that merely opening
a door and providing a protected space is all that is needed to profitably
John Llnddl 77
run a business. But even if it is a sellers' market, it is curious that all

sex clubs in New York have a similar look. Tlie uniform look of sex
clubs indicates that their owners imagine habits or customs of patrons
that lead them to create similar spaces. Today's sex spaces may look
as they do because of the club owner's desire to turn a quick profit,
illegally if need be, discreetly, if the space permits. But it cannot be
solely economics nor the uncertain nature of the business that keep
these spaces from being more architecturally diveree. Even the most
mediocre gay bar receives attention to design to make it distina,
interesting, and appealing to patrons.
For example, a recently opened sex space, Club 82, was previously
a rock and roll club. At some point a decision was made to install
booths, seats, and a movie screen, and to paint the space black, making
Club 82 look like every other sex club In New York City. A number of
other decisions could have been made to improve the space. Is this
architeaural look an immutable culairal type for sex club patrons? I
wish to suggest that it is the influence of this monolithic prototype that
reinforces a social stigma upon public sex, as well as a lack of self-esteem
in many sex club patrons.
The architecture of sex club spaces should be used to facilitate
certain behaviors and to reinforce positive attitudes toward sex. Archi-
tecture can express to patrons the attitudes of the owners toward the
activities that take place inside their clubs. By exploiting its difference
from current sex clubs and making iLs goals clear, a well-designed sex
club space could attract an entirely new audience of patrons who want
to practice safer sex (loosely defined here as jerking off, oral sex without
condoms or ejaculation, and anal sex with condoms). Through its layout
and facilities, a thoughtfully designed space could reinforce safer sex
practices, provided there is a reasonable community consensus on what
constitutes acceptable intervention in the enforcement of safer sex.'
Mutual surveillance could be enhanced by building rooms and cubicles
without doors, or by providing peep holes and windows throughout
the club.' In addition to their usefulness in monitoring sexual acts, peep
holes could be a bonus for voyeuristic sexual tastes as well. No pitch
black areas should exist; dim lighting, at minimum, should be used
throughout the club. Adequate light is essential for patrons who wish
to prevent infection by checking tlieir partners for sores (such as those
plan
5OCIAL STRUCTURE-9 (qty. 6) McAlpin
caused by herpes). Post-coital hygiene (not just for the prevention of

HIV transmission but for the general range of STDs as well) could be
promoted by providing wash basins with hot and cold water and
anti-bacterial soap, and by mounting the basins lielow crotch height.
The current spaces being used for sex clubs in New York are seldom
varied in appearance, nor are they optimally functional. Distances
between walls forming corridors that could comfortably promote group
sex or provide degrees of intimacy for people pairing up are usually
poorly planned, if they are planned at all. Cul-de-sacs, niches, and
columns could provide the illusion of privacy as an alternative to actual
private space. Raised platforms could provide relief from cruising traffic,
giving protection to those who seek an intimate respite from public
activity.
A sense of adventure, like that fostered in cliildren's play spaces,
could be recaptured by increasing or decreasing the scale of spaces
John Lindtll 79
L
plan
PERMEABLE CELLS
and architectural elements, As adults, we can .still relate to childhood

memories of improvising forts, tents, or any special small spaces used
for hiding, out of appliance boxes or bed sheets: spaces associated with
play, fantasy and independence from adult control. Some people may
even have fond memories of their earliest sexual experiences in these
kinds of spaces. Certainly the piers at the end of Christopher Street in
the 1970s and early '80s tapped into childhood memories of taking over
or exploring abandoned spaces (sadly, the superstrucmres have now
been removed). And it is easy to see the beauty of the piers as a
municipal ruin brought back to life by non-reproductive sex.
As patrons, we currently have little variety in sex club spaces. History
has led us to this jxwerty of imagination and supply. We should bear
in mind that life could be better. We can wish a little, and, like good
consumers everywhere, demand improvement from the businessmen

that sex club operators are. The current design of sex clubs—dark,
gloomy, and nondescript—confirms the vestiges of shame regarding
sex that remain in gay culture. This shame itself hinders the promotion
of safer sex. There cannot be open public dialogue (whether between
friends or in newspapers) unless sex acts can be experienced as open,
public, and shameless—and unless we understand that shamelessness
is essential to the promotion of self-respect and responsibility. For
feeling worthy to live is the necessary first step in defending one's life
by praaicing safer sex.
NOTES
1. Margaret Crawford, "The World in a Shopping Mail," in Michael Sorkin, ed.,
Variations on a Theme Park: The Neu> American City and the End of Public
Space Wew York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 14.
2. For a history of gay bathhouses and sex clubs see Allan BSrube's essay in this
book.
3. "Intervention" here can mean anything from a sign describing safer sex acts to
bodily ejeaion for violation of a club's rules. On the questions of whether or
not safer sex practices should be enforced and by whom, and what definition
of safer sex all parties will agree to. I.e., the Health Department, the police, sex
club owners, and sex club patrons, there is currently no consensus in New York
City. My following design suggestions are meant for a politically less hostile
future, one more akin to San Francisco where a pragmatic Health Department
is working with sex clubs to promote safer sex.
4. 1 define "mutual surveillance" as non-Invasive observation done only by patrons
themselves, as opposed to by the Health Department or by sex club staff Keep
in mind that these suggestions are for a sex club oriented to patrons who want
to practice safer sex in a public space. Currently, the result of monitoring at
some establishments has been to force patrons to have sex in a closet with a
locked door. Privacy may be desirable for some, but the display of safer sex
acts by patrons in a club can only help to further eroticize thase acts and provide
an example of safe behavior. However, the right to private space in a sex club
is undeniable and should be provided for in any design. To deny private space
would be force some patrons back to the bedroom, which is no safer than any
other space, and certainly less potentially instructive.
Scott O'Hara
TAIKING WITH
MY MOUTH FULL
It's a cliche in gay circles, I know. I'd
just like to point out that for gay men, all through history, having our
mouths full of dick has been a political statement like no other. In that
sense, nothing's changed. Sucking dick is still the perfect expression of
our First Amendment rights: it screams to the Authorities, Fuck You
(and your little dog too)! It gives us the status of Outsider, the
perspective necessary to comment on a sick society, and the detach-
ment to realize that their world is not quite the Utopia they seem to
think it is.
I would like to state that I think heterosexuals who insist on
monogamous relationships should be arrested and quarantined, so they
can't infect the rest of us with their insanity. Monogamy is unnatural
behavior, as any zoologist or anthropologist will attest, a curiosity of
so-called Western Society, and one need only look at modern history
to understand how unhealthy it is. But alas, since the folks in control
these days are heterosexuals, and since it is socially unacceptable to
promote promiscuity, my suggestions will probably not be adopted
anytime soon.
Promiscuity is not a "right," exactly; it's an instinct. I don't maintain
that people have a "right" to food or water or air; they need to pursue
each of these, in whatever manner they can. (Air is generally considered
to be free, but consider all those poor souls in Los Angeles and Mexico
City who live without it.) And men are compelled by their natures to
81
82 POLICINO PUBLIC SEX
pursue sex, in whatever form pleases them, in as many venues as

possible. (I'd rather not get into the debate over the putative differences
between men's and women's sexualities, so I limit my remarks to men.)
Monogamy is unnatural; it's a construct designed by society ostensibly
to raise children, but what it raises more effectively is the level of social
control and guilt. These social constructs are undoubtedly useful to
priests and politicians, but they don't do anything for me. I believe in
pleasure, not guilt. I don't wish to give anyone else guidance on how
to live their lives. What works for Jesse Helms obviously would not
work for me, and vice versa. So I don't claim that I have a "right" to
sex. The Declaration of Independence didn't maintain that we're all
entitled to happiness—merely the pursuit of happiness. I'm not gonna
file a lawsuit against someone who refuses to have sex with me; I just
deny that anyone has the right to declare that I MAY NOT have sex.
When I go out on a warm, summer, full-moon night, to Buena Vista
Park (or Central Park, or Olin, Griffith, Volunteer, Pease, Overton, or
Stanley Parks), sex is very definitely on my mind. I may or may not
actually fuck; that part is irrelevant. (Really!) But I go there with
intent—no, that's too strong a term—I go there with interest in fucking.
It's not that I will be disappointed if I go home without shooting a load
(or having one shot on me or in me); who could walk through Buena
Vista Park on a warm and moonlit night and go home unsatisfied? There
is a sense, when I'm in an environment so sensual, so welcoming, and
yet so mysterious, that this is a place meant for sex; even the feel of
the steps underneath my feet, the well-worn tree limbs that I lean
against and bend over, the sensual caress of a warm breeze on my
bared butt, conspire to give me a (mental) hard-on. Bedrooms are not
meant for sex; bedrooms are meant for sleeping, reading, and many
other things, but they do not arouse my libido. A park at night does
that, and the world would be a better place if everyone would just
acknowledge that essential attraction and get over their hang-ups.
For a humorous touch to all this, I should add that for the past
several years, I've been largely impotent—^with occasional notable
exceptions. (If I could figure out what causes my periodic bouts of
perfect potency, things might be much busier at Casa O'Hara.) When
I talk about having unsafe sex in parks and bathhouses, I'm mostly
speaking theoretically. In theory, yes, I believe that unsafe sex is good
Scott O'Hara 83
for me (and yes, I do get fucked regularly without condoms). In reality,

I fuck fewer men than almost anyone I know, frequency of opportunity
notwithstanding. Ah, irony,
I have AIDS, I've made a habit, some would say a career, out of
announcing that fact at the top of my voice for the past couple of years,
I talk about it at every available opportunity, because gay men (and
especially Positive gay men) have been beaten into submission over
the past 15 years. They've been convinced that Positive men and
Attractive men are two incompatible groups; they've been convinced
that Positives never have sex (except for Gaetan Dugas and other
Typhoid Marys), There is an image of The PWA: he has a gaunt face,
staring eyes, stick-like limbs, and no dick. That's what we all tend to
go through at the end of our lives, and that's the stage at which AIDS
becomes visible. I am healthy; I'm not readily identifiable as a PWA
until I take my clothes off, and even then, I often encounter guys who
don't seem to know a lesion when they see one. That's why I've been
so vocal about it: I want to change that stereotype, I also want to make
it clear that having sex is not going to kill me. It seems much more
likely to me, given my continued vibrant good health, that I will
eventually be hit by the proverbial taick (probably while I'm on my
motorcycle), I've had many worse things happen to me than being
infected with HIV; most of them resulted from long-term relationships,
which our society regards with benevolence.
Being Positive, in the current climate of fear and anger, is the best
thing that could possibly have happened to me, I look around me at
the Negative world, and I see men who are in the closet about their
desires: mustn't admit to wanting to get fucked—mustn't admit to liking
rimming—mustn't admit to drinking piss—mustn't admit to frequenting
sex clubs or bathhouses. It's as if AIDS has taken us back to pre-
Stonewall days: it's okay to be gay, now, as long as you're in a
monogamous relationship and you never, ever do anything the least
bit interesting. And of course, there's an unhealthy slice of jealousy and
anger built into that equation, too: they look at Positives, who don't
have to live by their rules, and I can understand why they'd be
green-eyed. Having AIDS has, in the long run, given me back my
sexuality and my voice. Not only has it given me freedom from that
fear of death, it has given me license to say and do things—without
84 POUCING PUBLIC SEX
censure—that wouldn't have been acceptable had I been Negative,

(And, you ask, what's Scott O'Hara doing using words like "acceptable"?
All right, it's not exactly what I meant, "Effective" is closer, A Negative,
saying the same things I've said, would be scoffed at; a Negative, doing
the same things I'm doing, would be called irresponsible. And many
have called me irresponsible, but just as many have called me coura-
geous, I'm indifferent to what I'm called, so long as I'm called. Silence
would wound me,) Because I know, first-hand, the advantages of being
Positive, I don't feel the need to warn people away from the virus. In
fact, I admire those whose sense of self-esteem is high enough that they
can distinguish between those desires that emanate from themselves,
and those that are imposed upon them from outside, I know a man
who recently sero-converted; he admitted to me, after a number of
conversations, that he'd been trying to get AIDS for over a year, getting
fucked, unprotected, by as many men as he could. I don't know all his
reasons for doing so, but he had thought them through pretty rationally,
and made his choice based on his own circumstances, rather than the
dictates of our Professional Health Providers (who would undoubtedly
be shocked and appalled by his irresponsibility). That indicates a fairly
strong personality—one of the most attractive characteristics in a man.
Is it any wonder that I find "irresponsibility" to be downright irresistible?
When I meet that man in the park (or at a bathhouse, or just walking
down the street) and we have sex, what rationalization can society give
for interfering in what is clearly a voluntary interpersonal transaction?
When I fuck that faceless stranger in the bushes, in the moonlight, he
and I both get pleasure from the act; the rest of the world, without
extreme measures of surveillance, would never even know about it. I
don't know how anyone can claim that we're harming society. The
justifications for surveillance and punishment have changed many times
over the centuries; the mere fact that the intent has never altered (stop
the homosexual sex!) should alert the objective observer. I find it very
difficult to accept the medical profession's advice about AIDS, in part
because their advice—stop fucking!—is exactly the same thing that the
various other erotophobes have been screeching for centuries. When
the police departments and concerned citizens groups (mostly the
former) start talking about the dreadful effects of sex in parks, they
inevitably bring up the horror of having their children exposed to men
Scott O'Hara 85
fucking. They don't seem to realize that the problem isn't with the men;
it's with the parents who haven't raised their children to live in the real
world. If fucking is part of the world (and I guarantee that it always
has been, and always will be), then it's a truly monstrous parent who
keeps his or her children in the dark about it, or doesn't want them
exposed to it. Sounds like real child abuse to me.
Sex is not safe. Sex cannot be safe. Trying to make it safe destroys
the essence of it. But at the same time, neither is it harmful, Sound
contradictory? Oh, come on—there are hundreds of similar cases in
everyday life. Driving a motorcycle is not "safe"; neither is crossing the
street in any major city, or Whitewater rafting, or eating chocolate if you
have diabetes. None of these things is inherently harmful; yet each of
them can kill you, if you don't do it right. That's what my life has been
about: teaching men how to do it right. Sex, that is. Oh, I don't believe
that I know the One True Way of having sex; I don't prescribe positions
and lotions like an advice columnist, and I don't even try to persuade
straight men that "you gotta try everything once," But by acting in porn
flicks, and doing so with a smile, I feel that I showed men the pleasure
I was taking from my work, I wasn't exploited; I did it because I wanted
to. By printing a magazine about sex, I hope I'm letting men know that
they can talk about those subjects that the world considers too dark and
dastardly for discussion. People may have printed horrified editorials
about me, but no one's tried to assassinate me—yet. And by going out
to parks at night (or, for that matter, in broad daylight) and fucking with
strangers, I hope I'm reassuring my partners of the essential harmlessness
of sex. Sex isn't the problem. The puritanical, power-hungry attitude of
the police is the problem.
There are probably still people out there who don't understand what
I mean when I say that AIDS has been good for me, I'm not saying that
I'm grateful for the epidemic itself; believe me, I have a long list of dead
friends and lovers, and I mourn them and wish they were here, I'm
also confident that if the epidemic had not happened, we would be
more sexually liberated today than we are, and that would be a good
thing. But given the epidemic and the effect it's had on all of our lives,
I am thankful to be in the middle of it. The life of a Negative, at this
point in our history, seems to me to be the most irrelevant and pointless
of positions; the continual fear of conversion under which most of them
live is equally distressing. It's not as if this were the bubonic plague.
I've lived with this so-called fatal disease for years—probably about 13
years, to be precise, I'm spotted like a dalmatian, which bothers neither
me nor my sex partners, and I survived a bout with lymphoma, which
is certainly not exclusive to HlVers. Otherwise, my life has never been
better; and I feel that this "disease" has given me a heightened
awareness of the beauty of life,
AIDS, if it is anything, is only a test. If this had been an actual
emergency, I would be dead. No, this epidemic is a test of our wits and
endurance and compassion, I don't believe in an omniscient teacher
who's administering the test—I think it's basically self-graded—but I
could point to a number of groups, primarily religious, who I think
have failed dismally, I think they—and the people who maintain that
we need to castrate ourselves to avoid risk—are the real losers in this
war. We will probably all die, sooner or later; the important thing is
what we do before that hypothetical date. And I know what I'll be
doing, I'll be out there endlessly repeating the same old message, which
I have learned to convey quite effectively with a mouth stuffed full of
dick: sex is good. Not "some sex is good," SEX, in and of itself, is good,
positive, life-affirming, joyful, ecstatic, beneficial. And those who are
out there trying to control my sex life, whatever the rationale, are "evil,"
Yeah, I know, that's the same thing that a lot of them are saying about
me, and the word doesn't therefore have much objective meaning,
except "antithetical to my own way of life," But when I signed on to
that Declaration, I meant it. Liberty is a fundamental right, whether
god-given or otherwise. It's worth fighting for, and that's what I'm doing.
Fighting with my mouth full.
PART II:
AIDS ACTIVISM
PART I I :
AIDS ACTIVISM
Barbed slogans and cutting-edge acts

of civil disobedience have had their day, but the future of AIDS activism
is not waiting on pins and needles. By writing AIDS cultural criticism,
forming discussion groups, and advocating radical treatment programs
(symbolized by the urgent politics of needle exchange), activists in tlie
prevention movement are wielding new-found weapons and rallying
cries on new battlefronts in the fight against AIDS.
With an attention to antibodies as well as to raced, classed, and
gendered bodies, the following essays examine the trajectory of the AIDS
crisis and efforts to stem it. To approach the question of prevention,
each anticipates the question of whether a sexually active subject can
be "responsible" in the midst of a sexually transmitted disease that has
become an epidemic. Ttie work of these writers represents a keen
awareness of the well-worn terrain of activism and the groundbreaking
contributions made by other activists. This leads them to engage with
questions of "community" standards and "peer" norms as distinct
obstacles to emerging coalitions—questions which also invoke dissimilar
opportunities for provisional collective action. Together, these essays
point out that activists must be as self-conscious of their pronoutis as
they are of each other, resisting the political impulse to invoke "^ve" to
mean a self-evident community, as well as the normative impulse to
enter mainstream US, society.
This section begins and ends with a discussion erf the tensions that
inevitably surface between identity-based communities and practice-based
interventions. The various voices in these debates present compelling
issues, competing interests, and uncommon strategies that emphasize safer
sex education and access to treatment. The attempt to locate accountability
might seem counter-intuitive or even counter-productive; we would
argue that this move looks forward to an oppositional politics that shifts
89
along with the ongoing challenge posed by the intractability of AIDS.

Alison Redick presents a theoretical argument concerning the
narrative construaion of the "second wave," suggesting that the impulse
to regulate public sex reveals a contempt for promiscuity that bears no
actual relation to the transmission of HIV infection. Her discussion, like
Stephen Gendin's, engages current debates over public sex. Whereas
Redick nails GALHPA's rhetoric to the wall, Gendin pins the tail on the
donkey by talking honestly about the sex gay men are having—ÂPAl's
innovative imperative for HIV prevention. By illustrating the difficulties
in maintaining safer sex practices over the course of a lifetime, he
complicates anti-public sex politics and provides a framework with
which to theorize AIDS education for infected promiscuous gay men.
Walt Odets takes aim at undifferentiated prevention education,
providing a psychological critique of primary prevention for uninfected
gay men. Neither Odets nor Gendin means to divide men into "positives"
and "negatives," but both aim to show the diverse strategies needed to
reach "gay men" today. Using a different approach, Ephen Glenn Colter
also identifies fault lines within AIDS education. His methodological
critique pokes around under the surface of safer sex education to expose
the relationship between contemporary AIDS public policy and histori-
cal prohibitions and proscriptions of non-normative sex in the U.S.
Because so many lives are at stake, it is not enough merely to critique
the current state of HTV prevention efforts. Witli an eye toward the future,
concerned activists must also put forward more productive models to
strengthen prevention and treatment, and redirect the fight against HIV.
Gendin speculates how much individually targeted education could be
done with the money being spent on vice cops enforcing sodomy laws.
Odets imagines an entirely new model of primary prevention, where
multiple messages reach different demographic groups simultaneously.
And Mark Schoofs puts forth the most radical redireaion of money and
energy for activists: working toward the attainable goal of an AIDS
vaccine could end the epidemic altogether. His investigative reporting
demonstrates not only the slings and arrows of outrageous pharmaceu-
tical fortunes, but also suggests tlieir directions and implications across
lines of race, class, and gender. The next wave of AIDS aaivists is
concerned with more than winning a political battle or gearing up for
some alleged "second wave." Tliey're strategizing to win a whole war.
Alison RedUk
DANGEROUS
PRACTICES
Ideological Uses
of the "Second Wave"
Cay people invented safe sex. We

knew that the alternatives—monogamy and abstinence—were unsafe,
unsafe in the latter case because people do not abstain from sex, and
if you only tell them "just say no," they will have unsafe sex. We were
able to invent safe sex because we have always known that sex is not,
in an epidemic or not, limited to penetrative sex. Our promiscuity
taught us many things, not only about the pleasures of sex, but about
the great multiplicity of those pleasures.
—Douglas Crimp, "How to Have
Promiscuity in an Epidemic"
Once again, a crisis has emerged around public sex. Facilitated at
first glance by genuine alarm around the projected "second wave" of
HIV, the impulse to regulate public sex reveals a contempt for promis-
cuity that bears no actual relation to the transmission of HIV infection,
and fails to constitute a viable public health measure. My concern in
this essay will be to unpack the various levels of rhetoric that charac-
terize the current polemic over whether or not public sex spaces should
be regulated and forced to close. It is especially critical to consider how
the "second wave" is itself a narrative construction that signifies different
imperatives for different representatives of the prevention debates.
The meaning of the term "second wave" varies according to who is
using it, and to what end. For the activists who have banded together
under the acronym "GALHPA" (Gay and Lesbian HIV Prevention
Activists), the "second wave" refers to the findings of an epidemiological
study, conducted at the Columbia University School of Public Health
91
in 1992, that projected a rise in seroconversion among primarily black

and Latino gay-identified men between the ages of 18 and 24. This and
several similar studies conducted in Philadelphia and San Francisco
constitute the epidemiological basis for GALHPA's use of the term. The
individuals in GALPHA, including journalists Michelangelo Signorile
and Gabriel Rotello, mobilize what I will refer to as "second wave
rhetoric" to justify regulating public sex. According to this use of second
wave rhetoric, a sharp increase in HIV transmission looms in the near
future, and can only be prevented by eliminating public, promiscuous
sex. Because there is absolutely no logical correlation between public
and unsafe sex, this move must be recognized for what it is: an
ideological strategy that makes regulation appear to be prevention
activism while relying upon a false equation that links public sex with
higher rates of seroconversion.'
At the same time that anti-bathhouse activists deploy second wave
rhetoric to justify regulating public sex establishments, prevention
activists in recently formed direct-action groups, especially members of
APAL (AIDS Prevention Action League) and CAPA (Community AIDS
Prevention Activists), use the term "second wave" in order to evoke the
pressing need for new prevention strategies in the second decade of
the AIDS crisis. Faced with the grim likelihood that a cure for AIDS will
not be found in this generation's lifetime, APAL's primary concern is to
develop practical prevention strategies that can withstand the long-term
challenge that the AIDS crisis presents to monogamous and non-
monogamous individuals alike.^
Because, unlike APAL, GALHPA is not actually a direct-action group,
another point at which it is critical to consider the rhetoric at work in
discussions of the second wave is in the very production of the entity
that has come to be known as GALHPA.^ Although I will refer to
"GALHPA" throughout this paper, it is with the understanding that it is
a journalistic fiction. There is the temptation to leave the acronym in
scare quotes, as though through repetition its fictionality could be
confirmed. The authority that the media have assigned to the group as
an activist organization in the tradition of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power) must be called into question. Furthermore, GALHPA
does not encourage an open membership, which became evident very
early on when its founders met covertly with Department of Health
Alison RedUk 93
officials and lobbied them secretly in the interests of regulating public

sex establishments before going public with their demands. These
included monitoring patrons of clubs and bars to ensure that no oral
or anal sex takes place, and removing all cubicle doors so that patrons
remain under the gaze of monitors and are unable to participate in
unsafe activities.
Although 25 people signed the initial press release that simultane-
ously announced the formation of GALHPA and called for immediate
intervention in public sex practices, GALHPA's position is almost
exclusively disseminated through the mass-circulated editorials in the
New York tabloids most of these "media activists" write for. Although
not all of the tabloid journalists who write in opposition to public sex
are actually members of GALHPA, their views reflect and support the
position taken by its official representatives.'' Among them are Gabriel
Rotello, former editor of the now defunct gay and lesbian weekly
Outtveek; Duncan Osborne, author of an editorial in the first issue of
ZGAT condemning public sex; Jonathan Capeheart; Amy Pagnozzi;
and well-known journalist, author, and self-help writer Michelangelo
Signorile. Thus GALHPA is a rhetorical construction in and of itself:
what is known of GALHPA and its so-called prevention strategies can
only be gleaned from a collection of editorials written for Newsday, The
New York Post, and New York Daily News, mainstream daily newspa-
pers that serve sensationalism to a largely conservative audience.^
Perhaps most significantly, GALHPA representatives rely upon the
flawed narrative account of the AIDS crisis first developed by Randy
Shilts in his epic And the Band Played On. As Douglas Crimp discusses
in his important essay "How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic," Shilts
constaicts a version of the AIDS epidemic in which bathhouses and the
culture of public sex in the 1970s are the primary reason for the rapid
spread of HIV among gay men.^ In GALHPA's continuation of this story,
it was the closing of the baths in the mid-1980s that temporarily stalled
the transmission of the virus, and current predictions of a rise in rates
of seroconversion are similarly attributed to a perceived increase in
public sexual activity.
Unveiling the rhetorical strategies of anti-bathhouse activism will
reveal that the impulse to regulate public sex is more ideological than
epidemiological. Conflating public with unsafe depends upon the
sex-negative and fundamentally homophobic position that equates the

spread of HIV with a sexual lifestyle instead of specific sexual practices.
The most treacherous aspect of taking up regulation as a prevention
strategy may be that the need to continue to develop safer sex
education becomes virtually eclipsed in the interests of eradicating
non-monogamy. More is at stake, however, than safer sex education
alone: regulation poses a false set of connections that threaten the
well-being of counter-normative sexualities.
Crashing the Second Wove

"Welcome to the second wave—of battles over bathhouses, public sex,
politics, and AIDS," writes Sara Miles in an article on the current debates
for Out Magazine? While some sources indicate the possibility of a rise
in seroconversion among homosexual men, the narrative that connects
the transmission of HIV to public sex is just that: a fictitious rendering
of the AIDS crisis, in which bathhouses were the source of the "first
wave," According to this account, regulating public sex in the 1990s is
the only way to ensure that the second wave is stalled. But, as Miles
indicates, debates over the second wave are not just epidemiological.
They also reflect an ideological polemic that has arisen in response to
a real need for new prevention strategies. At the same time that the
anti-bathhouse activists are hard at work constructing false connections
between public sex and HIV transmission under the sign of prevention,
other activist groups such as APAL and CAPA are calling for a second
wave of AIDS activism.
This double use of the term "second wave" to signify the need for
regulation on the one hand, and need for new prevention strategies on
the other, results in the retroactive creation of the previously unformu-
lated notion of a "first wave," Even before examining the implications
of the temporal phenomenon that has become known as the "second
wave," it is necessary to consider how something called the "first wave"
is produced in relation to present debates around regulating public sex
establishments. Several characteristics of the current prevention debates
emerge to illustrate the rhetorical dependence of the "first wave" upon
the cultural conditions of the second decade of AIDS activism.
First, there is the projected rise in HIV that finds gay men to be at
a new critical threshold in the AIDS crisis, Tliis is the epidemiological
basis for anti-bathhouse activism. Often referred to simply as the
Alison RedUk 95
"Columbia Study," the project conducted by Lara Dean and Ilan Meyer
at the Columbia University School of Public Health found that among
sexually active gay men, the average number of "unsafe sex partners"
had dropped off to one per year, as opposed to the average 11 before
the epidemic* While at the rate of only one unsafe sex partner per year,
HIV transmission among gay men would continue to decrease, if the
number of unsafe partners per year were to increase to just two, the rate
of transmission would rise sharply, exceeding the current threshold, and
vastly increasing the spread of HIV among gay men, Tliis rather alarming
and convincing set of statistics is deployed by anti-bathhouse activists
in attempts to regulate sex in public places without regard for the
specific population in which the rise was specifically predicted—Âfrican
American and Latino men—and in a way that falsely connects the
decrease of seToconversion in the mid-1980s to the closing of the baths.
The first wave is also constructed in terms of the actual existence
of public sex venues. The initial formation of the group of individuals
who call themselves GALHPA was in response to the opening of The
West Side Club, the first new gay baths to open in New York City since
the closing of many such institutions in the mid-1980s,' Portrayed as
proof of the resurgence of public sex, the opening of the West Side
Club and other new public sex venues is linked in anti-bathhouse
rhetoric to the "second wave" of HIV infection. In fact, while many of
the larger public sex venues were closed during the 1980s despite
widespread opposition from AIDS educators, sexual activity continued
to proliferate in other public places. Additionally, in New York City
several gay commercial sex spaces remained open during the decline
in infection rates, including the Mt, Morris Baths in Harlem, the Northern
Men's Sauna in Queens, and the East Side Club, which is under the
same ownership as the new West Side Club in Chelsea. The anti-
bathhouse activists have "remembered" and reconstructed the mid-'80s
closing of the bathhouses primarily through the lens of their vehement
objection to public sex.
Nan D, Hunter, an attorney in the trials that shut down the St, Marks
Baths in New York, and Allan Berube, who was writing a history of gay
bathhouses as the baths were being shut in San Francisco, tell quite a
different story,'" Contrary to the anti-bathhouse narrative, the baths in
New York and San Francisco were shut down in spite of the protests
of many AIDS activists, who had worked closely with public health
officials to maintain public sex venues as places to teach safer sex
practices to their patrons. Because many more men went to commercial
sex establishments than participated in activist or community events,
especially men who did not necessarily identify as gay, prevention
activists targeted commercial sex establishments as critical locations for
the widespread development of safer sex practices. Because these men
would most likely pursue public sex in other forms—such as at parks
and in tea rooms—clubs and movie houses provided a physically safer
environment for public sex practitioners."
Finally, the first wave is produced in relation to the second in terms
of the need to develop new forms of queer politics and activism in the
second decade of the AIDS crisis. In the 1980s activists were similarly
divided over the question of public sex. On one side were public figures
like Larry Kramer and Randy Shilts, who called for the closing of the
baths, arguing that these sites of promiscuous and public sex were the
source of transmission and contagion.'^ On the other were a variety of
AIDS activists and educators, including Douglas Crimp and Cindy
Patton, who insisted that public sex establishments were precisely the
sites from which safer sex information should be disseminated: not only
to gay men, but also to patrons who might not necessarily identify as
gay and therefore have more limited cultural and prevention resources.
In the academy, activism against closing the baths translated into a
branch of postmodern theory concerned with unveiling the early
representations of AIDS as a gay disease.'' In the mid-'80s, literature
proliferated around the troubling conflation of AIDS with a gay lifestyle,
which was meant to signify promiscuity, and an emphasis was placed
upon the importance of educating people about how to maintain
sexually diverse practices through safer sex.''* A primary objective of
this literature was to put an end to the use of the term "risk group,"
which implicitly blames gay men and IV daig users for spreading AIDS,
falsely linking the disease to "lifestyle." The more accurate term "risk
practice" was produced to replace it. Jan Zita Grover writes:
The aging of the epidemic has made clear the indifference of HIV to
categories such as junkie and faggot. It doesn't care whether it enters
the body of a nurse or a prostitute, a Senator Paul Gann or a "Patient
Zero" The continued emphasis on risk groups rather than risk
Alison Rediclc 97
practices in press and political discussions of AIDS masks the evidently

unspeakable fact that functionally there are no differences in sexual
practices engaged in by gay men and by heterosexual men and
women—only in the values ascribed to them,"
In a similar vein, the widely accepted idea that promiscuous or
public sex is inherently less safe than monogamous or private sex places
blame for the potential rise in HIV transmission upon a "lifestyle" instead
of specific sexual practices. This is the foundation for the treacherous
prevention strategy that sustains the illusion that sex with someone
familiar is somehow safeguarded against transmitting HIV, In fact, the
problem of maintaining safer sex practices in the context of monoga-
mous relationships is one of the greatest obstacles that prevention
research has encountered, A common response to GALHPA's demand
that cubicle doors be removed from commercial sex establishments has
been to question the assumption that unprotected sex will take place
behind these doors but not bedroom doors. Indeed, current research
indicates that the pressures to engage in unprotected anal sex are much
higher in the context of a long-term relationship than at a club, because
sex without latex barriers tends to operate symbolically as a measure
of trust and commitment.
Prevention activists must continue to illuminate the ideological
pitfalls inherent in equating the spread of HIV with a particular lifestyle,
especially because precisely the same strategy was used by the main-
stream press and politicians in the early 1980s to portray AIDS as a "gay
disease" that would not affect the rest of the population. The cautions
and objections of AIDS theorists during the '80s resonate today: in the
rhetorical gesture that contains the spread of HIV to public sex
establishments is the implicit refusal to draw connections between race,
class, and the potential increase in seroconversion. Anti-bathhouse
activists deploy the "Columbia Study" without specific attention to the
demographics of the threshold theory. By locating risk solely and
specifically in public sex, these activists abnegate themselves of the
responsibility to consider which populations are truly at risk, and refuse
to face the considerably more difficult task of developing overarching
prevention strategies. While black and Latino men certainly participate
in public sex, even if there were a viable relation berween transmission
and sex in public, regulation as a prevention strategy is not a program
9B POLICING PUBLIC SEX
that includes a consideration of the way that HIV affects communities

of color.
Activism around regulating public sex produces a narrative that is
flawed in several ways. On a practical level, as conflicting accounts of
the 1980s bathhouse closures demonstrate, these locations are vital to
continuing education campaigns, providing safer alternatives to the
outdoors and otherwise more vulnerable public areas where men have
historically congregated. Furthermore, as safer sex proponents of public
sex spaces have asserted time and time again, there is absolutely no
logical correlation between public sex and unsafe sex: in fact, unsafe
sex is more likely to occur between individuals who know and trust
each,other than between strangers.'* Symbolic and ideological issues
are also at stake in the move to regulate sexual activity in commercial
sex establishments. These are most apparent in the use of the second
wave rhetoric to regulate public sex.
Rhetorical Slippage in Anti-Bathhouse Activism

Because discussions of a second wave are used to justify regulation,
the complex reasons why HIV continues to be transmitted are collapsed
into a faulty rhetorical gesture that links public or promiscuous sex to
the spread of HIV. But there is something greater at stake in this debate
than HIV prevention alone. The continuity between the current impulse
to regulate sex venues and the activism that shut down the baths in the
1980s reveals an ideological schism in AIDS activism, at the heart of
which are continuing issues around non-monogamy in larger debates
about what constitutes "gay rights."" In GALHPA's account of the AIDS
crisis, public sex is the "reason" that HIV continues to be transmitted,
even among men who "should know better." Thus, at the heart of the
impulse to regulate public sex is the desire to project an image of a
normative gay sexuality. This is a profoundly conservative position that
threatens the future of radical queer politics.
Michael Warner addresses the second wave of HIV in his Village
Voice anide, "Why Gay Men Are Having Unsafe Sex." Written in late
January 1995, the article preceded the official formation of GALHPA,
although Gabriel Rotello had already characterized gay sex venues as
"the killing fields of AIDS," and members of the would-be GALHPA had
begun to meet covertly with city officials.'* Warner discusses the
"Columbia Study" at length in his piece, concurring with its findings of
Aliion R«dick 99
a relatively high incidence of unsafe sex among HlV-negative men."

In a city like New York, where approximately 50 percent of gay men
are infected with HIV, the increasing rates of seroconversion are a
serious matter indeed. Yet there remain questions as to whether this
actually constitutes a "second wave." Warner writes:
Studies... have led many to speak of a coming "second wave of AIDS."
But we may only now be noticing what has been there for a long time:
that safer sex is easier to adopt in the short run than to sustain. And
we may be noticing this for a simple reason: Since the 1993 Berlin AIDS
conference, which doused hopes for an imminent cure and dashed
faith in drugs like AZT, it has become increasingly clear that the AIDS
epidemic is likely to last for the rest of our lives.^^
Whereas at earlier points in the crisis, safer sex was understood to
be a temporary measure undertaken until the discovery of a cure or
vaccine, at this advanced stage of the epidemic, safer sex practices have
proven difficult to sustain over an extended period of time. Second
wave rhetoric presents a potential rise in HIV infection as evidence that
men who have sex with men can and should practice and maintain
safer sex. While at the outset this appears to be a sensible approach to
sex in the 1990s, it is significantly flawed because of its reliance upon
inaccurate assumptions about the first and second waves.
Most sources will confirm that rates of HIV transmission leveled off
among gay men around 1986, due to the combined development of
ELISA, the first reliable test for HIV antibodies, and safer sex education
programs."' However, according to GALHPA's narrative, seroconversion
decreased as a result of the bathhouse closures. This revisionist analysis
is made in the interests of bolstering demands for regulation, and used
as proof of the connection between public sex and HIV transmission.
On the other side of the debate, prevention activists whose interest is
in maintaining diverse sexual practices in the face of the epidemic must
look retroactively to the mid-'80s as proof of the temporary success of
earlier safer sex education programs, in order to continue to formulate
effective safer sex and prevention strategies.
In the panorama constructed by the anti-bathhouse activists, the
"first wave" of the epidemic was a result of the careless and self-
destructive hedonism of gay sexual culture in the 1970s and early 1980s.
According to this scenario, it was indeed the closing of the baths that
resulted in the initial leveling off of HIV among gay men in the mid-
to late '80s, As APAL members have noted, however, there were other
reasons that HIV infection decreased at this time. In an educational flyer
that spoofs the Out magazine article in which Signorile attributed
decreases in HIV to a decline in public sex, APAL members drive this
point home. The headline reads, "Out Magazine and Michelangelo
Signorile Apologize for Being Stupid and Ignorant":
When I spoke of HIV infection lowering after the closing of the
bathhouses in the mid-'80's, I neglected to mention that was when the
first HIV test appeared and we were seeing the first results from our
first prevention campaigns. That must have slipped my mind, since I
never got tested back then. The "second wave" as it's been called, can
be blamed on many things, not just people in bathhouses having sex
later with people in bedrooms. There's generation X, the straight, and
straight people of color population that haven't gotten the word as fast
as us gay people, etc. So, sorry again!'^
While GALHPA members by no means constitute the single voice
of contemporary AIDS activism, as independent journalists, tabloid
columnists, and authors of best-selling books, they enjoy high profiles
and seemingly influential positions in the public sphere. Combined with
Signorile's and Rotello's past affiliations with ACT UP, which might
camouflage the conservative politics behind the reaction against public
sex, there are good reasons to fear that GALHPA will succeed in
convincing a wide audience that public sex establishments are indeed
the source ofthe "second wave," In a roundtable discussion on National
Public Radio, mediator Joe Neel concluded with the following state-
ment, which clearly indicates the extent to which regulation has been
accepted as a legitimate prevention strategy by the mass media:
Once before, the gay community acted on its own to slow the spread
of AIDS, structuring pleasure around safer sex at a time when the
government was reluctant to act. But in a community where more than
100,000 have died, men have become desensitized to the fear of being
infected. There is a strong impulse to throw caution to the wind. When
that happens, the government can view it as an invitation to step in,
in order to slow the spread of HIV among gay ^^
ACT UP archives show that as early as 1992 there was disagreement
among ACT UP members over whether or not to regulate public sex
Alison RedUk 101
by asking club and bar owners to enforce existing New York Public
Health codes,^'' New York's Channel Four had aired grainy footage of
what was alleged to be unprotected sex in gay venues, ACT UP
provided a forum for club owners and concerned community members.
Although there was no full-fledged dispute over whether to regulate
public sex establishments at that time, in retrospect, these discussions
foreshadowed the current polemic. Over the past year, similar news
segments have been aired, claiming to provide evidence of unsafe sex
in commercial sex spaces, and compounding the public image that
GALHPA has acquired as "the voice of AIDS activism," Attempts to shift
the focus of AIDS activism towards different prevention strategies must
deflect the authority that mainstream media coverage has given to this
vocal minority.
An examination of the language used by Gabriel Rotello and
Duncan Osborne in their respective newspaper columns from February
to May of 1995 reveals a series of dangerous conflations that hark back
to earlier divisive debates around the gay baths. The example that best
demonstrates GALHPA's position relies upon a widely cited trope, in
which public sex establishments become "the killing fields of AIDS,""
Gabriel Rotello, in an April 1995 New York Newsday column, relates
witnessing an act of unprotected anal sex with a friend at Zone DK, a
popular men's sex club in New York, now closed, Rotello writes:
Dennis DeLeon and I witnessed a sex murder/suicide last Thursday
night I don't know if an actual death will result from the act we
witnessed, but I consider it a murder/suicide because the imperatives
of AIDS tell me I must,,, when it comes to challenging the morality of
some gay men, especially the culture ofprotniscuity that some see as
the birthright of gay life, suddenly the rhetoric of crisis drops away,
replaced by the weak tea of "education" and "outreach" and "condom
availability," or the mock defiant slogan, "Hands off our clubs," iMy
emphasis,]
Several false equations are at work in this account. First, the
act—unprotected anal sex—is equated with the contraction of the
virus, which is then equated with death. Not only is this an inaccurate
set of conclusions, based on assumptions about the serostatus of the
individuals engaged in the act, but the equation AIDS = Death produces
a representation of the disease that is both dangerous to PWAs and
complicit in homophobic reactions against the epidemic. Then, this one

act of unprotected sex is presented not only as "proof that public sex
venues are the site of HIV transmission but also as evidence of the
immorality of "some gay men" who practice promiscuous sex. In this
way, the location of sexual practices is conflated with sexual behavior,
and public sex becomes equated with unprotected sex, which then
results naturally and inevitably in death. The phrase "the killing fields
of AIDS" is a metaphoric gesture that transforms the public sex venue
into a death machine. Clearly, the future of HIV prevention will require
a far more nuanced set of Considerations than Rotello's analysis can
provide.
As Michael Warner warns, it is a mistake to believe the initial
decrease in seroconversion among gay men is sustainable now that it
seems safer sex practices must be maintained over a lifetime. In
discussions of the "second wave" there is an overwhelming tendency
to cast transmission in terms of irresponsibility, carelessness, nihilism,
and so on, without attending to other significant factors in HIV
prevention in the 1990s. These include issues of trust, especially in
monogamous relationships, the difficulty of sustaining safer sex over a
long period of time, and perhaps most significantly, the overwhelming
sense of inevitability that they will eventually seroconvert that many
HIV-negative men have expressed in the face of the epidemic.^^
Condusion
Effective HIV prevention in the second decade of the AIDS crisis must
resist the narrative that links unsafe sex to promiscuity. Because all
evidence points to the conclusion that gay men will continue to have
multi-partnered sex regardless of whether it is against the rules or
against the law, prevention strategies must continue to focus upon safer
sex education across race and class lines. Prevention activists must also
work to unveil what is taily at stake in anti-bathhouse activism. The
influence of GALHPA members upon media accounts of the "second
wave" of HFV is evident in most representations of the public sex
debates, and coincides with larger city-wide efforts to "clean up Times
Square" for purchase by big business.^ The relation of public sex
regulation to conservative politics is evident, and should serve as an
alarming reminder to radical AIDS activists that the future of queer
Alison Redick 103
politics depends upon smashing the illusion that sexually normative

practices will delay the spread of HIV.
NOTES
1. Michael Warner, "Why Gay Men are Having Risky Sex," Village Voice, January
31, 1995. In this article Warner discusses the collapse of the terms "public,"
"illegal," and "unsafe" in GALHPA's rhetoric.
2. Ibid., 33. Warner, who is a founding member of APAL, emphasizes that the
tendency to equate public with unsafe sex implicitly places monogamy at the
top of the "safeness" hierarchy, as though monogamous relationships are
somehow safeguarded against the virus.
3. Direct-action activism in the context of AIDS means participation in an activist
group that holds regular, public meetings and stages actions in response to
governmental and corporate policies that threaten the well-being of people
living with AIDS.
4. Amy Pagnozzi, for example, was enlisted by Dtincan Osborne to accompany
him on a trip to Zone DK. She wrote about this venture for the New York Daily
News as evidence of GALHPA's success: she did not witness any public sex at
this public sex venue. Zone DK has now closed, due to the Health Department
crackdowns.
5. Michelangelo Signorile does not write for the tabloids, but uses the same rhetoric
of sensationalism that characterizes the other journalists in GALHPA. Articles
written by Signorile and other journalists on the need to regulate public sex
venues include: Jonathan Capehart, "Getting Undressed, Going Undercover,"
Daily News, February 6,1995, 27; Duncan Oslsorne, "Time for Gays to Say No
to Unsafe Sex," Daily News, November 20, 1994; Amy Pagnozzi, "Gay Group
Measures Prevention in Lives," Daily News, Febaiary 15, 1995; Amy Pagnozzi,
"City Must Monitor Gay Clubs," Daily News, February 27, 1995; Gabriel Rotello,
"HIV and the Strange Ethics of Neutrality," New York Newsday, September 1,
1994; Rotello, "Unsafe Sex Clubs: Safe From Crackdowns," New York Newsday,
January 12, 1995; Rotello, "For Sale: State of the Art Unsafe Sex," New York
Newsday, January 26, 1995; Rotello, "Sex Clubs Are the Killing Fields of AIDS,"
New York Newsday, April 28, 1995; Michelangelo Signorile, "HIV Positive and
Careless," New York Times, February 26, 1995, E15.
6. See Douglas Crimp, "How to Have Promiscuity in An Epidemic," in AIDS:
Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism, Douglas Crimp, ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1988). I am greatly indebted to this article for my analysis of the narrative
continuity between Randy Shilts and GALHPA.
7. Sara Miles, "And the Bathhouse Plays On," Out, July/August, 1995, 88.
8. Laura Dean and Ilan Meyer, "Rapid Communication: HIV Prevalence and Sexual
Behavior in a Cohort of New York City Gay Men (Aged 18-24)," in Journal of
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology 8:208-211
(1995). This study includes a discussion of similar studies conducted among
young gay men in Philadelphia and San Francisco. Project Achieve, conducted
by the New York Blood Center, found that among negative men in New York,
20 percent had been fucked without a condom and 25 percent had fucked
without a condom. See Warner, 33.
9. For a history of the baths, see Allan Berube, "The History of Gay Bathhouses,"
this collection.
10. Thanks to Nan D. Hunter for taking the time to tell me about some of the
communication that took place between activists and public health officials in
the 1980s when the baths were heing closed.
11. Allan Berube, "The History of Gay Bathhouses," this collection.
12. Larry Kramer, Reports From the Holocaust: The Making ojan AIDS Activist (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1989); Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics,
People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).
13. See Douglas Crimp, op. cit.; Cindy Patton, Inventing AIDS (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1990); Tessa Boffin and Sunil Gupta, eds.. Ecstatic Antibodies iLondon:
Rivers Oram Press, 1990); and Simon Watney, Policing Desire: Pornography,
AIDS, and the Media (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1987.)
14. See Crimp and Patton, op. cit.
15. Jan Zita Grover, "AIDS: Keywords," in Crimp, p. 28.
16. Warner discusses the faulty logic behind the conflation of "public" with "unsafe"
in his anicle, op. cit.
17. Eva Pendleton, "Domesticating Partnerships," this collection.
18. Ibid.
19. Warner, "Unsafe," 33.
20. Ibid., 33.
21. Jonathan Mann, Daniel J. M. Tarantola, and Thomas W. Wellers, eds., AIDS in
the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), as cited in Cay and
Lesbian Stats, Bennett L. Singer and David Deschamps, eds. (New York: The
New Press, 1994).
22. APAL Members, "Way Out," flyer circulated in October 1995.
23. Joe Neel, "All Things Considered," National Public Radio, June 1, 1995.
24. ACT UP records, provided by a longtime memher of ACT UP.
25. Gabriel Rotello, "Sex Clubs Are the Killing Fields of AIDS," Newsday, April 28,
1995, A42.
26. Ibid., A42.
27. See Walt Odets, "Why We Stopped Doing Primary Prevention for Gay Men in
1985," this collection.
28. See David Serlin, "The Twilight (Zone) of Commercial Sex," this collection.
Stephen Gendin
I WAS A TEENAGE
HIV PREVENTION
ACTIVIST
Sex Talk Ihe New York Times called it "the

most provocative" float in New York City's 1995 Gay Pride Parade. Couples,
threesomes, and foursomes engaged in simulated (and sometimes real)
sex, some in a mock sex-club cubicle, others in a make-believe bedroom.'
The goal was not simply to capture newspaper headlines, but to
get people talking. AIDS Prevention Action League (APAL) wanted the
float to illustrate that sex happens everywhere, and that effective
prevention programs must focus not on where people have sex, but
on the emotional issues that prevent people from having sex with
condoms. The illustration was vivid, and people were certainly talking.
Working with APAL has been a good fit for me because, since my
early childhood, I've always been obsessed with sex, both with having
it and with trying to understand the power it holds over most people's
lives. Sex is not a single isolated part of my life, it is the center of my
being and central to the way I deflne myself. Sex influences more
aspects of my life than anything else. Having never been very good at
following decorum, I talk about sex all the time. What some might label
a perverse obsession, I flnd to be a very useful trait, especially now,
when the gay community is seeking new approaches to HIV prevention.
Back in the early 1980s, in my sleepy little Michigan hometown, I
was the envy of all my straight high school friends. Many an evening
was spent in the rec room of my friend Joe's basement. During those
long nights, we would sit around smoking pot, listening to Billy Joel,
and talking about sex. While my friends complained about how difficult
it was for them to cajole girls into having sex, I'd boast about the ease
105
with which I got gay boys into bed (or the backseat of my car). My
friends intently, although somewhat skittishly, listened to the graphic
details of my active sex life. I even had a few of my straight friends
wishing they were gay so they could have more sex. In college I got
bolder. Faced with a whole cadre of late-teen gay boys just coming out
and exploring their sexuality, I felt compelled to talk about my love of
getting fucked. I tried to eliminate their fears of getting fucked by
explaining that it wasn't painful. In fact, I'd say, I can get fucked for
hours, day after day, and not wince once.
Talking honestly is vital to helping each of us to understand
ourselves. This is even more the case with our sexual selves. Sexual
desires are so complex and so misunderstood that it is imperative that
we articulate them. In light of the AIDS epidemic, this need becomes
even more dramatic: until we better understand our desires, we'll have
little chance of developing effective prevention strategies.
Although I find it very easy to talk about sex nowadays, there was
a long stretch of time when I was disconnected from my sexual self. I
think back to the spring of 1994. I had just had my first "major" unsafe
sex since getting my results. At that time, it had been eight years since
I tested HIV positive. I was scared and confused and disappointed. I
was angry at the guy I had sex with and angry at myself. I'd lost the
ability to talk honestly about sex and to understand my own sexual
desires. And I didn't know where to turn. I didn't want to talk to my
friends, and I certainly didn't want to talk to some straight woman on
the city's AIDS Hotline. I couldn't even articulate how I was feeling; I'd
been denying my desire to have unsafe sex for so long that the urge
just seemed to slip in and take control of me. Over and over, I asked
myself why it was so appealing for me to get fucked without a condom.
I'm a bottom, and I honestly can't tell whether someone is fucking me
with or without a condom. It feels the same to me. Yet I still didn't want
the barrier, and it really disturbed me that I didn't know why.
To make matters even worse, I felt as though I was in an information
void. I didn't believe the information on reinfection aimed at HIV+ people,
and I wasn't really concerned about picking up an STD because I could
just go and get a shot of penicillin. Everything I read told me to "protect
myself." Well, for me, it was too late to protect myself, so all of those safer
sex brochures didn't speak to me. Nor had I ever read any real analysis
Stephen Gendin 107
of the risks involved in letting someone fuck me without a condom, I

couldn't find any real discussion of the issues that were affecting me, so
it became easier to justify my actions. Since there were no educational
materials out there that seriously challenged this notion, I thought,
"Maybe letting someone fuck me without a condom isn't all that awful,"
The gay community's prevention messages have been somewhat
successful at getting gay men to build dams against HIV, but we've failed
in learning how to deal with the pressure created by those dams. You
create walls (both psychological and latex ones) to hold back desires, but
those desires don't actually go away. They just keep building until they
are diverted somewhere else or until the dam breaks. When I had unsafe
sex that spring of 1994, the dam figuratively burst. The prevention
messages I had been listening to for years had drilled into my head the
idea that unsafe sex was bad. Those messages had given me the motivation
to build my dam, but I never learned how to process my desires,
I vowed to do something, to help develop the information I and
others so desperately needed. After not writing in my journal for years,
I was suddenly writing furiously, trying to understand my desires. But
I felt so alone, so isolated, I was afraid to admit publicly to having
unsafe sex; I didn't want to be branded irresponsible, or worse, a
murderer, I spent the next few months of that year struggling to develop
a safer-sex brochure for people who are positive. But I wasn't satisfied
with anything I produced. And I didn't know where to turn for support:
discussions of the difficulties many men had maintaining safer sex
practices really hadn't begun in New York,
The Battle over Preventien Strategies

By the beginning of 1995, there was still no widespread HIV prevention
campaign in New York City aimed at gay men, good or bad, accurate
or inaccurate. There were no public service announcements about safer
sex on gay cable shows. There were no billboards, no wheatpasted
posters, no radio announcements. The typical gay bar or disco was not
giving out condoms and didn't have any educational materials available
for its patrons, Tlie materials that were available were pretty pathetic:
the same old discussion on how to put on a condom without leaving
air bubbles, the same old list of sexual activities broken down into the
three categories of safe, possibly safe, and risky. In the decade that had
passed since 1985, AIDS prevention materials and education had not
changed at all.
Those early months of 1995 brought a lot of discussion about the
failure of HIV prevention materials and the need for new messages and
new strategies for the second decade of AIDS. Those discussions were
important, but what wasn't often acknowledged was just how plain
lazy our prevention efforts had gotten. Our community wasn't even
putting out our old messages anymore. When I first came to New York
in 1986, it was hard to avoid prevention materials—by 1995, it was hard
to find them. And any marketing expert will tell you that even when
you want your message to stay the same, you have to change your
presentation to keep people's attention. McDonald's basic message
about the Big Mac hasn't changed in decades: they want you to think
it's big and yummy. Yet every six months their television advertising
changes because they know their audience won't passively watch the
same thing year after year. Why, then, do we keep reprinting the same
old safer sex brochures from the mid-'80s? Who is actually going to pay
any attention to those old brochures that have been around for years,
with the same old lame drawings of condoms being put on dicks?
There was a lot of faistration during this time, and a real sense that
something must be done. This had both some good and some bad
consequences. On the positive side, it led to the formation of two groups:
Community AIDS Prevention Activists (CAPA) and AIDS Prevention
Action League (APAL). APAL and CAPA both formed in February 1995
and immediately started to produce educational foaims and to lobby for
better prevention programs. Yet on the negative side, this fiustration
resulted in a call to monitor and/or close all sex clubs, a call initiated by
a few gay men but quickly echoed by the City. Tlie gay men who asked
the City to close the clubs said they were motivated by the desire to do
anything that might quickly stop even a few transmissions.
But their stated intentions also fit in beautifully and conveniently
with Mayor Rudy Giuliani's plans to "clean up" New York. The City
started closing down clubs like crazy. Not only did shutting gay sex
clubs play very well in the outer-borough constituencies that had
elected Giuliani, but it also furthered the City's real estate development
plans. Many establishments that were shut were in Times Square,
Stephen Gendin 109
making it easy for the City to push through its plan for large,
commercial, "family" development of the area.
Early in the debate, in March 1995, I called Michelango Signorile,
one of the more vocal anti-sex club activists and an important gay
journalist, to ask him why he was publicly pleading for the City to
regulate gay men's sexuality. We had been friends for a few years, so
I naively thought I might talk some sense into him, but all the
conversation revealed was just how gung-ho he was on getting clubs
closed. He explained that he wasn't all that concerned about the
religious right or conservatives anymore, and that the gay community's
real enemy was itself. He didn't seem to be worried about the trouble
that could result from calling in police action during increasingly
conservative times, especially in New York, where a former federal
prosecutor ran the show, Signorile thought that our individual inability
to practice safer sex was a much greater danger than anything the right
could throw at us, and our community's inability to control this situation
necessitated asking for outside "assistance,"
It was such a despairing message, gloomy and depressing. He
seemed fatigued. It was as if he had given up on the gay community,
I realized that the weariness he was expressing might be the same
weariness that was resulting in what has been called the second wave
of new infections among gay men. But I also could see Signorile's
motivation: closing clubs was something that could be done, and done
quickly. It satisfied the goal-oriented imperative of activists. One of ACT
UP's slogans was "Action = Life," and I could see the appeal of doing
something definitively and quickly. Most of those calling for the closing
of clubs admitted that such action would have only a small impact on
new infections—that it was far from a broad solution. Yet they still
advocated the idea because they argued that everything that could be
done to stop even one new infection must be done. In the midst of the
ongoing community discussion over HIV prevention, these community
members seemed proud that they had found some steps that could be
taken immediately.
Unfortunately, the negative consequences of these plans far out-
weigh any short-term reductions they might bring about in new
infections. The current focus on shutting clubs distracts us from other
more positive actions that could have been taken instead, like media
campaigns, condom distribution campaigns, workshops, and the crea-

tion of groups where gay men can get support for staying safe. During
the summer of 1995, the City Health Department sent inspectors to visit
the Capri Theater, a public sex venue, over 100 times. Each visit lasted
about two hours. There were similar inspections of perhaps six other
clubs during the same time period. In total, the City paid inspectors to
be in clubs for over 1,400 hours during a three-to-four month time
period. (LGNY, a local gay paper, estimated that $400,000 had been
spent in the effort.) None of those inspectors did any safer sex
interventions; none provided any educational materials. They simply
watched and recorded. Meanwhile, during the entire year of 1995, the
City spent nowhere near 1,400 hours providing educational forums for
the gay community—enough hours to provide full-day educational
seminars to over 4,000 gay men.
Honesty and the Second Wave

Over the last year or so, prevention efforts have focused on a second
wave of HIV infections among gay men. The second wave refers to gay
men who for many years followed safer sex guidelines, but who found
it increasingly difficult to sustain that level of vigilance. These men
avoided being infected in the mid-'80s because they were successfully
reached by initial prevention efforts. An emphasis on the second wave
ignores the fact that many gay men (particularly young gay men and
men of color) were never reached by earlier HIV prevention efforts;
among those groups there is no second wave, just one long, continuing
first wave. Still, the second wave is a real phenomenon that highlights
some of the challenges we do have to face in HIV prevention efforts.
Dozens of explanations have been offered for why the "second wave"
exists: fatigue, a feeling of hopelessness, and a sense that seroconversion
is inevitable, to name just a few. All the explanations convey the sense
that the gay community is not prepared to face the fact that AIDS is not
going to go away. Safer sex was fine when viewed as a short-term measure,
but as a life-long practice, the concept is quite gloomy.
If we are, in effect, suffering some sort of communal depression
over the realization that our sex lives may be permanently crippled,
then we need to face this fact and talk about it. There's little point to
pretending we're all happy practicing safer sex if we're actually
miserable. And to grin and bear it doesn't really achieve much. But
Stephen Gendin 111
talking about our unhappiness with safer sex isn't easy. We've been
programmed for over a decade with all kinds of safer sex messages:
that safer sex is hot, that safer sex is the rational thing to do, that safer
sex is easy. For someone to proclaim that he finds safer sex neither hot,
nor rational, nor easy would, for many years, have gotten him labeled
a heretic. Plus, it's hard to talk about anything that you feel guilty about.
And even harder if you're worried about being labeled a homicidal
maniac (if you're positive) or a suicidal maniac (if you're negative).
With so many gay men feeling like the juice is being squeezed out of
their sex lives, and feeling depressed and angry and despondent over that
faa, government intrusions become particularly troublesome. The recent
closings of adult sex establishments have made New York City feel like a
police state. The City's regulations limit gay men's sexual options at a time
when we are already watching them slip away. We feel the sting of being
told we're so irresponsible that we need the government to come in to
monitor and control our actions. We worry about how far these enforce-
ments will go, particularly as we watch our entire nation turn conservative
and hateful toward those who aren't part of the establishment.
One letter that APAL received during this time really sums it up. It
reads, in part: "They, the religious right, are out to get us, to destroy
us, and APAL's attempt to conciliate them will only exacerbate their
scorn and Hitlerian resolve. They are using the AIDS scare to implement
their vicious agenda. An era of total darkness has descended upon the
gay community in New York City.... Let us be grateful that they are not
burning us at the stake as was their practice in medieval days."^
This is not the kind of environment that encourages honesty.
Moreover, the government's reactionary stance encourages similarly
reactionary stances in the media and general public. During the spring
of 1995, New York's gay community was subjected to months of news
stories labeling us irresponsible and uncontrollable monsters. Televi-
sion journalism produced exposes of our "lurid" and "depraved"
behavior. Reporters were showing up at forums where people were
supposed to feel comfortable opening up about their desire for unsafe
sex. Once there, participants had to worry that their confessions might
become front-page news. In general, it was hard to feel that there were
any safe spaces to talk. Among the politicized gay men I knew, it was
hard not to believe that anything a gay man said about unsafe sex
wouldn't be twisted and distorted. They doubted that there would be

any attempt to listen to the underlying desires and motivations. The
City's emphasis on enforcement over prevention set a tone decidedly
lacking in concern for gay men's real feelings.
When I was interviewed for New York's Channel 2 evening news, I
realized that honest discussion among gay men was impossible because
of the media's insistence upon portraying gay sexuality as monstrous
and masochistic, APAL had heard that some HIV+ community members
were going to confess on air to being murderers, to "knowingly" having
unsafe sex with people who then seroconverted. Wanting to present a
different point of view, I was interviewed for over half an hour, during
which time I focused primarily on the emotional issues that lead to unsafe
sex, I tried to present proactive solutions to dealing with these issues in
a manner that was less punitive than the City's actions. Unfortunately,
during some point in the conversation I mentioned that I didn't use
condoms for oral sex. When the program aired, I was introduced as
someone who admitted to having unsafe sex frequently and my
discussion around why unsafe sex happens Was edited to make it seem
like I was explaining why I had so much unsafe sex. Another HIV+
fellow on the show detailed his guilt over having infected people in the
past, I thought I could taist the media to provide an open and honest
debate, but my own words were twisted and used against me.
The Problem with Monitering

APAL has spent a lot of time fighting the City, For over a year, we tried
to get the City to understand why its emphasis on monitoring sex clubs
was ill-conceived. The Health Department had gotten the word out that
sex clubs themselves had to be vigorous in their own monitoring,
making sure that no oral or anal sex was occurring, with or without a
condom. Each time inspectors reported violations, the City would take
a club to court, where the inspectors would go into great detail about
how many monitors were there and whether or not they were stopping
all prohibited sex. Consequently, many sex club owners overreacted
and became extremely aggressive in their monitoring, and some clubs
even installed infrared cameras. These owners were scared; they felt
that the only way to satisfy the City was to comply, APAL tried to explain
to the City that its plan was actually counterproductive. The monitors
working at sex clubs weren't prevention specialists. They had no
Stephen Gendin 113
experience doing safer sex interventions. They were basically low-paid

bouncers, and their aggressive method of monitoring simply created
hostility between the clubs and their patrons. For example, at one
after-hours sex club, the primary monitor walks around with a high-
powered flashlight. Whenever he spots a blowjob taking place, he aims
the light directly into the eyes of the guy giving the blowjob and
screams, "No lips below the hips, ladies." His attitude, while somewhat
playful, is also tinged with hostility. He succeeds in getting the blowjob
stopped for a few minutes, but once he leaves the sex immediately
starts again. And it usually starts again with even more gusto, as lust
combines with a contempt for authority.
APAL has tried to explain to the City that monitoring takes respon-
sibility away from the individual and thrusts it on some outside source.
It encourages antagonism between those monitoring and those being
monitored, and it' actually discourages patrons from being concerned
about their own actions. A game develops where patrons do their best
not to be caught, and the focus shifts away from what is safe or unsafe,
to what one can get away with.
APAL has proposed an alternative model of comrnunity self-concern.
Gay men are taught how to intervene respectfully in sexual acts that
concern them as unsafe. When APAL hosted our own sex party, we
chose not to have any monitors, but to instead encourage community
self-concern. Before the party began, APAL members brainstormed
about how they might approach two people they saw fucking without
a condom. Some said they would simply give the top a condom, while
others expressed an interest in talking to the duo. As people entered
our space and paid an entry fee, we gave them a quote from Michael
Callen: "The next time you see unprotected anal sex in a sex club,
remember: Tapping a top on the shoulder and offering him a condom
and some lube is a very powerful way to express your affection for a
brother." Throughout the club were similar messages letting people
know it was all right—encouraged, in fact—for them to talk to people
they saw having unsafe sex.
APAL's efforts succeeded: there was very little unsafe sex, but where
there was some, people did seem to step forward. And the environment
of the club was more friendly than usual. Tliere was a sense of community
spirit, not the aloof meat market atmosphere that can exist in such spaces.
Here, the emphasis was on giving the gay men the skills they need to
look out for each other, Tliis is not an easy task, but ultimately it is the
only metliod that really can be successful. Since most sex doesn't
happen where official monitors can be watching, gay men must learn
how to protect themselves and others. No one else can do it for us.
Looking Ahead
There is no indication that the City is going to come to its senses anytime
soon. It's a scary yet exciting time to be involved in prevention activism.
The task is so large it's daunting, but the opportunities for creativity
and innovation are huge and promising. The community is beginning
to mobilize and to take action. There are more support groups for
HIV-negative men then ever before. There are more community
organizations going into sex clubs and performing interventions than
ever before, APAL has been producing a series of innovative safer-sex
posters (adapted from San Francisco AIDS Foundation and AIDS Action
Committee of Massachusetts) and is going out on the streets to
wheatpaste them. We've also produced a series of postcards that get
gay men to actively consider their sex lives and think about what
motivates the kinds of sex they have, CAPA is beginning to produce
public service announcements to air on gay cable shows. Gay Men's
Health Crisis (GMHC) has begun a program to evaluate sex clubs using
members of the community.
All of these activities strive to give people resources for making their
own decisions and leading their own lives, APAL's mission is to motivate
and support other gay men, not control them or dictate to them. We
cannot look for quick fixes, nor wait for a cure or vaccine. Prevention
activism is for the rest of our lives. We must find a way to live with
pride and respect for an indefinite future,
NOTES
1. "At Fifth Avenue Parade, Thousands Celebrate Gay Pride," New York 77mes, June
26, 1995, The float won the "Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous" Award from
Heritage of Pride, the official parade organizers,
2. Letter addressed to APAL, December 1995.
Walt Odets
WHY WE STOPPED
DOING PRIMARY
PREVENTION FOR
GAY MEN IN 1985
Over the past few years many have
bemoaned the failure of AIDS primary prevention for gay men.
Incidence of new infections is increasing in all segments of the gay
communities, and especially among the young and those of color. It
now seems apparent that communities of young, gay men will experi-
ence levels of infection comparable to those already experienced by
older men.' While AIDS education has certainly not failed completely,
such figures leave no doubt that there have been failures of some sort.
Unfortunately, many of our educators are now compounding the failures
by avoiding any fundamental reexamination of the problems and our
approaches to them. Many educators would retrench old approaches
and deliver them even more stridently; and authentic concern, anxiety,
shame, and homophobia have caused some minorities within gay
communities to propose desperate regulatory solutions to the epidemic,
including the regulation—or prohibition—of public gay sex venues.
While such unproductive responses certainly reflect the feelings of
some, an historical and psychological examination of AIDS education
in gay communities suggests that our failures are very often not failures
of primary prevention, but failures to accurately conceptualize the
nature of primary prevention and deliver it to gay men at all. We have
certainly directed a great deal of "education" to gay men during this
time—if not always equitably distributed among the diverse groups
within gay communities—but it has only rarely qualified as authentic
primary prevention in the 11 years since 1985. The differences between
the education we have done and true primary prevention are substan-
115
tive, not semantic or merely theoretical. Much of our work to date has
not only failed to provide gay men with a foundation for long-term
prevention, it has been responsible for much psychological damage,
and has often inadvertently supported the transmission of HIV,^
In the fields of medicine and public health, the terms primary
prevention, secondaryprevention, and tertiaryprevention have distinct,
long-standing meanings. In the instance of HIV and gay communities,
traditional use of the terms would define primary prevention as the
effort to prevent currently uninfected men from contracting HIV;
secondary prevention as the effort to prevent men infected with HIV
from progressing to clinical disease; and tertiary prevention as the
effort to minimize the impact of clinical HIV disease, extending the
quality—and perhaps the quantity—of life. These clear concepts have
traditionally drawn useful distinctions. The uninfected, the infected but
asymptomatic, and the clinically ill have been perceived as having
different medical needs, psychosocial issues, and prognoses, and thus
as requiring different prevention objectives. For example, uninfected
gay men need education in the behavioral change necessary to avoid
HFV infection, but not in "early intervention" treatment, and education
for uninfected gay men might be delivered in several popular gay
venues, but not through HIV treatment clinics. Furthermore, uninfected
men are much more likely to survive the epidemic than infected men,
and this fact alone contributes to substantial differences in the psycho-
social issues that must be addressed. Such distinctions allow each form of
"prevention" to accomplish its distinct purpose: to prevent infection, to
prevent clinical disease, or to prevent loss of quality of life, or life itself.
In discussing any form of prevention, the idea of "outcome popu-
lation" must be clearly distinguished from "target population," Primary
prevention for the gay communities has, by both definition and reason,
the purpose of keeping uninfected men uninfected, Uninfected men
are the only outcome population for primary prevention. Which target
populations primary prevention might address in pursuit of this
purpose—for example, HIV-infected men, who necessarily participate
in the infection of uninfected men, although they are not part of the
outcome population—is an entirely independent issue. Decisions about
including or not including target populations are made by evaluating
the potential of their inclusion for changing the outcome for the
Walt Odets 117
outcome population.'
Since the beginning of the epidemic we have done "AIDS education
for gay men," a generic description that has never contributed to clarity
about what kind of education was being done. In fact, psychological,
medical, social, and political issues have always dictated what kind of
prevention could be done, and we have intuitively worked within those
restrictions from the beginning. In the years prior to 1985 there were
only two possible kinds of prevention, primary and tertiary. Until 1984
we did not have a presumption about the organism responsible for the
clinical syndrome that came to be called AIDS, and any question of
who had "it" and who did not was moot. Thus—initially out of intuition
and later from epidemiological reconstaictions—^we educated gay men
on the presumption of communicability, and all gay men were either
presumed to be carriers, or known to be because they were clinically
ill. The first group—all gay men who were not clinically ill—^were the
only definable outcome population for primary prevention, although
many unknowingly carried HIV. Those who were clinically ill consti-
tuted the outcome population for tertiary prevention. This was a
prevention approach that accurately accounted for the facts as we knew
or conjectured them. Nonsymptomatic gay men, frightened by what
they saw befalling others in the community, were a profoundly
motivated population for primary prevention. Although there is little
evidence that education itself provided the motivations for behavioral
change, it certainly provided crucial information about probable modes
of transmission and thus played an important role in helping gay men
change their sexual behaviors on a scale unprecedented in public health.
In April 1985 the ELISA blood test became available and was soon
in clinical use for the detection of HIV antibodies. But the ELISA was
to become much more than a way to screen the blood supply and
determine the "antibody status" of an individual. Today the fact of HIV
antibody status stands as a laboratory marker with unprecedented
psychological, interpersonal, and social significance. The ELISA
provided the basis for—depending on the point of view—distinctions
or divisions within the gay community; and it should have changed the
fundamental nature of AIDS prevention for gay men. With knowable—if
not always known—uninfected and infected populations, the ELISA
provided the means for distinguishing the outcome populations of
distinct primary and secondary prevention efforts that could each

address the issues and needs of its outcome population. Instead, what
had once been tme primary prevention was slowly transformed into
an undifferentiated education that would increasingly separate itself
from anything resembling primary prevention.
What Is "Undifferentiated" Education?

The changes brought about in primary AIDS prevention following the
release of the ELISA are an anomaly in the entire history of public health.
Many within gay communities had been unsupportive of large-scale
use of the ELISA to determine antibody status because of the potential
for social and political abuse. In 1987, however, Project Inform^ and
the San Francisco AIDS Foundation became the first important agencies
within gay communities to endorse and encourage HIV testing. Their
stated reasons varied, but prominently included the idea of early
intervention medical treatment for those who tested positive. Addition-
ally, testing came to be promoted more and more as a prevention tool,
although the exact mechanism was not often stated explicitly. It was
sometimes implied that men who knew themselves to be positive would
behave more "responsibly," an idea that would quickly establish a role
for HIV-positive men as a target population for primary prevention. The
intended impact of HIV-testing on the behavior of men who tested
negative was even less clearly stated, although they would presumably
have new or additional incentive to protect themselves. Today we have
numerous studies suggesting that little change in sexual behavior occurs
as a result of HIV testing in either group.^
In response to the ELISA, AIDS secondary prevention almost
immediately began to define itself and change appropriately. A distinct
population for secondary prevention was being clearly defined as more
and more men tested HIV-positive, and advances in medicine increasingly
offered treatment for infected, asymptomatic men. Secondary prevention
began, and has continued, to vigorously address the needs of this
population with information on prophylaxis, relevant psychosocial
issues, and available social services.
In peculiar contrast, the newly defined outcome population for
primary prevention seemed to remain almost unrecognized and un-
acknowledged. Primary prevention that had—before the ELISA—been
true, focused primary prevention increasingly became undifferentiated
WoltOdets 119
and scatter-gun because it was failing to recognize what gay men

themselves were increasingly perceiving, if often unclearly at first. As
more gay men found out their antibody status, many realized that there
were important differences between infected and uninfected men.
Many social and psychological issues were significantly different; and
certainly the consequences of unprotected sex were very different for
the two groups. As a result, infected and uninfected men were very
differently motivated to practice or not practice "safer sex," Education
was not only failing to acknowledge these differences, it seemed to
often explicitly or implicitly deny them. Little or no education was being
specifically targeted at even the most distinctive issues and needs of
uninfected men. In apparent ignorance of the burgeoning social,
psychological, and interpersonal realities wrought by the ELISA, preven-
tion was busy at work, as in pre-ELISA days, establishing "community
norms" of behavior for "the gay community," This was the birth of
"undifferentiated" prevention.
To this day our AIDS education remains undifferentiated because it
fails to recognize that there are differences in the needs, issues, and
appropriate behavioral norms for infected and uninfected men. One
indicator of these differences is that gay men now routinely advertise
in "personals" for men of like-antibody status. Many uninfected men
do not want to risk their own infection or the potential trauma and loss
of a relationship with an infected man; and many infected men do not
want to risk infecting a negative man or deal with a relationship with
someone who cannot understand their values or form of life. This
divergence between infected and uninfected men has been supported
by many biomedical developments since 1985, These included the
discovery that fully half of urban gay communities were infected, which
provided both infected and uninfected men with substantial, distinct
psychosocial identities. We also discovered that most infected men
would progress to clinical disease within ten years—in 1985 we still
asserted that "perhaps 20 percent" would actually become ill—and we
were finding that antivirals were less than we had hoped for. The ideas
of "living with AIDS" or "thriving with AIDS" would become important
and useful for infected men in the years following 1985, But they have
increased the distance berween infected and uninfected men because,
for many of the latter, they increasingly had the ring of denial.
The result of these divergences between infected and uninfected

men has had one central consequence for primary prevention: unable
to acknowledge the differences because of the undifferentiated nature
of education, prevention included HIV-negative men only by implica-
tion. They were never singled out as the only outcome population for
primary prevention. In a recent examination of nearly 400 pieces of
AIDS prevention literature dating back to 1986, I found only two uses
of the terms HIV-negative or uninfected. The term "HIV-positive,"
however, appeared several hundred times. The following primary
prevention piece, Asians and AIDS: What's the Connection?, is typical
of our work since 1985.
We must face the fact that Asians are at risk, and we must do something
about it We can find out the facts—how AIDS is transmitted and
how it is not. We then have a choice—do nothing about it or use this
information by translating it into safer sex behavior. The AIDS virus is
often transmitted through having unsafe sex or shai'ing needles with
an infected person Playing safer means knowing how to protect
ourselves and our panners AIDS is not only a threat to you and your
partners, but also to your friends.^
The ambiguity about the outcome population in this very typical
undifferentiated educational piece is first suggested by use of the term
"at risk." At risk is probably intended to imply a primary prevention
intent here, particularly because "doing something about [AIDS and
Asians]" is first defined as finding out "how AIDS is transmitted." But
at risk is terminology commonly used for secondary prevention, as in
the idea that an infected man is at risk for opportunistic infections. The
confusion is heightened by the idea of "transmitting AIDS" (as opposed
to HIV), because only previously infected people are at risk for AIDS.
A clear and unambiguous primary prevention intent would have been
conveyed simply by saying, "at risk for HIV infection." The confusion
continues, for the reader is warned that HIV is transmitted, rather than
contracted, "through having unsafe sex or sharing needles with an
infected person." Finally, the (presumably uninfected) reader, having
been told that HIV is transmitted—^meaning contracted—by having sex
or sharing needles with an "infected person" learns that be should
"protect [his] partner" and that AIDS is a threat to "yowrpartners... [and]
your friends." Nowhere in the material is the term "uninfected" or
WgltOdett 121
"HIV-negative" used, and nowbere is it simply stated that the purpose of

tbe brochure is to help uninfected men remain uninfected. In fact, the
brochure displays a statement under the copyright notice reading, "The
target audience of this brochure is the Gay/Bisexual community." Such
confusions are virtually universal in our primary prevention today.
How Undiffferentiated Education Began

and Why Wo Sustain it
In retrospect, no single fact of the epidemic is so clearly responsible
for our undifferentiated approach to primary prevention as the extra-
ordinary prevalence of HIV in gay communities. The big and tragic
surprise of the ELISA was that fully half ihe gay communities of San
Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles seemed to be infected with HIV.
This single fact—in combination with the psychological predisposi-
tions of loathed, sexually characterized, minority communities—set in
motion what was to become a juggernaut of community identification
with AIDS that has proved far stronger than an identification with
"normal" lives unplagued by HIV and early death. The psychosocial
issues implicit in such figures were to prove new and especially
problematic, and they would interact destmctively with prevention
efforts in ways that have been particularly difficult to analyze and
clarify.' Public health would also find itself completely inexperienced
in promoting prevention in communities with 50 percent prevalences
of infection.
The gay communities were still profoundly disenfranchised in the
late seventies and early eighties, even as they struggled with partial
success for new, coherent social and political identities. They were to
prove horribly vulnerable psychological targets for the epidemic. The terms
"gay cancer" and Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), the earliest
descriptors for what was to become AIDS, were prescient indicators of
how profoundly the gay identity would become entangled in the
epidemic, both in the public mind and in the minds of gay men
themselves. In 1982 and 1983, the epidemic—although apparently not yet
of proportions warranting such a description—^was widely experienced
by gay men, not only as a threat to new-found sexual freedoms, but to
the broad social and political gains of the community as a whole. Thus,
the "problem" was an important issue for the whole gay community.
The relatively small number of us who were actually infected needed

to be protected from any mainstream efforts to restrengthen dis-
enfranchisement of gay men either because they were infected or
because—^the real issue at hand—they were simply gay, and GRID
provided new rationalizations for why gay men should be disenfran-
chised. As a struggling political community we were determined not to
permit any of our constituents to suffer this fate, and we certainly would
not allow any disenfranchisement of infected men within our own
community. Men were infected because they had exercised the sexual
freedoms we held as important expressions of civil and human rights,
the same rights all of us valued, exercised—or felt we ought to have
exercised—ând wished to continue exercising. Thus, from the beginning
there were important, compelling reasons for the gay communities to form
support around and identify with those who were, or might be, infected.
The reality in 1983 and 1984 was tliat we did not know who was
infected. The expectation, however, was that the prevalence of HIV
infection among gay men was relatively modest, at least in comparison
to what the ELISA would soon suggest. One common and astonishingly
painful forecast in 1984 was that perhaps as many as ten percent of gay
men carried HIV, Until we knew more precisely who did and who did
not, primary prevention would quite correctly promote the idea that all
gay men were to be temporarily presumed infected in order to eradicate
HIV. As 1985 and 1986 quickly revealed, the gay community needed
to protect the infected from any source of disenfranchisement not only
because it was the right thing to do for the presumed minority within
our ranks, but because a near majority of the total community was
actually infected. This revelation clinched the profound social, psych-
ological, and political identification of the gay communities with AIDS,
The identities of large, urban gay communities quietly but surely shifted
from that of largely "normal" communities, humanely concerned with
the future of an infected minority, to that of infected communities as a
whole. Although responsive to important new realities for gay men, this
shift overlooked an immensely significant fact. Even in our worst-struck
communities, half the population actually remained wwinfected.
These are the beginnings of what, in hindsight, can only be
described as the disenfranchisement of uninfected men within larger
urban gay communities. They are also the beginnings of our failure to
Walt Odets 123
sustain anything resembling a taie primary prevention effort. Community-

based organizations, initially formed to spread the word about GRID
and its speculated means of transmission, had pioneered AIDS primary
prevention for gay men. As increasing numbers of men proved to be
HIV-positive or became ill, these same organizations quite naturally
began a shift to the provision of services for these populations.
Compelled to serve, in part, out of personal experience, many of the
men in these agencies were themselves HIV-infected. Tlie acute needs of
those with HIV or AIDS quickly began to consume the total resources of
not only individual agencies, but of gay communities in their entireties.
Unprepared for the onslaught of suffering and illness, or the psych-
ological, social, and economic pressures it generated, we were all
necessarily "living with HIV" in some important senses. Meanwhile, we
were also supposed to be providing primary prevention for gay men—
prevention that would have to adapt to the radically changing human and
social realities created by the ELISA. It is little wonder that primary and
secondary prevention became entangled and blurred each other's pur-
poses, and that taie post-ELISA primary prevention would be stillborn.
By 1986, living with the emotional, social, and increasingly political
horror of what we had reluctantly come to realize was a plague, the
assertion of any needs by uninfected men were widely experienced by
almost everyone as an affront to the more pressing, acute needs of those
with HIV. The widely touted "public health victory" in the gay
communities—medically fortuitous, but also a fear-driven and humanly
destructive abstention from sexual expression—^was at its peak. Uninfected
men knewwhat needed to be known to remain uninfected. Any explicit
assertions of the needs of uninfected men—including the assertion, in
occasional whispers, that it was not always easy to remain uninfected
and men needed to talk about that—^were experienced as an affront to
men with HIV or AIDS.
Eurthermore, if we explicitly asserted that it was better to remain
uninfected, were we not implying that there was something "wrong" with
being infected, aggravating already powerful, if unutterable, feelings that
infected men were somehow culpable for their infection? If a large
segment of the community was planning to survive the epidemic, were
we not abandoning those who could not survive? Could the fortunate
members of the community explicitly hope for something that was
impossible for the unfortunate? If we insisted upon the central impor-

tance of primary prevention were we not implying that the futures of
men already infected were hopeless? Could we really assert that it was
better to be living without MDS than with ill And, after all, if men were
really living with AIDS, doing well with AIDS, thriving with AIDS, or
were long-term survivors, what was so important about not having HIV?
In this psychological and social climate, any explicit statement of
the central primary prevention objective—that it is important to remain
uninfected and possible to do so—^was, and still is, widely experienced
as disenfranchising of HIV-positive men. It calls into question many of
the tenets that make their lives productive, reasonably happy, and
possible at all. If uninfected men were to stay uninfected, we needed
them to think the worst possible things about infection, while infected
men needed to envision just the opposite. Woody Castrodale, a longtime
AIDS worker in San Francisco, summed up the dilemma succinctly:
For me, seroconverting would be a death sentence. But many of my
positive friends talk about it as if it were simply a challenge, as if they
had something like a new career opportunity. It seems to me that such
feelings are at the root of a very deep cognitive split in the gay
community,^
The way out of this humanly intolerable—and ever more political—
conundrum was to prove critical to the futures of the gay communities.
The almost completely unconscious solution was to ignore the increas-
ingly important indiyidual and social realities of the ELISA, This meant
continuing to promote community unity in the context of primary
prevention, which was to be done more or less as it was done before
we had HIV antibody information. This confused, if humanely moti-
vated, prevention work—no longer qualifying or functioning as true
primary prevention—has, to this day, been virtually unable to explicitly
mention its outcome population or objectives: uninfected men and the
possibility that they might retnain uninfected. The mention of HIV-
negative men came to be experienced as simply divisive of the gay
community. As late as 1993, one of San Francisco's important gay papers
characterized support groups for HIV-negative men with distress about
die epidemic as an attempt at "viral apartheid," and thereafter refused to
carry public service announcements for services identified as explicitly for
HrV-negative men. In 1994, San Francisco's arguably most influential
WaltOd»ts 125
educator, the long-standing former Director of Education at the AIDS

Foundation, wrote in the same paper that local psychotherapists who
spoke publicly about the problems of uninfected men were "nail-biting
Chicken Littles... and victim wanna-bes... [who lack] a more balanced
and reality-based notion of the difficulties of coping with AIDS... HTV-
negative gay men share most of [their issues] with HIV-positive gay men."'
In this social and psychological climate, today's prevention is
essentially pre-ELISA education "for gay men," but with some important
changes. The warnings or "scare tactics" of earlier education—tactics
that threatened men with the dire and grotesque consequences of
infection—had to be eliminated, because such descriptions conflicted
with what we were telling infected men to feel about being infected.
In fact, education had to stop explicitly telling men to stay uninfected.
Commonly, our "primary prevention" today is ambiguous enough that
neither the purpose of the message, nor the intended outcome population,
can be determined without significant interpolation and interpretation.
How Undifforontiatod Education Fails

Undifferentiated AIDS education, as it is now almost universally practiced,
appears to fail in three primary areas. It creates confused identifications
between uninfected and infected men, and thus exacerbates largely
unconscious feelings that contracting HIV is inevitable or desirable; it
cannot identify and specifically address the distinct psychosocial issues
of uninfected men; and, finally, undifferentiated education cannot
explicitly support distinct benefits for remaining uninfected.
Identity Issues
My clinical experience with gay men has clarified that undifferentiated
education often exacerbates psychological conflicts that work against
the primary prevention purpose of keeping uninfected men uninfected.
If uninfected men who desperately need community are disenfran-
chised because they are uninfected, infection offers the possibility of
enfranchisement. In failing to distinguish the very different results of
unprotected sex for uninfected and infected men, undifferentiated
education supports unconscious feelings that differences of antibody
status do not exist. In the Asians and AIDS ptimary prevention piece,
the same man—^the HIV-negative reader, who should be presumed the
reader of a primary prevention message—is first warned that he is at
risk by "having unsafe sex... with an infected person," but told a

paragraph later that he himself is a danger to others. A man of known
antibody status cannot simultaneously be at risk and a risk, and the
assertion is fraught with unconscious and destructive confusions.
In generating such confusion, undifferentiated education assists,
rather than inhibits, entanglement of the identities of uninfected men
with men who have HIV. This individual process is assisted by the
broader, historical community identifications I have already discussed,
as well as the general public's perception—and many gay men's
internalization of that perception—^that AIDS is a gay disease, and gay
men get AIDS.^" "When I told my mother I was moving to California,"
a 24-year-old psychotherapy patient told me,
she said, "If you do that you're going to get AIDS." What she really
meant was, "You're going out there so you can be gay." For her, being
gay means having AtDS. And now that I've been here for two years,
I'm beginning to think she's right. I mean, if you aren't at least positive,
you're son of a nobody in San Francisco. And anyway, if I keep having
sex with guys I probably am going to get it sooner or later, and I guess
the question isn't i/but when. I'd be afraid to tell her because you know
what she's going to say: "I told you so."
"Not if, but when" is a feeling that innumerable HIV-negative
psychotherapy patients have expressed to me. This experience of
inevitability is particularly problematic for older men who have lost
many friends to AIDS, and young gay men who have never known a
gay identity or gay community that was not characterized by, and
necessarily preoccupied with, the epidemic. It is often precisely the fact
that young men were born into the epidemic that creates a plausible
and seamless integration of AIDS and HIV into their lives, and makes
them vulnerable to infection. Unconscious feelings of homophobic
self-hatred and expectations of retribution are too easily transformed
into feelings of inevitably contracting HIV because of who one is."
The Distiiul Psythosodal Issues of Uninfetted Men
In the shadow of the AIDS epidemic itself, a complex, destructive
psychological epidemic has developed that is evident in the lives of
most gay men.'^ The radical form of life—living in an apparently
interminable plague—that gay men now routinely experience has
predictably transformed who gay men are, and therefore how they must
WaltOdets 127
be effectively addressed in prevention.

Unrelenting loss, depression, anxiety, hypochondriasis, sexual and
social dysfunction, and survivor guilt have become destructive
components of many gay men's experience. These issues have also
entangled themselves in longer-standing issues of gay men. Feelings
about "retribution" or "sickness" because one is homosexual become
entangled in feelings about being sick with AIDS; feelings about an
invalidated and hated form of life because one is a homosexual become
feelings about living in a semi-private plague; and feelings of guilt about
being gay become feelings of guilt about having AIDS, not having AIDS,
or not doing enough for those who do have it.
While some of these problems are experienced by infected and
uninfected men alike, many are not. Many uninfected men have a great
deal of psychological conflict arising from not having HIV, and from
anticipation of surviving the epidemic. In many ways they hold a
special, not always advantageous, position in larger gay communities.
Because undifferentiated prevention cannot acknowledge discrete
identities, issues, and needs of infected and uninfected men, it cannot
acknowledge that the owrcowe of successful primary prevention would
be quite different for the two groups. One of the most peculiar
characteristics of undifferentiated prevention is an almost exclusive
focus on theprocess of prevention, with rarely a mention ofthe benefits
or results that might be obtained. The focus on process rather than
results is understandable. If we tell men simply to put on condoms, we
can talk to infected and uninfected men simultaneously. But if we wish
to talk about the complex psychosocial reasons men are not putting on
condoms, the discussion will have to be very different for infected and
uninfected men. Regarding protected sex, motivation for each of the
two groups is very different.
Likewise, talking about results would require distinguishing between
infected and uninfected men and specifically addressing the issues of
uninfected men: If you are uninfected, you can stay that way. We cannot
implore "gay men" to remain uninfected, for many are already infected.
Thus undifferentiated education typically resorts to ill-defined objeaives—
they hardly qualify as benefits—like "we can do something about AIDS,
instead of letting AIDS do something to us,"" Other objectives typically
offered can be seen in the Asians and AIDS campaign previously cited:
"enjoying sex without fearing AIDS," and "making sex special by

specializing in safer sex."''' Not a single other benefit is offered in Asians
and AIDS. The benefits of not having HIV are not obvious to men who
experience disenfranchisement, derision, dread, and guilt for their good
fortune. Why can we not simply suggest that uninfeaed men can "Not
have AIDS," or "Enjoy sex without contracting HIV"?
Educators are more likely to include something resembling benefits
to the extent that they can be interpreted ambiguously. This is done
with offers that gay men can "Stay Healthy," "Eight for Life," or "Enjoy
Hot Sex." Such "benefits"—although they might be about staying
uninfected—equivocate completely on whether they are addressed to
infected or uninfected men. None require that the outcome population
be named. Any of these phrases might—were they in appropriate,
focused context—be true primary or secondary prevention. But if
primary prevention were the intent, why not say unequivocally, "Stay
Uninfected and Stay Alive" instead of "Stay Healthy" or "Eight for Life,"
phrases which are so often the implorations given to infected men.
Benefits limited to those which might be shared by infected and
uninfected men leave out too many important and motivating benefits
for uninfected men.
The confusions surrounding the benefits offered by education are
illustrated by one of the most famous campaigns of the epidemic, the
San Erancisco AIDS Eoundation's "Be Here for the Cure." According to
one Eoundation educator, "The beauty of this campaign is that it works
equally well for both positive and negative men."'' Wayne Blankenship,
another Eoundation educator, provided me with press releases for the
campaign substantiating that it was intended as secondary prevention.
But in the same communication to me, Mr. Blankenship also expressed
his concern that "there is not likely to be a cure for HIV, in the traditional
sense of the word."'^ This "nontraditional" use of cure created much
confusion. Eeeling or intuiting that the term was being used in some
special sense, many uninfected men interpreted the campaign phrase
as a metaphor for the end of the epidemic, and thus, as a primary
prevention effort. At the 1993 National AIDS Update, a well-known
San Erancisco educator defended the campaign's primary prevention
purposes by telling the audience, "I have personally found 'Be Here
for the Cure' very heartening."'^ At the same time, many infected men
Walt Odets 129
resented the promise of benefits that seemed unlikely or impossible.

The unclarity of the stated benefit in this campaign thus confused both
infected and uninfected men, and was widely interpreted as dishonest
or peripheral. "Why should I put my life on hold waiting for a cure?"
an HIV-negative patient asked me.
Uninfected men commonly experience undifferentiated or confusing
prevention that offers no benefits as not speaking to their issues.
Ambiguous messages—to the extent they are interpretable at all—are
too often experienced as being for infected men. As the disenfranchised
members of urban gay populations, uninfected men do not expect to
be the object of community concern.
Soiial Marketing and Community Norms
Social learning theory proposes associating—coat-tailing—desired
new behaviors to preexisting positive identifications between the
individual and his community (or the individual and identified commu-
nity leaders). New behaviors are adopted because of the meaning and
authority that preexisting, valued identifications hold for the individual.
If a man feels unrecognized by his community, those identifications do
not exist. The disenfranchised man thus has little motivation to adopt new
socially normative behaviors—particularly those that occur in private,
address sexuality, or seem to risk contributing to further interpersonal
isolation. The very ambiguity that characterizes undifferentiated preven-
tion has made uninfected men an unresponsive target for the social
marketing approaches of that very same prevention. Prevention cannot
hope to simultaneously destroy social identifications and exploit them
for behavioral change. In general, the use of social learning theory in
communities of perhaps former—but ever ready—"outlaws" is a delicate
proposition. Although a gay community may provide important social
identifications, membership rarely remakes a character formed by years
of conflict with mainstream society.
Finally, among undifferentiated education's implications for social
learning-based prevention is a serious, intrinsic limitation. By virtue of
its very nature—"universality"—undifferentiated education can market
only one set of social norms. Before the ELISA this made sense because
there was only a single community of men of unknown antibody status.
But knowledge of antibody status has become increasingly known to
individual gay men, and in 1994 an estimated majority—about 60
percent—have been tested and know, or presume to know, their

antibody status.'* Knowledge of antibody status, whether accurate or
not, is a huge contributor to a gay man's psychosocial identity and his
sense of values, purposes, and needs in life, including relationship needs.
In this perception, gay men are far ahead of undifferentiated prevention,
for many realize that a single set of "peer" norms for "gay men" makes no
more sense with regard to sexual behaviors and relationships than it would
for medical, educational, orfinancialplanning.
Infected men, uninfected men, men of unknown or unsure antibody
status, and men in serodiscordant relationships all have very different
needs, and must be targeted with appropriate primary or secondary
prevention. Prevention must clarify and support, rather than smear or
deny, these differences. Men within seroconcordant relationships—
probably of both types—have sexual possibilities that men in sero-
discordant relationships do not have. The unavailability of these
possibilities to some gay men is no reason to deny them to all gay men.
The paucity of benefits that can be offered by undifferentiated
prevention—^which treats all gay men as //"their antibody status were
unknown or different from that of their partners—is clearly revealed in
one fact. Men who do not know their antibody status stand to lose the
most in true primary prevention. These men must behave as if they
were infected when the health of others is at issue, and as if they were
wninfected when the issue is their own health. Thus men who do not
know their antibody status must contend with behavioral restrictions
that reflect the worst of both worlds—precisely what everyone must
contend with under the standards of undifferentiated prevention.
Denial of the importance of these differences is an expression of
homophobic disrespect for the lives and sexuality of gay men. We have
never suggested to known seroconcordant heterosexual couples that
they use condoms for the rest of their lives, or failing to do so, that they
abstain from vaginal intercourse. In its innumerable variations, "If you
don't like condoms, don't fuck," is one immensely destructive hallmark
of undifferentiated prevention.
How True Primary Prevention Migiit Looit
True primary prevention will be easily recognizable because it will name
and speak explicitly to and about its outcome population of uninfected
men; name its central purpose of keeping uninfected men uninfected;
WaltOdett 131
explicitly state benefits for uninfected men who remain uninfected; and
maintain clear and explicit distinctions between its outcome population
and other target populations. Primary prevention will help permit gay
men to say out loud that they are uninfected without shame, guilt, or
derision. Thus "Stay Healthy" becomes "Ifyou are an uninfected gay
man, we can help you stay uninfected"; "We can do something about AIDS,
instead of letting AIDS do something to us" becomes "You don't have to
become infected simply because you're gay"; "It's about ourfuture. It's
about our community. It's about commitment" becomes "Staying
uninfected is about your future, your community, and your commit-
ment to both "; "Make sex special by specializing in safer sex" becomes
"Keep sex special by remaining uninfected"; and "AIDS has affected every
one of us in one way or another" becomes "Ifyou 're HIV-positive, you
can make a big difference in the life of an uninfected man."
The most obvious benefit of such simple changes is that prevention
will be more effective, because the outcome population will know it is
being spoken to and about what. Such changes will also help correct
two other important problems contributing to HIV transmission. These
are tbe confused identifications between uninfected and infected men
that make HIV feel like an inevitability for so many uninfected men;
and the disenfranchisement of uninfected men, which exacerbates
psychosocial issues contributing to infection, and makes uninfected
men less available to social learning theory-based education.
Younger Gay Men
Older uninfected gay men experience confused identifications and
disenfranchisement partly because of personal histories with the
epidemic. Older gay men have lived through the pre-ELISA years of
the epidemic, knowing neither whether they were infected, nor who
among their peers were. This complex, historically rooted identification
with being infected is partially responsible for the conflict and disen-
franchisement many older men feel about being wninfected,
Tbe situation for younger men is quite different. Having never
known a gay identity or gay community without AIDS, they may
experience confused identifications with HIV, But these identifications
are largely not based in personal experience with the epidemic, and
are thus less powerful and psychologically entangled than those of
many older men. Furthermore, young men do not enter gay commu-
nities feeling disenfranchised because they are uninfected, but learn

disenfranchisement in vivo. Thus for younger men, some confused
identifications with AIDS and virtually all feelings of disenfranchisement
for being uninfected are a product of undifferentiated education and
the community values that support it. It is crucial that younger men not
be exposed to these influences. At the present time, we are using
publicly funded education to acculturate young gay men into psycho-
social confusions that exacerbate the transmission of HIV.
Who Should Do Primary PreweniloH?
Primary prevention is now predominantly done by largely gay-staffed,
community-based organizations. These agencies naturally possess an
internal "culture" that reflects the psychological, social, and political
issues of the larger gay communities in which they are located. Virtually
all—including the flve major agencies in the LT.S.—are primarily "AiDS
service agencies," providing secondary prevention and direct services
for infected men.'' In all cases, they are secondarily providers of
primary prevention, judging by budget, staff, and publication allocations.
It seems obvious that in such "hybrid" agencies there are potential
conflicts of interest between primary and secondary prevention,
although these conflicts may be largely experienced and expressed
unconsciously.
According to its monthly newsletter of services, the AIDS Health
Project of the University of California at San Francisco is entrusted with
"the mission... to provide culturally sensitive counseling and education
to stop the spread of HIV infection, and to help people face the
emotional, psychological, and social challenges of living with HIV
disease."^" The actual listing of services offered by the newsletter,
however, suggests that primary prevention is a peripheral part of the
mission. The oflfering includes seven groups for infected men, and one
for uninfected men. There are also three groups for "HIV-Affected
Clients"—^which might mean uninfected men—including one for
caregivers of those with AIDS, one for caregivers of those with HIV
dementia, and a third, "Drop-in Group for Meditation/Self-Hypnosis,
open to anyone with HIV concerns, including caregivers and HIV-
negative individuals." If these groups are for uninfected men, they seem
largely aimed at helping uninfected men take care of infected men,
rather than themselves. This is not primary prevention. Some sources
WaltOdets 133
of this typical neglect of primary prevention when it is entangled in

secondary prevention are clarified in a description of the agency by its
director, James Dilley;
Each program within the AIDS Health Project is designed to work with
individuals at different points along the continuum between a state of
health at one end of the spectmm and the clinical disorder of AIDS at
the other. Thus, individual programs reflect different levels ofpreven-
tion. For example, the Prevention and Support Services (formerly the
Worried Well) Program is an example of primary prevention; i,e, services
are provided to healthy individuals who are at risk in an attempt to keep
them from contracting disease. The HIV Positives Being Positive
Program is an example of secondary prevention, lEmphasis added,]^'
The idea that uninfected and infected men exist on the same "health
continuum" is an accurate reflection of the historically rooted feelings
of the gay communities—and, unfortunately, of uninfected men who
experience HIV infection as inevitable or desirable, Wliile Dr, Dilley
makes clear distinctions between primary and secondary prevention in
this quotation, it is also true that the AIDS Health Project appears to have
embraced the idea that primary and secondary prevention are simply
"different levels of prevention," Regarding potential survival and many
important psychosocial issues, this conceptualization obscures the fact
that uninfected men are not at all on a continuum with infected men,
HIV is not an inevitability for gay men, and men do not fail if
they do not "progress" along the continuum from health to AIDS,
The idea of a continuum of health corresponding to different levels
of "prevention"—which so easily becomes a model for a continuum of
prevention—also commonly obscures the fact that very little of the
continuum is actually primary prevention in terms of delivered program.
With all the important contributions the AIDS Health Project has made
to the gay communities of San Francisco, it has provided minimal
services, at best, to the outcome population for primary prevention. When
it has attempted to do so, it has become the object of political controversy,
and, in this dilemma, the Projea is in the company of most U,S, agencies.
Thus, the neglect of primary prevention, as well as the potential for
supporting or generating confused identifications between uninfected
and infected men, are two major risks in hybrid agencies whose
conceptualization and organizational structures are not clear,^^ While
the AIDS Health Project seems to fall largely in the category of

neglecting true primary prevention, an example from the Cascade AIDS
Project of Portland, Oregon illustrates the possibilities for confused
identiflcations between infected and uninfected men.
The Men's Prevention Project of Cascade initially published a
monthly newsletter. Positive Connections, funded through "wellness
support" funds from the County—wellness apparently referring to
asymptomatic HTV infection in this case. The very complex, almost
unintelligible evolution of this newsletter during 1994 illustrates the
difflculties an agency may have in clearly conceptualizing and delivering
primary prevention. Howard Dana, editor of the newsletter, explained
the concerns behind its evolution;
Because we have been looking at the split in Portland's gay community

between positive and negative men, we decided to make some
changes. Too many negative men didn't even know someone who was
positive and they had no idea what positive men were going through—
and }^
Feeling that "the Men's Prevention Project" did not speak to
uninfected men, the project moved the newsletter to a program called
Speak to Your Brothers}^ This program is identifled with the statement,
"Together we will overcome fear, misinformation & disease. Together
we will build a strong & caring community." Thus the inclusion of
uninfected men was to be accomplished by removing "prevention" from
the name of the program sponsoring the newsletter—a necessary
change because the agency, one among many, had spent years teaching
uninfected men that prevention was for infected men. The name of the
newsletter itself was also changed, to Speaking Up, and the masthead
then identifled the newsletter with both the Men's Prevention Project
and Speak To Your Brothers. Although the changes were made in order
to include uninfected men, the publication data sidebar clarifled that
Speaking Up was "a monthly newsletter by, for and about HIV-positive
people and others affected by HIV."^' At this point, uninfected men
were expected to feel included by mention as "others affected." Finally,
beginning with the August 1994 issue, the newsletter was described on
the masthead as "A Newsletter of the Gay and Bisexual Men's Commu-
nity," and in the publication data sidebar as:
WaltOd0t* 135
A newsletter of Speak To Your Brothers at Cascade AIDS Project, It is

for all gay & bisexual men. The focus of Speaking Up is to serve as a
means of support, communication & education for this community.
Speaking Up is also a resource for the wider community which
encompasses, supports & celebrates gay & bisexual men.
The developmental complexity of this single campaign—^which
resulted in a purely undifferentiated statement of purpose—reflects the
confusions that surround most prevention today and the difficulty of
clarifying them within hybrid agencies. Even a careful reading of
Speaking Up leaves one with doubt about its prevention purposes or
its intended target populations,^^ The publication is a mixture of gay
interest stories, secondary prevention, and primary prevention. In trying
to clarify the publication, Mr, Dana explained, "Speaking Up is really
Positive Connections plus."
A secondary prevention campaign for infected men—plus—is not
a foundation for primary prevention. Cascade's difficulty in knowing
what to do with uninfected men resulted in their being shuffled around
like orphaned and unwanted children within the prevention project.
The solution finally adopted was to enlist uninfected men in "the
community's" fight against "fear, misinformation, and disease." While
this attempt may help make services for uninfected men more socially
and politically acceptable, it is fraught with dangerous psychological
implications. Enfranchisement for uninfected men is conditioned on
their joining the battle against AIDS. Cascade's solution echoes that of
the AIDS Health Project in itsfirstgroup for HIV-negative men; Negatives
Supporting Positives and Each Other}^ Inclusion in the fight against
AIDS cannot be the condition for enfranchising or re-enfranchising
uninfected men into the communities.
The issues that Cascade AIDS Project is dealing with are complex
and difficult, reflect values and politics deeply rooted in gay commu-
nities, and are sometimes also infiuenced by funding requirements. In
terms of thoughtfulness and attention to psychosocial issues important
for primary prevention. Cascade's work is among the best being done
in the United States today. The extent to which their efforts—and the
primary prevention efforts of virtually all agencies—^remain problematic
is a measure not of their failure, but of the broad community failure to
clarify how heavily history and community feelings bear against all
136 POLICINO PUBLIC SEX
true primary prevention.

Whether hybrid agencies—indeed, anyone—can do true primary
prevention will depend largely on the gay community's clarification of
its feelings and purposes, as well as each agency's correction of
conceptualizations and internal structures that refiect confusions. It is
imperative that any agency doing primary prevention have an
autonomous department of primary prevention that is distinct from
other agency departments or services. This should become a universal
requirement for primary prevention funding.
Conclusions
Recent figures from a five-year study of gay and bisexual men in Oregon
echo the troubling figures we have seen elsewhere: 25 percent report
unprotected anal sex in any given month, and 50 percent report it within
the past year.^ An even more disturbing finding of this study—one
rarely reported, but probably predictive of most gay and bisexual
populations—is that the number of men testing for HIV is declining,
and today "almost half of the gay and bisexual men in Portland do not
know their current HIV status."^' This trend bodes poorly for preven-
tion, not because HIV testing is in itself primary prevention, but because
it suggests discouragement about personal and community futures. Men
who believe they are HIV-negative—and can stay that way—test to
confirm that. Many men who do not test do not want to know if they
are HIV-negative, do not believe they are HIV-negative, or do not
believe the information is important one way or the other because,
ultimately, they will be infected.
What do the realities of the epidemic, the gay communities, and our
current primary prevention offer as benefits for being uninfected and
confirming that with an HIV test? Life in communities that hardly allow
public utterance of the term HIV-negative? Vae possibility of surviving to
age 45 to see half of one's peers dead? Disenfranchisement as the lucky
and needless ones? lives lead in fearful, restricted sexual intimacy regardless
of HIV staais? Life in communities that refer only to infected men as thriving,
long-term survivors? The inevitability of seroconverting later?
One feeling seems paramount among gay men as a consequence of
a decade in the epidemic: everyone feels disenfranchised. Infected men
are commonly incredulous that men lucky enough to be uninfected
might have any needs at all; uninfected men of color are often
Walt Odets 137
incredulous that uninfected white men could experience marginaliza-

tion by gay communities; and the infected survivors of dead lovers are
sometimes incredulous that uninfected survivors of dead lovers could
feel comparable grief. Some of these feelings of disenfranchisement—
and the resentment and anger it breeds—arise naturally out of the
universally painful, if different, experiences of the epidemic itself. In
their own ways, both infected and uninfected men are deprived of lives
they expected to lead and futures they expected to grow into.
Feelings of disenfranchisement, disappointment, resentment, and
anger also arise from another painful, barely utterable fact of the
epidemic: there arepossihilitiesfor uninfected men that do not existfor
the infected. This fact not only creates feelings among infected men,
but feelings of guilt—and resentment about "having" to feel guilt—
among uninfected men. If we cannot acknowledge that infected men
cannot have all that uninfected men might have, and clarify feelings
about that, we will continue to deny uninfected men reasonable
possibilities for their lives, and thus fail in primary prevention.
Uninfected men cow/rf have many realities and hopes that are unrealistic
for infected men—important realities and hopes about life, work,
relationships, and sexuality. But our primary prevention, as a reflection
of our community, is mute about these possibilities because their
utterance is experienced as an exploitation of inequity, a violation of
community solidarity, and a betrayal and abandonment of those with
HIV. Unfortunately, these realities and hopes also provide the onty
incentives and motivations for a man to remain uninfected through a
lifetime, sexually vectored epidemic.
What about the feelings of many infected men that the real meaning
of primary prevention is that their lives are hopeless? While these
feelings are psychologically understandable, I do not believe they are
accurate. But infected men perceive much that 25potentially true about
their situation. Although wninfected men within large urban gay
communities are now the disenfranchised, that is a tenuous balance
that could easily shift to the detriment of infected men. It is true that a
tacit national policy decision focusing on prevention of infection as the
important hope for the epidemic seems to have been adopted following
the Berlin Conference.'" And it is true that ôwe community support for
HIV-positive men is sustained more by guilt—which is tenuous and
volatile—than by simple, humane concern, and infected men often

intuitively perceive that. Thus, infected men have many realistic and
important concerns about their positions in the gay communities and
in society at large. These concerns must be addressed and clarified if
infected men are to be respected and cared for, even as real primary
prevention is initiated.
Unless the uninfected man's hope to survive, perse, is experienced
as betrayal, primary prevention is not a betrayal or abandonment of
those with HFV. Explicit primary prevention can acknowledge the
different paths of infected and uninfected men without implying that
one is culpable or hopeless. Explicit primary prevention can respect
the humane desire for unity within and among the gay communities
without denying differences where they really exist. Explicit primary
prevention can be done without threatening the indispensable
secondary prevention that we have become so skilled at. If the feelings
that mislead us on these facts cannot be examined and clarified, we
will not be able to make a decision to do primary prevention, or not
do it because it is too humanly destructive for those who are infected
and thus too painful for all gay men. Today, the epidemic and its
trajectory within gay communities are already the product of a decision,
if an unconscious one: we do not do primary prevention. This is too
important a decision to have made unconsciously.
NOfES
I. D. R. Hoover et al., "Estimating the 1978-1990 and Future Spread of Human
Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 in Subgroups of Homosexual Men," American
Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 134, no. 10.
]• I have written more extensively on the nature of our current education and its
problematic contributions to gay communities in a guest editorial for AIDS and
Public Policy Journal, Spring 1994, vol. 9, no. 1.
3. I have written in more detail on the role of various populations in primary
prevention for gay men, including infected gay men, in the article from which
this essay originated, "Why We Stopped Doing Primary Prevention for Gay Men
in 1985," AIDS and Public Policy Journal, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 1995), 1-21.
4. The San Francisco-based treatment advocacy group founded by Martin Delaney
and Joe Brewer.
5. Although my clinical experience confirms such studies, it also suggests that there
is a population of men who believe themselves to be positive, but test negative.
These men may make changes in behavior as a result of testing, because they
often experience profound changes in identity with a negative test. They often
Walt Odets 139
suddenly feel that they are no longer among the dying of our community.
6. Asians and AIDS: What's the Connection, The Asian AIDS Project, San Francisco,
1988.
7. I have discussed this interaction in the /ifTy editorial cited in note 2; see also
my book In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age ofAIDS
(Duke University Press, 1995); "The Psychological Impact of AIDS on Uninfected
Gay and Bisexual Men," an oral presentation at the 1990 VI International
Conference on AIDS; "The Psychology of Unsafe Sex: The Human Issues and
Politics Among Gay Men in the United States," a poster presentation at the 1992
VIII International Conference on AIDS; two chapters in Psychotherapists on the
Front Line: Challenges in Psychotherapy with Gay Men in the Age of AIDS
(American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C., 1994); "The Secret Epidemic," in
Outlook: National Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 4:2; "The Homosexualization of
AIDS," in Focus: A Guide to AIDS Research and Counseling 5:11 (University of
California at San Francisco, AIDS Health Project, 1990); and "Survivor Guilt in
HIV-Negative Gay Men" in Directions in Clinical Psychology 4:15 (New York:
Hatherleigh Publishing, 1994).
8. Personal communication, 1992.
9. Chuck Frutchey, "Negatives Being Negative," The San Francisco Sentinel,
October 26, 1994.
10. I have discussed this topic in much greater depth in the editorial cited in note 2.
11. In smaller gay communities, even where services are provided for men with
HIV and AIDS, it is the HIV-positive man who remains socially disenfranchised,
even within his gay community. This disenfranchisement makes discussion of
infection difficult or prohibited, and one result is that many more men are
infected than is commonly acknowledged. The presumption of non-infection is
a significant transmission risk in such communities, a problem that does not
exist in larger communities, which often have a slight majority infected with
Hrv, and thus a presumption of infection.
13. See note 7 for references on these psychological and psychosocial issues.
13. See note 5.
14. See note 4.
15. Personal communication. Chuck Frutchey, 1993.
16. Wayne Blankenship, Prevention Coordinator for Adult Gay and Bisexual Men,
the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, personal communications, July and
December 1994. Having been exposed only publicly to the campaign, I was
unaware that this was intended as a secondary prevention campaign until these
communications. According to Mr. Blankenship, "In both 1992 and 1994 releases
of this campaign, following the phrase 'Be Here for the Cure' is the phrase 'Get
Early Treatment for HIV.'" In fact, some poster, placard, lapel button, and t-shirt
releases of the campaign did not contain the second phrase, and thus supported
confusions about the campaign's meaning.
17. Dan Wohlfeiler, at the 6th National AIDS Update Conference, "Gay Men's
Programs: Contemporary Innovations."
18. Personal communication, Ron Stall, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, 1994.
Dr. Stall was using as his sample five populations, including one from San
Francisco, two from Tucson, Arizona, and two from Portland, Oregon.
19. These are, respectively, the Gay Men's Health Crisis (New York City), the
Whitman-Walker Clinic (Washington, D.C), AIDS Project Los Angeles, the San
Francisco AIDS Foundation, and the Northwest AIDS Foundation (Seattle).
20. AHP Events & Services, November 1994.
21. J.W. Dilley, The University of Calijornia at San Francisco AIDS Health Project:
A Community Psychiatry Approach to the AIDS Epidemic, Psychiatry Clinics of
North America [?], 17:1 (March 1994), 205-25.
22. It should be clear at this point in the discussion that the minimization of true
primary prevention, or the failure to do it at all, is an important source of feelings
of disenfranchisement among uninfected men, and thus encourages the desir-
ability of identifications with infected men. Agencies must not only have a clear
conceptualization of primary prevention, but a structure and delivered program
that are consistent with the conceptualization.
23. Personal communication, November 1994.
24. Speak To Your Brothers is a program within The Men's Prevention Project, and
is funded separately by the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies of the University
of California at San Francisco
25. Speaking Up, Cascade AIDS Project, mid-June 1994.
26. The editor explained to me that the newsletter was intended as both primary
and secondary prevention, "keeping as balanced as we can, article by article,
with regard to primary or secondary prevention." The November/December
1994 newsletter does, indeed, contain both, including a cover story on "The
Second Wave of HIV Transmission" and an article, "To Be Gay and Latino." The
lead column is unfortunately titled "Infectious Energy," and the "News in Brief
section contains five pieces, four about pharmaceuticals and HIV treatments,
and one about a Newsweek piece, "Surviving the Second Wave." The bulletin
board offers 12 notices, six for HIV-positive men, one for HIV-negative men,
and five for men of unspecified HIV status.
27. This was the title of guidelines for "negative groups" first offered by the AIDS
Health Project in 1988. From Ed Wolf, personal communication, 1994.
28. Speaking Up, Cascade AIDS Project, November/December 1994.
29. The figures cited in note 18 (that approximately 60 percent of men "know" their
antibody status) are for men who have ever tested. The currency of a test might
be a matter of judgment, but by most standards, a six- or eight-year-old test for an
ordinarily sexually active man might not be the last word on his antibody status.
30. The IX International Conference on AIDS in Berlin publicized discouraging news
about antivirals, especially zidovudine, and therefore about the possibility of
medically controlling the epidemic by treating, infected individuals. On June 17,
1993, a New York Times editorial stated, in part: "AZT apparently has little or no
effect when given to people who are infected with the vims but have not yet
developed symptoms.... There is little choice but to shift the emphasis to
prevention programs."
Ephen Glenn Colter
DISCERNIBLY TURGID
Safer Sex and Public Pelicy
Here is your condom.

Wearing this over the penis from the beginning of sexual contact will
help protect you and your partner from sexually transmitted diseases.
To put it on...
First, hold the tip of the condom to squeeze out the air. If you put a
dot of water-based lubricant (not Vaseline or cream) in the tip of the
condom you will feel more through the rubber.
Keep holding the tip as you carefully roll the condom all the way onto
the hard penis and all the way down to the hair.
After you have come, hold onto the base of the condom (keep your
fingers around the base) and pull out gently.
—Bureau of HIV Program
Services, New York City
Department of Health, 1995
The desire for new models of HIV prevention in the second decade
of the AIDS epidemic has prompted a movement to consider the next
appropriate step for AIDS service organizations, community activists,
and the state. But any critique of safer sex is first and foremost a critique
of sex. Because notions of sex and safer sex are socially, historically,
and locally rooted, both must be explained in terms of these realities.
An examination of the way the sexually active body is figured by the
New York State Sanitary Code, the New York City Zoning Resolution,
New York State Penal Law, and the United States Department of Health
141
142 POLICIHG PUBLIC SEX
and Human Services reveals the state's alleged logic to be far less
interesting than the tensions between what these organizations say and
what they police. It seems the attack on public sex is, in fact, an attack
on historical concepts and cultural productions of safer sex.'
To explain the social violence of heteronormativity and sexual
representation in AIDS discourse, my approach to the history of safer
sex is to show that queer safer sex practices are collapsed with moral
prohibitions in order to conceal the construction of normative sexuality.
The central question sustaining this analysis is quite simple: how are
activists and AIDS cultural critics to advocate safer sex messages when
both sodomy laws and state sanitary codes prohibit this knowledge?
In a 1994 memorandum regarding the definition of sexual activity
under Section 24-2 of the New York State Sanitary Code, the City of
New York Department of Health finally responded to questions posed
by the New York Coalition for Healthy Sex, an early movement of
commercial sex club owners and activists concerned with public sex:
After consulting with the City's Law Department, we have concluded
that neither the use of a sexual toy covered by a condom nor fisting
constitutes prohibited sexual activities under the Code. The same
applies to licking of the scrotum. As to the latter, however, we are
concerned that licking of the scrotum may quickly lead to fellatio,
which is, of course, prohibited by the Code. Since it may be difficult
for establishments to monitor patrons closely enough to prevent the
licking of the scrotum from leading to fellatio, it is advised that
establishments do not permit their patrons to engage in the licking of
scrotums. lEmphasis mine.] ^
Licking of scrotums? Though AIDS activists and culairal critics may

giggle, this is an irksome example of the way that safer sex and public
policy have become convoluted. Even as the state denies the right to
privacy and sexual freedom to certain members of the nation, safer sex
has nevertheless incorporated public policy mandates. Even though
homosexuality includes the desire for "deviant" sexual behavior and
the pleasure of transgressive practices that destabilize fixed notions of
identity or community, public policy has appropriated safer sex. For
these reasons the substance of the above memo is anything but funny.
In the Department of Health's formulation of HIV prevention, risk is
poised on a slippery slope that has less to do with the transmission of
Ephen Glenn Celter 143
disease than with the transmission of queer ideas about sex. As just one
of many documents in a long paper trail leading to controversial debates
around AIDS in America, this memo represents both the state's conser-
vative position on AIDS as well as its confusion over sex. In public
service announcements and on condom wrappers, the Department of
Health is still telling the public how to put on condoms and explicitly
defining what sex is; in meetings with community activists and in official
memos like the one above, it is telling the public why to avoid scrotum
licking, implicitly deciding what sex is not.
Hence this essay is not simply another plea to think about putting
on a condom or theorize sexuality and the law. On the contrary, in the
tradition of the nelly queens, bull dykes, and transvestites who
defended Stonewall, this is a proposal to throw bricks at the New York
City Department of Health. This is also a methodological critique that
attempts to identify fatilt lines under the surface of safer sex education
by revealing the relationship between contemporary AIDS public policy
and historical prohibitions on non-normative sex in America. My
contention is that gay men are constaicted outside the state but used
in the service of the state's flght against AIDS. The creation of ACT UP
was fueled by rage over the urgent need for faster drug testing and
treatment. APAL was fired up to defend the rights of gay men to define
public space and determine its use. Safer sex education has been an
issue of each of these fights, but for the HIV prevention movement in
the second decade of the AIDS epidemic, the legalization of safer sex
has become an urgent battlefront.
The transmission of mainstream American values into AIDS
discourse via HlV-prevention information is as signiflcant as the
exchange of body fluids through sexual contact. HIV prevention
through education has not been a failure because it has foregrounded
human sexuality through the cultural productions of safer sex messages
and the political discourse of public policy. While this analysis explores
the question of legislative reform, it also considers power as discursive,
for power not only resides in the law, it resists interpretation. Many
gay rights activists have placed their faith in bureaucracy, waiting for
homophobic laws to give way to civil rights, counting on the non-
enforcement of existing laws, convinced of the good will of the state.
Well, the state is no longer looking the other way, and AIDS activists
144 POLICING PUBLIC SIX
can no longer be ciieeky, pretending the law does not matter. Public
sexual culture has become a war of words and wills. And while the
paper trail leads in many directions, I want to keep in mind the deeper
clues to be found outside the courtroom and the state house.
Having read endless how-to instaictions on condom wrappers while
distributing thousands of them at sex parties or college dorms, having
seen countless safer-sex education videos debuted at AIDS conferences
or hypnotically looped at porn theaters, having listened to unfathom-
able lectures on prevention from world-famous researchers and globe-
trotting PWAs, having talked trash to uptight support groups, talked shit
on rape crisis hotlines, and talked dirty on numerous adult phone lines,
sometime in the early weeks of 1996 I realized that I was no longer a
virgin, I was 27 years old and standing somewhere on 8th Street in New
York City, amid the heady flavors of African incense on the corner of
6th Avenue and the bass-heavy sounds of House music on the corner
of 3rd,
My familiarity with critiques of the possibility of "absolutely safe
sex"' and my knowledge from work in the prevention movement had
led me to question "absolute sex," I could no longer accept the
heterosexist notion of lack of penetration as the sole marker of
virginity;'^ I could no longer hierarchize a notion of safer sex that
privileged celibacy, nor accept my extensive cultural knowledge about
sex (as an AIDS educator, an STD counselor, and a consumer in a society
where "sex sells") as abstinence.^ But my sexual conversion was no
surprise to my friends. Because I talked so much about American sexual
politics, because I simply accepted my own sexual status as strongly as
I argued the significance of bisexuality, transexuality, miscegenation,
or monogamy, for years these friends had called me a "virgin-whore"
in an attempt to call my "innocent" status into question. To my chagrin,
they thought the possibility that I might be a parent (by artificial
insemination) before I was a paramour (by old-fashioned penetration)
just plain funny.
While bound up with contradictions in American identity, sexual
activity, and political strategy, there is no humor in the death and dying
that commonly characterize the urgency of the AIDS crisis. For those
uninfected by HIV, there is no way to be unaffected by the cultural
context of AIDS, It comes up in big budget films and in popular music;
Ephon Gjenn Colter 145
it is registered in red ribbons and the invocation of Ryan White as an

"innocent victim." To rethink safer sex is to rethink several associations
linking good sex with monogamy, romance, and naivgte (sometimes
referred to as virginity); bad sex with sex toys, pornography, and paid
sex (sometimes referred to as sex work); and hot sex with unprotected
sex, emotional abandon, and spontaneity (sometimes referred to as
anonymity). Once I stopped giving lip-service to condomania (AIDS
rhetoric, discursive risk, and state regulation) and swallowed hard, I
realized that the analogy between "absolute sex" and abstinence was
profoundly complicated by safer sex, public sex, and queer sex, and
that my AIDS activism was itselfsexual activity.
To rethink safer sex and theorize new models of HIV prevention is
to consider the history of sexuality and HIV anxiety in U.S. culture.
Once again, desire is at odds in our cultural and intellectual life—the
need to change public opinion about homosexuality and the need to
change the negative image gays and lesbians have of themselves.
In "Street Talk/Straight Talk," Samuel R. Delany situates AIDS
anxiety in relation to public sex, oral sex, and identity by first setting
up a distinction between knowledge regulated by official policy and
knowledge constituted informally. Writing about his personal sexual
encounters during the first decade of the epidemic, Delany asks:
Was I anxious about AIDS? Constantly, continuously. Thefirstexchange,
however, was—more or less—the one around which I structured my
behavior. The second was the one around which I—more or less—
structured my intellectual analysis of the situation.
What I can say at this distance, however, is that I doubt I ever
thought about them at the same time. At least in 1983. They belonged
to two different discourses.^
Describing the Mineshaft and the St. Marks Baths, Delany writes that
the management of both clubs allowed "concerned gay male groups"
to institute safe-sex demonstrations that were hands-on, explicit, and
active. He argues that "it was from this time and these demonstrations
that we get our current emphasis on condoms and the lack of exchange
of body fluids."' Tliese graphic demonstrations were so effective in
changing the behavior of patrons without resorting to abstinence that
the city responded by closing both clubs down. Delany was one of the
first to provide an argument defending oral sex by critiquing identity
politics as a reliable strategy of HIV prevention and questioning the

selective dissemination of knowledge about HIV.
In "Unsafe: Wliy Gay Men Are Having Risky Sex," Michael Warner
establishes the contemporary cultural context in which gay men are
facing the psychic challenges of safer sex. He argues that "the pursuit
of dangerous sex is not as simple as mere thrill-seeking or self-destruc-
tiveness. It may represent deep and mostly unconscious thinking about
desire and the conditions that make life worthwhile. [Emphasis mine.]"
Drawing on the work of Walt Odets to describe these conditions,
Warner goes on to suggest that both "the so-called mainstream of
American culture and gay activists who insist on optimism... conspire
to 'normalize' the epidemic by denying the radical form of life it has
created for many gay men." To get at the relationship between safer
sex practices and a collective orientation towards fear, guilt, and shame,
Warner's analysis leaves us with a dramatic question: "Under what
conditions is life worth surviving for?"*
While gay men are constructed outside of the state at the same time
that they are used in the service of the state, my second contention is
that heteronormative sexuality is promoted in public policy on safer
sex. This is accomplished by the unmarked category of absolute sex,
the self-evident category of objective good sex, and the categorical
response to risk as zero tolerance. Together, these three concepts define
the relationship between the discourses proposed by Delany and the
conditions suggested by Warner. The difficulty many gay men are
having in sustaining safer sex practices may be due to the fact that the
state's regulations concerning safer sex have influenced gay men to
think in these terms (absolute, objective, natural process) as well as to
speak in accompanying language (guilt, shame, fear), limiting their
possibilities to explore other ideas about human sexuality and
epidemiological risk.
In the face of so much data and such convoluted debates about HIV
transmission, the push for other approaches is not simply radical but
rational. Indeed, while the thrust of this analysis urges the state to
legalize safer sex and emphasize the opportunities presented by the
culture of public sex, it also challenges gay men and lesbians to stop
navel-gazing and cop a queer feel off the growing body of writing and
thinking called AIDS cultural criticism.
Ephen GUnn Colter 147
Contemporary definitions of safer sex accommodate forms of

discrimination and depersonalization that have ultimately destabilized
it. Safer sex is not just a hotly debated issue between partners; it is a
highly contradictory formation subordinated to naturalized notions of
absolute sex on the one hand and moralistic notions of objective good
sex on the other. Safer sex lies at the intersection of sex and public
policy. But this discussion situates it as a vector, a point where politics,
technology, and social transformation find new direction. What role has
safer sex education assumed in the United States?
The Mercy Fuck

Our present Congress doesn't care about poor people, sick people, or
people that they feel are gay or lesbian. And these are the people
who continue to be diagnosed with HIV. Young, poor minorities—
especially black women and adolescents—are dispensable to our
current Congress.'
—Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, Vibe, 1996
Federal, state, and municipal authorities claim that AIDS is a public
health issue and that safer sex is a public health measure. Thus they
aim safer sex education at Americans in the form of public health
legislation. But many people still find condoms uncomfortable or
distasteful, still tire of prevention information, still use HIV testing as
their only form of prevention, and, unfortunately, still keep getting
infected by HIV. What is it about public policy on HIV that continues
to undermine the practice of safer sex? During the mid-'80s, at the same
time that activists, cultural critics, and health professionals were fighting
AIDS while attempting to make sense of HIV, federal, state, and
municipal authorities were enacting legislation on safer sex while
attempting to fathom non-normative sex. Deviance was constructed in
relation to the unmarked category of heteronormativity, ultimately
compromising the long-term success of HIV prevention efforts. As an
organizing principle for social and cultural relations, heteronormativity
undermined safer sex education by promoting absolute sex, objective
good sex, and zero tolerance under the cultural codes of virginity,
celibacy, and abstinence.
What follows is an overview of the most significant legislation
concerning public policy on AIDS. It compares I) the "prohibited sex
acts" defined by the New York State Department of Health, II) the
prohibited "specified anatomical areas" defined in the New York City
Zoning Resolution, III) the "deviant sexual intercourse" defined by New
York state sodomy laws, IV) the "right to privacy" defined by the
Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, and V) the censored
ideas defined by the Federal Register that prevent CDC-funded materials
to "promote or encourage, directly, homosexual activities," Tliese laws
focus on specific sexual practices, spaces, and identities in order to
discern and reconstruct a sexually active body whose representation
can then be regulated.
I.
Early findings of the New York State Public Health Council stated,
"Epidemiological surveillance of the occurrence of AIDS in New York
State during the period 1981 to 1985 has demonstrated that the
behaviors associated with the syndrome are high risk sexual activity
and intravenous daig use,"'" As a result. Section 24-2,2 ofthe New York
State Sanitary Code, enacted by the State Public Health Council in 1985
as an emergency measure and later amended in 1993 (in response to
both the escalating epidemic as well as a new report by the AIDS
Institute concerning HIV transmission), reads as follows:
No establishment shall make facilities available for the purpose of
sexual activities where anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse, or fellatio
take place. Such facilities shall constitute a threat to the public health,"
According to the State Public Health Council, "appropriate public
health intervention mandateld] intensive efforts at educating the public
and reducing the prevalence of intravenous drug abuse and high risk
sexual activities," They based their decision on epidemiological and
physiological evidence, defining high-risk sexual practices as those that
"result in the introduction of semen into the rectal or oral cavity of
another," It was the 1993 amendment that added "vaginal intercourse"
to the list of prohibited activities. This report (and the various studies
upon which it is based) informs the legislated regulation of commercial
sex establishment in New York City today,'- Enforced primarily by the
New York City Department of Health, the Code allows authorities to
close establishments that constitute a "public nuisance," The configu-
Ephen Glenn Colter 149
ration of safer sex by the Department of Health is just one way in which
the debate on sex and public policy has developed.
II.
In 1995 the New York City Council (not to be confused with the
aforementioned State Public Health Council) passed a zoning law
prohibiting adult establishments from nearly all residential and
commercial neighborhoods in New York City: "In all districts, a
non-conforming adult establishment shall terminate within one year
from October 25, 1995 or from such later date that the adult estab-
lishmenthecomes non-conforming."'^ For the purpose of defining adult
establishments. Section 12-10 of the new New York City Zoning
Resolution reads:
"specified sexual activities" are: (1) human genitals in a state of sexual

stimulation or arousal; (2) actual or simulated acts of human mastur-
bation, sexual intercourse or sodomy; (3) fondling or other erotic
touching of human genitals, pubic region, buttock, anus or female
breast.
"Specified anatomical areas" are: (1) less than completely and opaquely
concealed; (i) human genitals, pubic region, (ii) human buttock, anus
or (iii) female breast below a point immediately above the top of the
aureole; or (2) human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state, even
if completely and opaquely concealed.
New rules and regulations based on this law affect the sale of books,
magazines, periodicals, or other printed matter. Live performances,
films, motion pictures, videocassettes, slides, or other photographic
reproductions "characterized by an emphasis upon the depiction or
description of these activities or areas" are also subject to the Zoning
Resolution." This Resolution extends to include the regulation of what
it calls "adult physical culture establishments," that is, any club or
business which offers as part of its service "massages, body rubs,
alcohol rubs, baths, or other similar treatment, by members of the
opposite sex." Licensed physicians. New York licensed masseurs or
masseuses, practical nurses, or registered professional nurses are
exempt. The self-evident category of objective good sex is implied by
"adult" "opposite sex" activity. This implicit category neglects same-sex
services, but nonetheless contradicts the heteronormative notion of
absolute sex by foregrounding sexual gratification and the threat of

nonprocreative, nonmedical, yet pleasurable, rubbing and touching.
To constnact strict boundaries for nonsexual bodily contact, the
Zoning Resolution exempts athletic facilities of educational institutions
and electrolysis treatment by licensed operators in barbershops or
beauty parlors who "massage,,, the scalp, the face, the neck, or
shoulders only," Also exempt from designation are hospitals, nursing
homes, and medical clinics, which serves both to police the sexually
active body and to pathologize sexual identities as "an ordered maxi-
mization of collective and individual forces."** In this particular debate
about sex and public policy, the concern with safer sex is obsessed
with regulating the representation of sex and sexual identities. Attention
to bodily contact in the Resolution is a return to a much older
construction of this debate.
III.
Since 1881, "deviant sexual intercourse" under New York State Penal
Law, Article 130 has been anything but self-evident. In order to avoid
any threat to heteronormative standards of absolute sex, the statute
goes to great effort to position penetration as an element of the "crime"
of sodomy rather than an element of sodomy, which focuses attention
on definitions of what is criminal rather than on definitions of what is
sexual. As a proscription of sex offenses, this law has a nearsighted
view of what it refers to as "specific sexual conduct" to be policed,
"Deviant sexual intercourse" means sexual conduct between persons
not married to each other consisting of contact bettveen the penis and
theanus, the mouth and thepenis, or the mouth and the vulva. [Emphasis
mine,]"
This focus on contact rather than penetration is important because
in the state's formulation of HIV prevention, risk is poised on a slippery
slope, "Contact" rather than penetration becomes a nuance altering the
concept of risk from a concern with the transmission of disease to a
concern with the transmission of queer ideas about sex. For example,
the "self-evident 'sexual parts' of a person" do not include a person's
mouth, nor does the law include the activity of "kissing,,, and inserting
tongue into,,, mouth" as deviant sexual intercourse. These acts consti-
tute what might be better understood as objective good sex because

the pleasure they represent is assumed to be self-evident.
The intent of this legislative proscription is to expand its applicability
to cases of sexual contact that fall short of what it calls "actual
intercourse, "what is often ûnderstood as absolute sex. Use of the term
"touch" to define deviant sexual contact is strictly construed to apply
to those instances in which there is "digital manipulation or manual
handling or fondling" of a person's leg, thigh, "female breast," or male
buttocks, "whether directly or through clothing." These sodomy laws
are intended to police activity and authenticity by defining the limits of
an unmarked conceptual category: absolute sex. To ward off queer
ideas about sex, the law must name women as both active and passive
transgressors through the act of sodomy.
[I]n deviant sexual intercourse reference to male gender "he" does not
limit culpability only to males; consequently, any person, male or
female, who engages in deviant sexual intercourse with another person
by any means specified, is guilty of sodomy in first degree, and any
person who so engages, in any ways specified, is guilty of sodomy in
lesser degree.'*
A consideration of gender roles here destabilizes the crime of
sodomy with uncertainty and vagueness while still clinging to
heteronormativity. Elsewhere we find gender exploited to police
nonheteronormative sexualities and the use of public space:
Sexual acts between consenting adults, heterosexual or homosexual,
done in private are absolutely beyond the right of the state to interfere,
but such right will not be extended to any area of multiple unenclosed
urinals where several or a dozen or more male members of the public
may congregate to use the same at the same time}^
In this coordination of sex and public policy, safer sex pleasure remains
subject to intervention because both safer sex practices and "private"
environments for them are already polluted by the presence of deviant,
non-normative sexualities.
IV.
The 1986 Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick declares that
states which criminalize consensual sodomy are not in violation of the
constitutional right to privacy. By upholding such a statute in Georgia,
the United States Supreme Court held that the Federal Constitution's
guaranty of an ihdividual's right to privacy does not extend to "practic-
ing homosexuals" (as opposed to nonpracticing homosexuals or
non-card-carrying queers?). Even here, political identities and sexual
conduct are unfavorably linked. Although the decision revolves around
acts and orifices, it pays particular attention to identity in the guise of
"homosexual sodomy." This is a prime example of the way morality
allows fcir selective prohibitions on deviant sexuality and for selective
information. Notions of sex that conform to presumed norms make
discriminatory laws constitutional; these same notions Result in the
dissemination of dated, inaccurate knowledge about disease transmis-
sion.
Bowers v. Hardwick provides perhaps the clearest evidence that
practicing sodomy with a condom puts one constantly in "imminent
danger of arrest."^" In the context of the paper trail being mapped
here—^the court decision onto HIV—a sexually transmitted disease
highlights the lack of documented textual support for expanding
definitions of safer sex on the federal level.
V.
Tlie first published content guidelines for AIDS information and edu-
cation released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) became part
of the' Federal Register in 1986.^' After much controversy, the "Helms
Amendment" was added to' the grant terms on content guidelines in
1987 and included in the Department of Health and Human Services'
1988 Appropriations Act. The Amendment declared that CDC-funded
materials may not "promote or encourage, directly, homosexual activi-
ties." After a series of amendments and deletions concerned with the
language with which to impose a single national standard for materials
distributed by groups undertaking multi-state programs, the original
Helms Amendment prevailed. Since 1992 the full letter of the law reads
that educational materials
(1) shall not promote or encourage, directly, homosexual activities and
(2) in addition, with regard to AIDS education programs and curricula—
(A) shall be designed to reduce exposure to and transmission of the
etiologic agent for acquired immune deficiency syndrome by providing
accurate information, and (B) shall provide information on the health
risks of promiscuous sexual activity and intravenous drug use.^^
Ephen Glenn Colter 153
Here, HIV information and AIDS education are regulated primarily to

prevent the promotion of "sexual lifestyles." The reduction of HIV
transmission occurs almost as an afterthought.
However, in a 1988 document entitled, "Content of AIDS-Related
Written Materials, Pictorials, Audiovisuals, Questionnaires, Survey
Instruments, and Educational Sessions in Centers for Disease Control
Assistance," the conservative rhetoric of the CDC, marshaled by the
1987 "Helms Amendment," included a serious contradiction: "Control-
ling the spread of HIV infections and AIDS requires the promotion of
individual behaviors that eliminate or reduce the risk of acquiring and
spreading the virus." This early policy statement seems to support the
promotion of safer sex, but today activists and health providers have
come to define oral sex and other deviant sexual practices as "individual
behaviors" that successfully manage the risk of HIV transmission.
Moreover, the document insists that "[m]essages must be provided to
the public that emphasize the ways by which individuals can fully
protect themselves from acquiring the virus." But today these messages
have become appropriated as selective information in order to discour-
age deviant sexual behavior and poise risk on a slippery slope of zero
tolerance. Heteronormative notions of absolute sex and zero tolerance
are explicitly revealed in public policy when the Department of Health
and Human Services writes that HIV information should promote
"abstinence... from sexual intercourse except in a mutually monoga-
mous relationship."
In a 1992 guidance document aimed at the Department of Health
and Human Services, the CDC requested changes in terms related to
the above requirements. The CDC stated that "[l]ifting of the restrictions
will allow those working in areas of AIDS education and prevention to
finally produce credible materials that will be effective in stemming the
course of the epidemic."'-^ However, with a focus on the illegal act of
sodomy, gay male identity and sexual activity was to be continually
misconstmed and misrepresented in public policy. This trend began
with the 1992 deletion of the 1988 Kennedy-Cranston Amendment from
the content guidelines, which had modified the Helms Amendment
restrictions (stating that CDC-funded programs should not be "designed
to promote or encourage, directly, intravenous daig abuse or sexual
activity, homosexual or heterosexual"). The rejection of this language
has had lasting effects on the development and dissemination of frank

and explicit AIDS prevention materials.
By specifically prohibiting materials that "promote or encourage,
directly, homosexual sexual activity," policy makers represented gay
male desire as always public sex and invariably public nuisance. This
justified the State's attempts to regulate it. But if the issues that face men
who have sex with men could be understood as expressed desire,
negotiated space, and risk management, then the resolution would have
to educate these men with queer ideas about sex.
If safer sex policies were more explicit about a wider range of sex
practices, perhaps they would not be so difficult to incorporate into
more sex lives. Safer sex, as currently constructed, has not developed
as an outgrowth of human sexuality and complexity but as an
outgrowth of bourgeois morality and heteronormative standards of
pleasure. Legislation about the content of HIV/AIDS-related materials
operates within this heteronormative definition of sex and sexuality. In
the face of the homophobic restrictions put in place by Senator Jesse
Helms to coordinate the debate on sex and public policy, it seems that
Congress is still living in the 1980s. Similarly, by deploying the 1985
sanitary code to crack down on public sex in 1995, the City of New
York Department of Health invokes the 1986 Bowers v. Hardtvick
decision, appeals to the 1881 sodomy laws, enforces the 1987 Helms
Amendment, aligns itself with the 1995 zoning resolution, and brings
this paper trail of documents, and this discussion, full circle.
On the one hand, this analysis has been an attempt to reveal the
discursive mechanism that constructs, regulates, and polices sexuality:
to show the contingency of human sexuality in an epidemic and the
need to legalize safer sex as a strategic move to shift meaning. On the
other hand, this analysis has been an argument for a radical sexual
politics of pleasure. Whether the body is cut up with attention to
particular body parts or carved out to accommodate certain forms of
penetration, sexual activism concerns the social maintenance of sexual
subjects, not just the civil liberties of sexual beings. Although regulations
attempt to locate pleasure in specific parts of the body or specific acts
of the body or specific spaces inhabited by the body, this understanding
of sex is unable to creatively address why people are having unsafe
sex precisely because it is unable to locate pleasure singularly. If
Ephan Olonn Colter 155
pleasure is the motivation for unsafe sex, should activists and cultural
critics ask the law to regulate it? Do we want the law to have anything
to do with it?
Court transcripts from the Capri Theater hearing suggest that these
kinds of questions stand at a crossroads, where the consolidation of
heteronormative ideas about sex and sexuality and the regulation of
deviant sexual representation collide. These transcripts show how
conservative inklings about safer sex and confusion around sex itself
have combined to confound contemporary HIV prevention efforts.
VI.
The Capri Theater was both a pom movie house and a commercial sex
club. On March 3, 1995, Dr. Benjamin A, Mohica, Acting Commissioner
for the City of New York Health Department, sent a letter to the theater
advising it that Department inspectors had observed "high risk sexual
activities" among its patrons and that inspections of the facility were
"being conducted on a continuing basis, "^'' In fact, 14 undercover
inspectors had visited the theater on some 50 occasions that year. They
reported 150 incidents of "prohibited sexual activity" in violation of the
Sanitary Code, In sum, the letter stated; "Nothing short of immediate
cessation of the prohibited sexual activities in your theater is acceptable."
In a letter dated March 4, 1995, the Capri Theater replied that it had
"started,,,to deal with the...danger," The undercover inspections
continued, and in 54 of these follow-up visits, inspectors observed "no
action at all, no sexual conduct at all." Nonetheless, mysteriously, the
Capri Theater was soon closed. Although cited for activities defined as
"sexual practices that result in the introduction of semen into the rectal,
oral, or vaginal cavity of another," the Capri Theater's owners argued
in court that their only infractions were on counts of oral sex. In effect,
they challenged the court to decide whether oral sex constituted a high
risk and therefore reasonable cause for closing the theater.
If the logic of risk in the Capri Theater Case had been clearly
concerned with the transmission of disease, observers and inspectors
would have seen that, in fact, lots of sex (in the form of queer ideas
about sex) and safer sex (in the form of risk management) was
occurring via the visual consu'mption of porn, the performance of
masturbation, the practice of oral sex (with or without a condom), and
the very act of patronizing an establishment where safer sex messages
were circulated and where printed HIV prevention materials could be

obtained. While literature on AIDS was available at the Capri Theater,
the interpretation and enforcement of the Sanitation Code by the
Department of Health undermined its effectiveness. Whereas risk
management succeeds as an explicit negotiation of sexual practices and
practicalities, risk reduction fails as an explanation of sexual prohibi-
tions and conduct. For example, many HIV prevention advocates in the
U.S. officially advise performing oral sex with a condom, but this is
changing." When activists, cultural critics, and sexually active partners
talk about the sex that is actually going on, acknowledging that it is
counterproductive to separate risk from pleasure in order to manage
the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, then safer sex messages
concede that many men and women—straight, gay, infected, uninfected,
and untested—do not and will not use condoms for oral sex.
In response to a question challenging the statute that describes the
risk factors of sex in an epidemic. Dr. Mohica reveals what stands in
the way of situating public sex within the boundaries of safer sex:
Q: Doctor Mohica, this may be pretty simple, but if you use a condom
in either vaginal sex or anal sex, does that reduce the risk of HIV
transmission?
A: It does.
Q: And if a condom is used in any of the three categories of sex
[including oral sex], would that [be] high risk sexual activity?
A: Yes, you would consider that not to be a high risk use with the use
of the ^^
Implicitly, as Dr. Mohica reluctantly admits, the focus here is on
penetration, which fails to discern that prophylactic latex technologies
manage the risk of disease transmission but also manage the possibility
of "prohibited sexual activities" under the law. Those who practice
deviant sexual behaviors are multiply criminalized. Perhaps laws were
made to be broken, but they become even more irrelevant when they
cannot be obeyed. To enable safer sex practices, the laws that prohibit
them and dehionize their practitioners must be lifted. In response to a
recent understanding of the effects of fear, shame, and guilt on sexual
behavior, AIDS activists and cultural critics must work to change the
laws governing heteronormative notions of sex and backward notions
Ephen GUnn Colltr 157
of safer sex. As yet another debate connecting sex and public policy,
the above exchange shows that the Department of Health's policy is
underwritten by a desire to police queer notions of sex, sexuality, and
risk management, not a need to reduce the transmission of disease.
Therefore it is deeply flawed, distinctively homophobic, and downright
dangerous.
By accommodating discrimination and depersonalization, safer sex
education has been jeopardized. To reconfigure the debate on public
sex, policy makers need to decriminalize sodomy and other deviant
sexual behaviors in order to return the discussion to the issue of public
health policy reform. As in the 1994 memo from the Department of
Health, the practice of safer sex has become a joke that is no longer
funny. The state's attack on public sex is, in fact, an attack on the
historical concept and cultural productions of safer sex, Tlie method of
attack has been to appropriate strategies that reach different popula-
tions in order to pollute knowledge about the risk of infection. This
greatly limits the ability of people who enjoy deviant sexual activity to
integrate safer sex practices because it regulates their sexuality under
the banner, or red ribbon, of HIV prevention. Since the problem is that
safer sex is by definition illegal, the Sanitation Code, the Zoning
Resolution, the sodomy laws, and the content restrictions on CDC-
funded materials must be changed, Tliis is a pragmatic argument to
dismantle the conflation of queers and vice.
The prohibition of safer sex by government agencies has been made
possible by associating sex with secrecy and privacy. This sustains the
"self-evident" appearance of absolute sex, situates "deviant sexual
activity" in opposition to objective good sex, and sets up risk reduction
as a slippery slope whose only safety net is zero tolerance.
Legalizing safer sex would eliminate certain critical dangers as
excuses for discrimination and depersonalization. In a Sample Inspec-
tion Report of commercial sex establishments by the Surveillance Unit
of the City of New York Department of Health, the state is concerned
not only with whether condoms are used (or whether their use is
observable), it is equally concerned with profiling identity—not just
body parts and body contact—to constaict a particular kind of sexually
active subject. The inspection report asks inspectors to "provide specific
information concerning the appearance and physical characteristics of
the patron who performed it, such as the manner of dress, height,
weight, race and apparent age,"" Thus the identification of deviant
sexual practices, uses of space, and sexual identities becomes an overall
strategy for pinpointing and figuring a targeted sexually active body.
Safer sex history is queer history indeed,^ To legalize safer sex
would call attention to the fact that it is necessary to promote gay and
lesbian identities, to promote nonprocreative sex practices and sex
education about infection, and to promote commercial sex spaces. This
strategy is tricky because contesting the role of the state here is a means
to fight AIDS, not an end in itself; it is definitely not a cure for
HlV-related illness. The HIV prevention movement in America cannot
advance new safer sex messages while sodomy is constitutionally
unprotected, federally demonized, and locally vilified. Remove these
restrictions, and new strategies concerning AIDS might be possible.
Continue the confused run-around with sex, and convoluted ideas
about safer sex will continue to plague AIDS discourse.
The Mindlu<k
When the articulation of coherent identity becomes its own policy, then
the policing of identity takes the place of a politics in which identity
works in the service of a broader cultural stmggle toward the rearticu-
lation and empowerment of groups that seek to overcome the dynamics
of repudiation and exclusion by which coherent subjects are constituted,
—Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, 1993
In a document marked "draft," dated October 6, 1995, and entitled
"Prevention Plan for Clubs and Other Entertainment Establishments,"
the Bureau of HIV Program Services (the same arm of the Department
of Health that distributes condoms locally) lays out an initial version of
a plan to reduce risk behaviors for HIV and other sexually transmitted
diseases in patrons, "By December 1996" it aims to provide "profes-
sional training to a minimum of 200 individuals representing [sex] clubs
and other [adult] entertainment establishments," This plan has been
stalled for several months because the Bureau of HIV Program Services
is at odds with another arm of the Department of Health, the AIDS
Surveillance Unit (the long arm of the law responsible for closing the
Capri Tlieater and developing the Sample Inspection Report cited
earlier):
There is currently no data which suggests that clubs and other

entertainment establishments are responsible for the continuing rates
of sexual transmission of HIV. There is general agreement within the
MSM [men who have sex with men] community and the Department
of Health, however, that these establishments could be utilized to
provide HFV education for MSM [men who have sex with men] and
heterosexuals. Additionally the City of New York has recently stepped
up its enforcement of the State Sanitary Code which limits most sexual
activity in these venues thereby making efforts at this time extremely
timely.^
The contradiction between services and surveillance has thus
muddled not only the Departtnent of Health's policies but also its
respective public health projects. What is interesting and significant in
the draft prevention plan is an implicit, albeit profound, emphasis on
the substance and location of knowledge in AIDS discourse. According
to Delany, men and women who practice prohibited sex acts "inhabit a
world of borderlines, ]ines laid out very differently from where the
straight world might place them." He suggests that "the discursive
stmcture that controls... rhetoric... is characterized precisely by its ability
to move acts anywhere and everywhere along that inflected line.""'
In "Between Innocence and Safety: Epidemiologic and Popular
Constructions of Young People's Need For Safe Sex," Cindy Patton finds
that this distinction is drawn deeply in public policy:
By the mid-1980s, it was evident that the "general public" had
problematic misperceptions about AIDS, especially regarding casual
transmission. A second wave of education aimed at the "general public"
culminated in the controversial 1988 Surgeon General's report. The
report, which never imagined that the general public was actually at
risk, largely assumed that, while knowledge about risk reduction was
nice, the public really only needed information about the impossibility
of contracting HIV through casual or social contact. [Emphasis mine.]''
As part of its training component, the plan for sex clubs aims to
provide "information on effective HIV prevention and other sexually
transmitted diseases [and] safer sex messages for MSM and heterosexuals."
The distinction between "HIV prevention information" and "safer sex
messages" in AIDS discourse is central to the regulation attempts that
challenge activists and cultural critics. Here, I elaborate Patton's distinc-
tion between "information" and "knowledge" to assess the Department
160 P01ICIN6 PUBLIC SEX
of Health's distinction between "HIV prevention information" and "safer

sex messages," While attention to this distinction is meant to elucidate
the intersection of sex and public policy as a point where safer sex has
been appropriated and polluted, this distinction is also meant to be a
place from which to begin rethinking safer sex. According to Patton, in
the early 1980s AIDS epidemiology and educational efforts supervised
by public health services aimed specific risk-reduction advice to groups
perceived to be at risk. This strategy reinforced a broad societal
perception that behavior corresponds directly to identity so that certain
types of people were at risk, irrespective of the sexual acts they
performed.
As distinct forms of AIDS education, argues Patton, information and
knowledge "created the conditions for a system of policing [that]
enunciatled] one educational subject as needing to protect herself/him-
self from HIV and the other as needing to protect herself/himself from
the deviants at inherent risk for HIV,"'^ Patton concludes that "the first
kind of education was virtually impossible or rendered incomprehen-
sible by the restrictions that prevented discussion of condoms and
nonintercourse forms of sex,"" Distinguishing different understandings
of HIV/AIDS allows for a more narrow focus on safer sex messages as
a useful category of analysis defined by risk management rather than
risk reduction: defined by locally rooted messages rather than bureau-
cratically stalemated information, defined by pleasure, play, and new
possibility rather than guilt, shame, and fear.
Today, it's not just about how to put on a condom—it's about how
to think about putting on a condom and about how to talk about getting
off. Both the draft prevention plan by the Bureau of HIV Program
Services and the surveillance unit of the Department of Health charac-
terize a debate over raced, classed, and deviant sexually active bodies.
Safer sex practices call to mind what Americans want to imagine these
bodies doing in public; thus an understanding of these practices
emerges out of a critique of these constructed categories, not out of
scrutinization of the uses of orifices. The debate about gay male
sexuality and public promiscuous sex is a fight over how Americans
choose to represent their.bodies in public; the problem of unsafe sex
is a fight over how the general public bargains with contradictory
attitudes toward risk, sex, and pleasure. Each debate coordinates the
intersection of sex and public policy in complex ways, revealing

ambivalence toward the fact that representation and identity are about
what is produced (ideas and images) and reproduced (new affiliations
and future generations).
Since change is epidemic, complacency is the real disease, because
it dulls thinking about what kinds of safer sex knowledge are livable
in an ongoing epidemic and ever-changing world. HIV prevention must
continue to be a changing phenomenon. Discussions of safer sex
should not encourage the general public to think of oral or anal sex as
deviant sexual behavior, nor should the thought of public sex (with its
association with promiscuous and nonmonogamous sex) be posed as
a problem of sexual morality. Mindfucking is no longer better than the
real thing if safer sex education is about sex.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services 1988
Appropriations Act, federally funded AIDS education programs must
be consistent with the language contained in the appropriations acts of
the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and related agencies'
appropriations acts. Under Basic Principles, this law circumscribes
language used in "written materials (i.e. pamphlets, brochures, fliers),
audiovisual materials (i.e. motion pictures and videotapes), and picto-
rials (i.e. posters and similar educational materials using photographs,
slides, drawings, or paintings) to explain 'safer sex' practices and/or to
contrast them with 'unsafe sex' practices concerning AIDS." At the same
time that it acknowledges that certain terms or descriptors are necessary
for specific target audiences to understand educational messages, the
law states that "such terms or descriptors used should be those which
would be judged by a reasonable person to be inoffensive to most
educated adults beyond that group." In sum, this regulation not only
niffles feathers among activists and health advisors, it plucks the wings
off of any progressive or oppositional HIV/AIDS education programs
funded by the Centers for Disease Control, muzzling and gagging
educators.
The limited parameters of AIDS public policy have been constructed
during the course of the AIDS epidemic along with and against broader
notions of HIV prevention. This is evident in the "Basic Principles"
section of the first content guidelines for AIDS information and educa-
tion, where the CDC's initial vision of the crisis was much broader:
The adoption of "safer sex" praaices is a practical concept of AIDS risk

reduction and is being suggested as a strategy intended to minimize
the spread of HIV infection among sexually active individuals, includ-
ing gay and bisexual men. Thepromotion ofa "safer sex" risk reduction
strategy may involve supporting the communication ofsuggestions using
candid terms, some of which may he offensive to society at large.
(Emphasis mine.]**
It would be theoretically simplistic to distinguish the state from

community, to define HIV prevention as Health Department memos, signs
in commercial sex establishments warning against prohibited activity,
public service announcements, and other public policy documents
produced or encouraged by the state (the Sanitation Code, the state
sodomy laws, and content restrictions), or to identify safer sex messages
as community-based flyers, pamphlets, and other printed materials by
grassroots organizations (ACT UP, APAL, GMHC, and the New York
Coalition for Healthy Sex). Safer sex messages must be methodologically
distinct but not separate from MDS rhetoric. Both exist within HIV/AIDS
discourse, within the same field of power, informing our thinking and
fashioning our rethinking as activists and cultural critics.
Conceptually, a simplistic view of the distinction between safer sex
messages and HIV prevention information pivots on divisiveness when
the point of my analysis is to encourage new ideas about sex and
additional connections in the realm of human sexuality. To be effective,
safer sex messages need to be in plain talk; societal standards are an
obstacle to this. Before addressing laws restricting acts, AIDS activists
and cultural critics must eliminate laws restricting how we even talk
about those acts. For the AIDS prevention movement, the important
point to keep in mind is that right-wing propaganda can no longer be
allowed to fly as safer sex campaigns.
Conclusion
During the course of writing this piece, it occurred to me that sex is as
close as inquiring minds want to look for it. The New York University
computer center, where I write, is located on the corner of 12th Street
and 3rd Avenue, a meeting of gay and straight worlds at the intersection
of anonymous sex at the Jewel Theater and paid sex on the local
prostitute's stroll. If you just stand there and look, in one direction you
could see reckless ogling among blacks. Latinos, and white East
Villagers as they walk quietly toward the blacked-out windows of the

Jewel. In the other direction you could see the keen consumer-eyes of
uptowners, out-of-towners, and Bridge & Tunnel men as they drive
slowly past the battered bodies of junkies. Like public sex, safer sex is
pervasive; you simply have to know how to look to see it.
Since queer safer sex practices have been collapsed into moral
prohibitions in order to conceal the structural foundations of normative
sex, a more discerning eye is needed to distinguish the complex
relationship between risk and deviant sexual activity. As a vector, a
point where politics, technology, and social transformation find new
direction, safer sex must be seen as a critique of sex and public policy.
It reveals the polluted political implications of federal, state, and
municipal regulations as well as the state-sponsored demonization of
sexual minorities through public policy, which constructs them as
diseases of the state. The practices, proscriptions, and prohibitions that
have come to limit homosexual activity, shape gay identity, and affect
queer politics indicate that safer sex is not just illegal. Current notions
of safer sex reproduce the ill will of the state, particularly the New York
City Zoning Resolution that goes into effect in October 1996 and the
Prevention Plan for Clubs and Other Entertainment Establishments that
aims for December 1996. The illicit sexuality in U.S. AIDS education is
not beyond the law, but constituted by it, by the legal designation of
queers as criminals and their practices as vice.
Safer sex messages, in the form of hands-on knowledge and
know-how, must confront outdated information and well-known
prohibitions about sex. While this analysis charges the state with the
responsibility of both welcoming the opportunities presented by the
public culture of sex and legalizing safer sex, activists and AIDS cultural
critics can no longer ignore the contradiction between health and
well-being that resides in the relationship of safer sex and deviant sexual
activity. No longer can we casually advocate safer sex messages that
are consonant with the status quo of HIV prevention information.
NOTES
t would like to thank Lisa Duggan and Phillip Brian Harper for reading earlier drafts
of this article. I would also like to thank the organizers of the 1995 Queer October
conference at Johns Hopkins for allowing me to present this research. The title of
this essay reflects my interest in what new HIV prevention looks and feels like as a
place to begin to understand what it is beneath the surface of our anxieties and
what it could be beyond this critical moment. My title is also an attempt to
conceptualize the sexually active body—before condoms or dental dams, before
sex toys or lube, before any so-called risks are taken or any laws broken—in a way
that is playful, pleasurable, and poised for the added dimensions of race, gender,
and social relation. For an excellent discussion of the way "economies of visibility"
produce identity and identity politics, see Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies:
Theorizing Race and GenderCDurhami Duke University Press, 1995); for a discussion
of health and fitness shaping our ideas of disease, see Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies:
The Role ofImmunity in American Culturefrom the Days of Polio to the Age ofAIDS
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
1. The most recent and visible attacks on public sex in New York City have involved
the cooperation of a group of gay men and lesbians calling themselves GALHPA
and espousing the state's anti-sex agenda.
2. The City of New York, Department of Health memorandum from Ramzi
Abu-Jawdeh to Carlos A. Ball (cc: Pete Pappas), May 20, 1994.
3. In this analysis I explore "absolutely safe sex" within the parameters of
heteronormative notions of virginity, celibacy, and abstinence. Similarly, I
develop an understanding of "absolute sex" within the parameters of bourgeois
notions of monogamy, penetration, and heterosexuality. For a specific discus-
sion of the term "absolutely safe sex," see Michael Warner, "Unsafe: Why Gay
Men Are Having Risky Sex" in The Village Voice, January 31, 1995; for a
discussion of the construction of sexual identity, see Judith Butler, Gender
Trouble; Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex"; and Michel Foucault, Tbe History of
Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction.
4. According to New York Penal Law, Section 130 (McKinney) 1987, "The definition
of the terms 'sexual intercourse' ISection 130.00(1)1 and 'deviate sexual inter-
course' [Section 130.00(2)1 are self-evident." As to intercourse, it should be
emphasized that "penetration, however slight," qualifies, and "this degree of
contact can be achieved without a male being aroused." Not only does this
imply that penetration refers to the penis, it also confers active agency singularly
to men. Moreover, the notion of "self-evident" sex is a strategic attempt to render
heteronormative sex invisible, naturalized, and absolute: "This section [Penal
Law 1909, Section 20111 means nothing more than penetration of the private
parts of the woman, and no discussion is necessary or proper as to how far
they entered."
5. While heteronormative standards of virginity perceive oral or anal penetration
as significant only to gay male culture and digital or dildo penetration as vaguely
significant to lesbian culture, in this analysis I am thinking about penetration in
all its charged symbolism. And while I am aware that frottage, oral sex, and s/m
are considered "safer fucking" for many who are sexually active today, my use
of the term "celibacy" here is meant to invoke and oppose the widespread,
conservative, and uncreative concept that "no sex is safe sex."
6. Samuel R. Delany, "Street Talk/Straight Talk" in differences: AJournal of Feminist
Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (1991), 29.
7. Ibid,, 30-31,
8. Michael Warner, "tJnsafe: Wliy Gay Men Are Having Risky Sex" in The Village
Voice, January 31, 1995,
9. Vibe, January 15>96, tn 1992, President Clinton asked Dr, Joycelyn Elders to step
down from her position as Surgeon General because she advocated masturba-
tion as a form of safer sex for young people. For a specific discussion of the
investigation and treatment of homosexuals by the U,S, House Committee on
Un-American Activities, see John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communi-
ties: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 63, 76-77,
10. Details of this study and report can be found in court records: The City of New
York and the New York City Department ofHealth v. the Capri Cinema, Inc. The
Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, part 48, index
406692/95, p, 11,
11. New York State Sanitary Code, 10 NYCRR 24-2, Prohibited Facilities,
la. See especially the October 3,1995, testimony of Dr, Benjamin A, Mohica, Acting
Commissioner for the City of New York Health Department, in court transcripts
of The Capri Cinema hearing. According to Section 24-2,1 of the New York State
Sanitary Code, establishment refers to "any place in which entiy, membership,
goods or services are purchased," According to defense testimony, the Capri
Theater is a movie house and a sex club, p, 44,
13. Zoning Text Amendments as Adopted by the City Council on 9/19/95-N950426
zrm; 10/25/95-N9503S4 zry. See also the legislative history in Commission Report
#N950384zry, Sept: 18, 19S)5,
14. New York City Zoning Resolution, vol, I, Articles 1-7, (c50-43, zrc, cop, 3) Rules
and Regulations: update *6,
15. Zoning Resolution; Section 12-10, Note: An "adult establishment" is defined as
"a commercial establishnient where a 'substantial portion' of the establishment
includes an adult book store, adult eating or drinking establishment, adult
theater, or other adult commercial establishment, or any combination thereof,"
16. Michel Foucault, The History ofSexuality, Volume!: An Introduction (.New York:
Vintage Books, 1990; originally published 1978),
17. New York Penal Law, Section 130 (McKinney) 1987,
18. Ibid,
19. Ibid,
JO. Bowers v. Hardwick 478 U.S. 186 (1986),
21. Chronology of the CDC's AIDS Content Guidelines from the Prograni Planning
& Policy Coordination, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of
HIV/AIDS, The CDC began funding and cooperative agreements for AIDS
Innovative Risk Reduction Programs in 1984-85, Grantees could use federal
funds to develop AIDS information/education materials and programs,
2J. Federal Register, vol, 57, no, 61, Monday, March 30, 1992/ Notices,
23. Federal Register announcement published December 13, 1991 (56 FR 65169);
Centers for Disease Control, "Resolution for Requirements for AIDS-Related
Written Materials, Pictorials, Audiovisuals, Questionnaires, Survey Instruments
and Educational Sessions in Centers for Disease Control Assistance Programs,"

March 30, 1992,
M. The City of New York and the New York City Department of Health vs. the Capri
Cinema, Inc. The Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York,
part 48, index 406692/95,
25. See Dave Nimmons and Ilan Meyer, "Oral Sex & HIV Risk Among Gay Men,"
Research Summary (New York: Gay Men's Health Crisis, 1996), The report lists
review articles, community studies, and other research, and concludes that "the
body of literature is clear; oral sex offers a possible, but very low, risk of HIV
infection. Unprotected oral sex is classifiable as safer sex or as safe compared
to safest"(5).
26. The City ofNeu> York and the New York City Department of Health vs. the Capri
Cinema, Inc., op cit, -,
27. City of New York Department of Health, Sample Inspection Report, See Section
E, Prohibited Sexual Activities, See also the DOH Papers included in this
anthology,
28. See Henry Abelove, "The Queering of Lesbian/Gay History," Radical History
Review 62 (1995), 44-57,
29. HIV Prevention Plan for Clubs and Other Entertainment Establishments," New
York City Department of Health, Bureau of HIV Program Services, October 6,
1995,
30. Samuel R, Delany, "Street Talk/Straight Talk" in differences, vol, 3, no, 2 (1991),
33, For an excellent discussion of the boundaries between public and private
sex, see also Phillip Brian Harper, "Playing in the Dark: Privacy, Public Sex, and
the Erotics of the Cinema Venue" in Camera Obscura 30 (May 1992), 93-111.
31. Cindy Patton, "Between Innocence and Safety: Epidemiologic and Popular
Constructions of Young People's Need For Safe Sex," in Deviant Bodies: Critical
Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture," edited by Jennifer
Terry and Jacqueline Urla (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 341,
See also The Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome (October 1986), which contains messages consistent with the 1987
Helms Amendment included in the Department of Health and Human Services'
1988 Appropriations Act (PL, 100-436),
32. Patton's important analysis of the sexually active body in mid-to-late 1980s media
coverage focuses on the "normally abnormal adolescent" who matures to
sexually "responsible" adulthood (i,e,, monogamous, married, procreative,
white, heterosexual) and "the young deviants" who by their "nature" (the
homosexual desires of gay teens) or from their "natural" environment (the
ghetto, supposed harbor of all youth of color) are irreversibly and persistently
at risk. For a further discussion of public policy and its maintenance of specific
categories of identity, see also George Lipsitz's "The Possessive Investment in
Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the 'White' Problem in American
Studies," in American Quarterly, vol, 47, no, 3 (September 1995),
33. Ibid,
34. AIDS Content Guidelines, Program Planning & Policy Coordination, Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, Office of HIV/AIDS,
Mark Schools
AN AIDS VACCINE
It's Possible.
So Why Isn't It Boing Dono?
mven though an AE)S vaccine offers the

best hope—indeed, the only hope—of actually ending the epidemic, it
receives the least amount of research money. This is a crisis and a scandal.
Anyone who is sexually active should be especially outraged, because
safer sex is extremely hard to maintain. As much as everyone hopes that
prevention and education can reduce the rate ofnew infections so much
that the epidemic slowly dies out, such a success has never occurred in
the history of public health. Cigarette smoking persists in America despite
a massive public. education campaign and overwhelming cultural
stigmatization. But an AIDS vaccine could stop in its tracks the immense
death and loss caused by this disease.
That's a goal many activists no longer dare to hopefor. Indeed, HIV
hasproven soformidable that researchers rarely speak ofa cure; instead,
they talk about drug "cocktails" that might make HTV "manageable,"
which means that infected people will live longer, but hardly long
enough. And their deaths will still be horrible. What I hope thefollowing
article will do is make readers question why AIDS activists have neglected
the questfor a vaccine. And, of course, I hope it will spark at least a few
farsighted activists to startpushing for a vaccine, the ultimateprevention.
How can HIV be stopped? Despite tremendous advances in therapy, a full-

fledged cure remains remote. The promising new multi-drug regimens
may have to be taken for life and may cause long-term problems, such
as cancer. These drugs are also wildly expensive for the Third World,
167
where 90 percent of new infections are occurring and where annual

health care spending can be less than five dollars per person.
Educational campaigns stand even less of a chance. Among American
gay men—one of the best-informed communities anywhere—the virus
continues to spread at a despairing rate. An urban gay man in his
twenties can expect to see half his peers infected by the time he's in
hisfifties.Education is having even less effect among Americans whoi are
poor, who don't speak English, who suffer from addiction, or who are
struggling against racism. Heterosexual women—the fastest growing
category of newly infected Americans—face what might be called the
Cassandra problem: even if they know all about safer sex, they often
cannot make their partners wear condoms. Indeed, they sometimes risk
violence if they ask them to do so. And in developing countries,
illiteracy and poverty often make education downright quixotic.
As it stands, thie World Healtli Organization estimates that 22 million
people are already infected, and another person contracts HIV every
nine seconds. The best hope for stopping the pandemic is the sarrie as
it was for smallpox and polio: a vaccine. But despite sound scientific
reasons to believe an AIDS vaccine is possible, the effort to develop
one has been largely abandoned by industry, neglected by activists,
and slighted by government, A recent report by the Rockefeller
Foundation, a leader in international health, estimates that, in 1993,
spending on an AIDS vaccine—public and private, worldwide—^was
just under $160 million. That's less than the latest Kevin Costner movie.
Stunning results in monkeys, as well as surprising immune responses

in humans, have convinced most researchers that an AIDS vaccine can
be made. Nevertheless, a paralyzing pessimism, based on the percep-
tion that a vaccine is virtually impossible, has slowed the seai"ch.
No vaccine has yet been tested for efficacy in humans. Numerous
Phase I and Phase II safety trials have occurred, biit they are far too
small to be conclusive. And few of the many vaccine strategies have
been tested in humans at all, "Because we have never evaluated a
vaccine," says John McNeil, clinical director of the U,S, Army's AIDS
vaccine program, "we have not gotten to the point where we know
whether the science is a problem,"
Mark Schools 169
What we do know is that HIV poses a lot of potential problems. Dr.

Maurice Hilleman led the vaccine division at pharmaceutical giant
Merck for almost 30 years, where he developed more vaccines than
anyone in history: measles, mumps, rubella, and hepatitis B are his
biggest trophies. But he says they look easy compared to AIDS: "My
God, here's a disease for which there is no recovery."
That's worrisome because vaccines don't attack a virus on their own.
Instead, they train a person's immune system by mounting an attack
with harmless viral impostors. Until very recently, vaccinologists used
killed virus, as Jonas Salk did with polio, or they "attenuated" the virus,
removing key parts so that it was alive but powerless to cause disease,
as Albert Sabin did with his competing polio vaccine.
The inoculation for hepatitis B marked the first time researchers
engineered a vaccine by isolating specific viral "subunits" that actually
provoke an immune response. But despite this advance, the principle
of vaccination remains the same as it was thousands of years ago, when
Chinese doctors blew pulverized smallpox scabs through bone tubes
into the noses of healthy patients: prime the immune system so it's
ready if it encounters the virus in the wild.
But with HIV, the immune system seems to have met its match. It
doesn't eliminate the virus, and although some "long-term survivors"
stave off disease for 15 years or more, they appear to be a tiny fraction
of infected people. Ultimately, even they may succumb to the disease.
"We may have to improve on nature," says Duke University's Dani
Bolognesi, a leading AIDS vaccine researcher.
Because people don't recover, scientists don't know what part of
the immune system to target for enhancement. Should they attempt to
elicit neutralizing antibodies, which attack free-floating virus in the
bloodstream? Or should they try to rev up "cytotoxic" response, the
other main arm of the immune system, which targets infected cells?
Many researchers believe both are needed, but getting the right balance
is tricky because, like a biological seesaw, raising antibodies tends to
lower cytotoxic response and vice versa. And because HIV attacks the
immune system itself, stimulating the wrong kind of response could
abet the virus's invasion of the body.
Another potential problem is that 80 percent of all HIV infections
occur sexually, meaning the virus usually enters through mucosal
tissues in the vagina, rectum, or mouth. It's possible that HIV could be
stopped there, and also that it must be stopped there, before it spreads
through the body. But little is known about mucosal immunity—or, for
that matter, about the immune system in general. Some experiments
suggest that protection against HIV may come from immune responses
that have not yet been identified.
Assuming the right response could be mobilized, it would have to
protect against a vast variety of strains. HIV-l is one of the most mutable
viruses known. (There's also HrV-2, which is less virulent, less trans-
missible, and much less common.) HTV-l has eight major genetic subtypes,
called "clades," and more than 660 catalogued variants. In some areas of
the world, several clades circulate among the population; but even in North
America, where one subtype predominates, the others are just a plane ride
away. Finally, in several African countries, scientists recently discovered
an entire additional HFV-l group, with its own clades.
Another impediment is the lack of an ideal animal model.
Chimpanzees get infected with HIV, but they do not progress to AIDS
and can even eliminate some strains, of virus on their own. Many
researchers believe monkeys such as the rhesus and macaque are the
best models even though they don't get infected with HIV. Instead, they
are susceptible to the closely related simian virus SFV, and they get sick
with an AIDS-like disease.
Experiments with these monkeys counter the doomsayers. In
separate protocols by different research teams, a vaccine protected the
animals against SIV. It worked against the virus that was both free-
floating and in cells, against intravenous and mucosal transmission, and
against different viral strains. The vaccine's immunity was also long-
lasting, protecting the monkeys against a "challenge" infection more
than two years later.
The vaccine used a live attenuated virus, which the vast majority of
scientists consider too dangerous for a retroviral vaccine. Even if it never
caused AIDS (as one kind of attenuated SFV has done in baby monkeys),
attenuated HIV could induce cancer or neurological disease, as
retroviruses often do. Nevertheless, these experiments offer rock-solid
evidence that a vaccine is possible.
There are other reasons for optimism. Recent data from the World
Health Organization's project to describe the genetic variation of HIV
Mark Schools 171
suggest that, although the virus varies tremendously, the parts that are
vulnerable to immune attack might be fairly "conserved," Antibody sera
from some people infected with one strain of HIV neutralized many
other strains, even across clades. The significance of this is not yet
fully understood, but WHO'S vaccine chief. Dr. Jose Esparza, says, "We
cannot assume today that the genetic variability of HIV-1 is an
insurmountable obstacle,"
Perhaps the strongest hope lies in the immune response of human
beings. While it is true that people do not fully recover from HIV
infection, they do mount a powerful counterattack. Indeed, most
people succumb only after years, "If it's a horse race and all you have
to do is tip the balance," says Hilleman, "maybe that's possible,"
Indeed, a few people seem able to ward off the vims. Separate
research teams have found female prostitutes in Kenya and Gambia
who have been repeatedly exposed to HIV for years but have not
become infected. The most probable explanation, concluded one study,
"is that they have been immunized by exposure to HIV." In fact,
researchers found that many of these women had cytotoxic resistance
tailored specifically to HIV; similar immune responses have been found
in exposed but uninfected gay men, drug users, health care workers,
and babies born to HIV-positive mothers.
It remains unknown whether such resistance is enough to protect
most people, or how to induce it artificially. The devil is in the details.
But together with the successfully vaccinated monkeys and the vigorous
immune response of almost everyone, these resistant people constitute
a powerful antidote to pessimism.
Not powerful enough, however, for the private sector. Early on, at least
four large pharmaceutical companies and a bevy of biotechnology firms
threw their hats in the ring, in part because the hepatitis B vaccine
proved that the safer and supposedly cheaper recombinant technology
could work. But as an AIDS vaccine has proven more stubborn, the
private sector has fled.
Of the big companies, only Pasteur Merieux—the world's preemi-
nent vaccine producer—has made a substantial effort. It is pursuing
many different approaches, four already in clinical trials, and the
company says it is devoting one-fifth of its R&D budget to the effort.

However, Pasteur Merieux was recently bought by Rhone-Poulenc, and
some observers worry that the multinational chemical corporation
might replace the Merieux family's humanitarian philosophy with the
same bottom-line mentality that is driving most companies and investors
out of the AIDS vaccine business.
Private funding has completely dried up for the effort at Therion
Biologies, a small firm whose simian prototype vaccine has shown the
ability to induce both antibody and cytotoxic response. Therion's
program, now half its former size, subsists solely on U.S. government
research funds. Three years ago, Bristol-Meyers Squibb substantially cut
back its program, despite encouraging results in monkeys. Last year,
Genentech and BioCine (a joint venture of Chiron and Ciba-Geigy)
slashed their programs by more than 80 percent, after a controversial
decision by a federal scientific panel nixed large human efficacy trials
of their vaccines. The two companies had each spent between $50
million and $100 million shepherding their products, both based on a
viral envelope protein called gpl20, through Phase I and II safety trials.
Last year was also when Merck and its small partner Repligen sus-
pended work on a product they finally concluded wouldn't work, after
spending perhaps $30 million.
At least Merck retains an in-house research teani, eved if most
analysts believe it's small. Burt Dorman's little biotech firm, Acrogen,
has "not yet wet a test tube." For three years, Dorman has been trying
to raise $5 million to try making a whole-killed vaccine, like the kind
Salk made for polio. (When he died, Salk was working on a therapeutic
AIDS vaccine—one that would be given to already-infected people as
an immune booster—using a variation of the whole-killed approach.)
Dorman can't believe that, more than a decade into the epidemic,
almost no one in industry or government is seriously pursuing a
whole-killed approach to a preventative vaccine (see accompanying
box, "Not Our Job"). After all, that's the method used for about a third
of all viral vaccines, and Dorman used it to develop several veterinary
immunizations. In addition, that approach has worked in cats, protecting
them against a leukemia retrovirus with similarities to HIV. "It's simple
common sense to start with things that have worked before," he says.
Mark Schools 173
But investors, says Dorman, weren't excited by the "40-year-old

technology," even though SIV studies were encouraging. Monkeys
inoculated with a whole-killed vaccine got infected, but they lived much
longer than uninoculated controls, and they were less infectious. No
existing vaccine completely repels infection—instead, they prevent the
onset of disease—and many scientists think "sterilizing immunity" will
also be impossible for HIV,
But even before discussing the science, Dorman had to counter "the
standard litany" of objections: "Vaccines are generally perceived to be
bad business, and AIDS vaccines are seen to be the worst. You would
invest a lot of money and time to get it licensed, and if you got it licensed
there'd be a lot of pressure to give it away, especially to the Third World,
Even if you gave it away, you'd still have the liability: if the vaccine
were nothing but salt water, someone would get sick the day after he
got injected, and you'd get sued," Even a group of people who wanted
to donate money got scared off by the specter of liability.
The Rockefeller report noted that the private sector accounts for
about 40 percent of general medical research, but only about 15 percent
of research into an AIDS vaccine—and that estimate was made before
several of the biggest private efforts fizzled, "AIDS vaccines," says
Therion president Dennis Panicali, "have lost their appeal on Wall Street,"
In this sense, AIDS is hardly unique. In the late 1970s, more than a
dozen major companies made vaccines. Now there are only four. Even
though vaccines are the most cost-effective public health measure ever
invented, they generate little profit. Worldwide, vaccines account for
less than 1 percent of all prescription sales, Tlie leading ulcer medica-
tion does better than all vaccines combined.
Development can easily last a decade and cost more than a
quarter-billion dollars. Everything from lab work to quality control costs
more, in part because vaccines tend to be made from fragile biological
material, as opposed to drugs, which are typically made from inert
chemicals. Most importantly, vaccines face far higher hurdles than
therapeutic drugs in getting onto the market. If a daig for a life-
threatening illness can demonstrate that it probably works, it can
usually get accelerated approval, even with serious side effects, AZT,
which is now known to have only a marginal benefit when taken by
itself, was originally approved on this basis, and the drug has rung up
almost $2 billion in sales since 1989.
Because a vaccine is given to healthy people, it must meet much
stricter standards. (It is a common belief among vaccinologists that the
Sabin live-attenuated polio vaccine could not win a license from the
Food and Drug Administration today, because it causes polio in a tiny
fraction of its recipients.) In fact, vaccine developers typically can't
predict whether their product will be licensed until the completion of
double-blinded placebo studies that involve thousands of participants
and span years.
With AIDS, this could take a particularly cruel twist. A vaccine that
hit the jackpot of "sterilizing immunity" could be tested in a trial lasting
perhaps two or three years—not much longer than for other diseases.
But trials for a vaccine that prevents disease might have to last a decade,
perhaps longer.
Brandon Fradd, an M.D. turned securities analyst, has been watch-
ing AIDS vaccines since the late 1980s, first for Shearson Lehman Hutton
and now for Montgomery Securities. Because of the unpredictable—^but
certainly astronomical—R&D costs for an AIDS vaccine, he says the
industry won't gamble until science can demonstrate that "if you do X,
Y, and Z, you pretty much have it." In other words, the private sector
rarely invests in vaccine research until the hard questions have already
been answered and it can smell profit.
When the market fails to provide an important public service,

government is supposed to step in. But Congress and the Clinton
administration have actually worsened the vaccine environment. In
1994, the Vaccines for Children program greatly increased the amount
of vaccine the government buys, and it set a cap on what it pays.
Although the program doesn't include AIDS, it sets a profit-withering
precedent that deters investment in all vaccines. That's why prominent
researchers have joined industry executives in opposing it.
What the government should do, these experts say, is guarantee to
purchase a licensed AIDS vaccine at a price that guarantees a healthy
profit. Even better, it could prime the pump by creating a public-private
consortium that would share R&D costs. The government has done this
MarkSthooft 175
before: Sematech, which carries out semiconductor research, spends

$180 million per year, half provided by the Defense Department. Similar
proposals have targeted the vaccine industry, but they have been
ignored.
Government could also offer massive tax incentives for vaccine
development, extend the patent life on a successful product (giving the
company longer to earn back its R&D costs before competitors can
copy the formula), and exempt an AIDS vaccine from liability lawsuits.
One of the government's few real achievements is the National Vaccine
Injury Compensation Program. It effectively precludes lawsuits arising
from the small number of serious adverse reactions caused by child-
hood vaccines, and it compensates victims from a fund supported by
a small tax on vaccine sales. But the program does not include HIV.
Fradd asks, "Has the government gone out of its way to make
development of a vaccine so cheap that you'd be foolish not to give it
a shot? No." Meanwhile, the federal government will spend $4.2 billion
this year on medical care and social services for people with HIV, private
insurers will pay out another $1.5 billion, and the economic value of
labor lost to AIDS will be $20 billion.
By contrast, the government has earmarked a mere $149 million this

year to search for a vaccine. About $21 million goes to a Department
of Defense program, and the rest goes to the National Institutes of
Health. Although the NIH is often criticized (see accompanying article,
"Not My Job"), its research is indispensable, and it subsidizes academic
labs and private companies alike. Even Pasteur Merieux, the biggest
vaccine firm, says that without aid from the NIH and its much smaller
French-government equivalent, it would be unable to continue its effort.
But NIH allocates just 9 percent of its AIDS budget to vaccines, a
smaller slice of the pie than any AIDS research category. Therapeutics
garners 35 percent; Etiology and Pathogenesis (how disease begins and
develops), 23 percent; Natural History and Epidemiology, 14 per cent;
and Behavioral Research, 12 percent. (The remaining 7 percent goes
mainly to support services.)
"You're asking the question, 'Are we doing enough for vaccines?"'
says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, the NIH branch that conducts the most AIDS
vaccine research. "Enough is a very elusive word." He points out that,
in science, categories often overlap; understanding pathogenesis, for
example, can aid the search for a vaccine. He adds that the budget for
therapeutics is inflated by clinical trials, the most expensive part of
research. More of those trials are occurring for treatments than for
vaccines, he says, because drugs have advanced faster. But even
subtracting the cost of trials, treatment still garners more than twice as
much money as vaccines—and surely part of the reason more drugs are
ready for testing is that they have received the lion's share of resources.
How were these priorities set? "I remember myself in front of the
Congress, saying, 'What we really need to do is basic research, we need
to develop a vaccine,'" says Fauci. "And the Congress beat me over the
head, saying, 'How many people are in clinical trials? How many people
are getting this drug? Is AZT being made available to all these people?"'
The desire to save those already infected was, in the words of Martin
Delaney, founder of the AIDS advocacy group Project Inform, "appro-
priate and heroic." But it also demonstrates how politics drives NIH
research. Fighting for their lives, people with HIV form an intensely
motivated and compelling constituency. But people not yet infected
are very hard to mobilize. Lacking a constituency, the best chance for
ending the epidemic has gotten the least amount of NIH money.
Has there ever been a protest about vaccines? New York ACT UP's Luis
Santiago, one of a handful of activists who have paid attention to the
issue, thinks for a moment and replies, "No, I don't think so."
There hasn't been much insider agitation, either. Medical watch-
dogs, such as Project Inform and the Treatment Action Group, monitor
vaccines, but not as closely as they do treatments, and certainly not as
aggressively. Over the last three years, the American Foundation for
AIDS Research has given about 10 percent of its grants to vaccine-
related activities. The AIDS Action Council has produced a guide to
navigating the ethical minefield of human trials, as has Gay Men's Health
Crisis. But these actions pale when compared to the immense efforts
on therapy and behavioral prevention.
Mark Schools 177
GMHC and two of its largest sister agencies, AIDS Project Los
Angeles and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, are spending $5
million this year on behavioral prevention. Those campaigns employ
46 full-time staff and 385 volunteers. Yet there is not a single employee
at any AIDS organization whose full-time job is to advocate for vaccine
development, says David Gold, a well-connected activist and former
editor of GMHC's medical newsletter Treatment Issues. At some organi-
zations, certain staff members are supposed to monitor both vaccines
and therapeutic drugs, which in practice means that vaccines get short
shrift. Several advocates argue that vaccine science hasn't yet pro-
gressed far enough to warrant serious attention, even though the
purpose of AIDS activism is to spur science, not wait for it.
Why do vaccines get so little attention? "The AIDS activist commu-
nity, and particularly people doing treatment activism, are themselves
HIV-infected," explains Santiago. "It's a survival fight." A similar urgency
fuels behavioral prevention. Condoms can save lives right now; a
vaccine can't.
"You always hear," Gold continues, "that we have a vaccine, it's
prevention. That's so simplistic and so silly. We learn continually that
people slip through the cracks, even when they have all the knowledge,
even when they have all the psychological counseling. I'm not suggest-
ing that vaccine research should be the main thrust of prevention. But
to totally ignore it in any prevention program, well, the costs of that to
people around the world are terrible and tragic."
The omission is so glaring and so illogical that it begs a deeper
explanation: pumping money into vaccines might drain money from
treatment research. Gold flatly refuses to discuss which area of research
is most important. He wants new money for vaccines, and says fighting
over the "meager AIDS research pie" would be "the worst thing that
could happen." But in this era of flat budgets and social conservatism,
new money is unlikely—which means any attempt to increase vaccine
spending would force wrenching triage and, possibly, bitter infighting.
Even more disturbing are the repercussions of success. The discov-
ery of an effective vaccine could cancel the search for a cure. If most
new infections ceased, what company would invest in therapeutics? By
the time a cure was licensed, the market might have literally died out.
A vaccine would save tens, even hundreds of millions of lives, but it
might also be a death warrant for everyone already infected. In the four
decades since Salk's discovery, virtually no treatment research has
occurred for polio,
"I don't think people are making a conscious decision not to
advocate for vaccines because they think it's going to hurt therapy,"
says William Snow, a prominent vaccine activist. Indeed, the neglect
may well be unconscious, determined by guilt about the ambiguous
consequences of success. Especially among HIV-negative gay men, for
whom solidarity with the infected is a community obligation, pursuing
a vaccine can feel like betraying one's friends and lovers.
The irony is that many of those living with the viais want a vaccine,
"I'm HIV-positive," declares Snow, "And I have come to realize that,
important as treatments are, they are probably never going to have an
overall impact on the course of this epidemic, period. And neither is
behavioral change,"
Not Our Job: Why Can't tho Governmont Make a Vaccine?

Whose job is it to make an AIDS academic vaccinologist, conducts
vaccine?"If you ask, you'll hear it's its own research, and subsidizes
the mission of a combination of the R&D of private companies, "If
organizations," says Wayne Koff, you didn't have NIH," says the
who used to am the AIDS vaccine renowned vaccinologist Maurice
program at the National Institute of Hilleman, "you'd really be out
Allergy and Infectious Diseases there without a paddle,"
(NIAID), and now does the same But NIH provides only theo-
for a biotech company, "But it's retical, or "basic," science, which
probably the mission of nobody," private companies are supposed
Indeed, only the U,S, Army says to churn into tangible products,
its mission is to make a vaccine. The trouble is, industry has largely
from test tube to syringe. But its fallen out of the equation, leaving
AIDS vaccine budget is a paltry $21 the AIDS vaccine pipeline almost
million. By contrast, the National empty, "We have the infrastructure
Institutes of Health (NIH) spends to do two to three times as many
$128 million, more than half of all Phase I and II trials as we're doing
the AIDS vaccine money in the now," says Alan Schultz, a top
world. The NIH funds almost every administrator of NIAID's vaccine
might also be a death warrant for everyone already infected. In the four
decades since Salk's discovery, virtually no treatment research has
occurred for polio,
"I don't think people are making a conscious decision not to
advocate for vaccines because they think it's going to hurt therapy,"
says William Snow, a prominent vaccine activist. Indeed, the neglect
may well be unconscious, determined by guilt about the ambiguous
consequences of success. Especially among HIV-negative gay men, for
whom solidarity with the infected is a community obligation, pursuing
a vaccine can feel like betraying one's friends and lovers.
The irony is that many of those living with the viais want a vaccine,
"I'm HIV-positive," declares Snow, "And I have come to realize that,
important as treatments are, they are probably never going to have an
overall impact on the course of this epidemic, period. And neither is
behavioral change,"
Not Our Job: Why Can't tho Governmont Make a Vaccine?

Whose job is it to make an AIDS academic vaccinologist, conducts
vaccine?"If you ask, you'll hear it's its own research, and subsidizes
the mission of a combination of the R&D of private companies, "If
organizations," says Wayne Koff, you didn't have NIH," says the
who used to am the AIDS vaccine renowned vaccinologist Maurice
program at the National Institute of Hilleman, "you'd really be out
Allergy and Infectious Diseases there without a paddle,"
(NIAID), and now does the same But NIH provides only theo-
for a biotech company, "But it's retical, or "basic," science, which
probably the mission of nobody," private companies are supposed
Indeed, only the U,S, Army says to churn into tangible products,
its mission is to make a vaccine. The trouble is, industry has largely
from test tube to syringe. But its fallen out of the equation, leaving
AIDS vaccine budget is a paltry $21 the AIDS vaccine pipeline almost
million. By contrast, the National empty, "We have the infrastructure
Institutes of Health (NIH) spends to do two to three times as many
$128 million, more than half of all Phase I and II trials as we're doing
the AIDS vaccine money in the now," says Alan Schultz, a top
world. The NIH funds almost every administrator of NIAID's vaccine
Mark S(lioof« 179
program, "but we don't have propose experiments in that area.

products." There are also "unsolicited" pro-
NIAID, which receives almost jects, wherein scientists submit
two-thirds of the NIH's AIDS vac- proposals out of the blue: "You
cine budget, is trying to coordi- can never rule out that some sci-
nate more effectively with entist somewhere is going to
industry and is considering manu- have a brilliant idea that will turn
facturing prototype vaccines. But the field on its head," says Patri-
these steps won't solve the deeper cia Fast, associate director of
problems: the NIH moves with NIAID's AIDS vaccine program.
maddening lethargy, its endeavors But this system has allowed
are loosely coordinated, and it research to "drift," says Duke tJni-
slights empirical research. versity's Dani Bolognesi, who is
NIAID director Anthony Fauci chairing an NIH vaccine review
concedes the bureaucratic pace is committee composed of prominent
"very frustrating." Citing contract- scientists. Its task: correct the drift
ing laws that require months for that causes problems big and small.
advertising, review, and other pro- One glitch is that animal testing is
tections against cronyism, he ex- not standardized. Researchers use
plains: "When one of my different viral strains and routes of
colleagues gets a terrific idea and transmission to "challenge" vacci-
I push it through—I mean, I'm nated primates, which makes it
standing there with a whip saying, hard to compare vaccine candi-
'Let's go, let's move'—it still takes dates and immune responses.
a year" until lab work begins. More disturbing is that critical
Very little work at the NIH is questions are not getting an-
assigned. Instead, most research is swered. Bolognesi says "very little
"investigator initiated," meaning attention" has been paid to cyto-
individual scientists create their toxic immunity, and "much too
own projects that peer panels ap- riiuch" to the probably unattain-
prove. able goal of sterilizing immunity.
Defenders of this system ar- He calls for "better steering," per-
gue against directing research haps with input from scientists in
more aggressively, because no industry and academia—^yet "very
one knows for sure which course definitely involving investigator-
to take. But some guidance is initiated research."
given through "solicited" work, Hilleman, who is also on the
in which the NIH defines an im- review committee, would prefer a
portant topic and researchers more radical solution. Isolated in
their separate laboratories, individ- people may not be possible until

ual scientists cannot see the big there are protected people to
picture, he says, so they "don't study. "The ideal way" to discover
know what the hell needs to be the correlates of immunity, says
done." He maintains that the best NIAID's Fast, is to conduct "a
way to fill in "the great big blanks whole bunch of vaccine efficacy
of knowledge" is to invest a com- trials that induce different kinds of
mittee of top scientists with the immune responses, and see what
power of "central direction, central works." But these trials depend on
tracking," and give them the having vaccine candidates, which
money to contract out for work in turn depends largely on the kind
they themselves cannot do. His of applied, empirical research NIH
models? The March of Dimes, scientists disdain.
which conquered polio, and the The consequences can be
military's vaccine programs during shocking. Vaccines for several dis-
Wodd War II. eases are made from killed virus,
But even Hilleman thinks trying and this strategy has produced en-
to centralize NIH research is as couraging results with HIV's sim-
futile as "trying to rearrange the ian cousin, SIV. But it's hard to
bones on a dead horse." NIH's core inactivate HIV and retain impor-
constituency—academic scien- tant "antigens," which stimulate
tists—would mutiny: "Those guys the immune system. Peer review
want total academic freedom." panels keep rejecting proposals to
They also want an emphasis on solve this problem, laments John
"basic" science. Skeptics see career- Killen, director of NIAID's division
ism, because such research leads to of AIDS, because they don't test "a
articles in prestigious journals and captivating hypothesis that will ad-
academic tenure. But it can also vance fundamental knowledge."
result in critical discoveries. The holy So even though, as Killen puts
grail is the "correlates of immunity," it, "one can make a compelling
biological mechanisms that protea case that whole-killed virus ought
against HIV or, like smoke to fire, to be developed, that we ought to
"correlate" with protection. If they pursue it very, very aggressively,"
could be discovered, then "we the NIH has neglected this classic
would design a vaccine around and potentially effective vaccine
them," says Hilleman. strategy.
But the search could take dec- Last year, the Army picked up
ades. Indeed, in a chicken-and-egg the slack, and is now doing the
paradox, finding what protects necessary gruntwork to make a
Mark Schools 181
whole-killed-virus vaccine, ("If "there was a really good, coordi-

you're going to win a war," reasoris nated effort" on a vaccine. After all,
Hilleman, "you better not have dis- NIH has a billion-dollar AIDS
eases holding you back,") Unfortu- budget, and researchers were at-
nately, the Army's small AIDS tending conferences and publish-
research budget is in peril. Con- ihg papers. But then Francis and
gress might slash it by as much as others bent his ear,
75 percent, despite the Army's Berkley convened an interna-
proud history of developing vac- tional group of scientists, pharma-
cines for diseases such as typhoid ceutical executives, and advocates.
and yellow fever. Here is a catch-22 After the four-day conference, the
that symbolizes the government's Rockefeller Foundation committed
AIDS vaccine failures: the Army, to creating a "1990s version of the
the only organization with the March of Dimes," an initiative that
mandate to actually make a vac- would coordinate academic, indus-
cine, doesn't have enough re- trial, and government efforts world-
sources. But the NIH, which has wide to make an AIDS vaccine. It
more resources than any biomedi- is seeking $600 million for an initial
cal institution in the world, doesn't seven-year effort, and it may turn
have its eyes on the prize. to the World Bank or the govern-
ments of wealthy countries. It has
also talked with the newly formed
Don Francis is the Larry Kramer of Albert B, Sabin Vaccine Foundation
vaccines. He fought smallpox and (which has DNA co-discoverer
Ebola with the Centers for Disease James Watson on its board of trus-
Control and now works for tees); that group wants to create a
Genentech, "If one case of Ebola new kind of tax-free bond to sup-
was brought into the U,S,, we port AIDS vaccine work.
would rally everything to stop it," Can Rockefeller raise the
he tells anyone who will listen, inoney? It certainly has experience
"But even though 10,000 people and credibility; in 1930 it outspent
get infected with HIV every day, the U,S, government on medical
you can count all the scientists R&D, and today it is the largest
working on an AIDS vaccine on private funder of international
your fingers and toes," AIDS activities. But more impor-
In 1993, Francis buttonholed tantly, the toll of the epidemic may
Seth Berkley, the Rockefeller Foun- finally have reached a critical mass,
dation's associate director of health Berkley notes that $600 million is
sciences, Berkley had assumed "less than 1 percent of what would
be spent on AIDS prevention and a lot of ideas. I have a lot of

care" worldwide during the same vaccines I'd like to try."
seven-year period. A grassroots constituency may
"I've talked with other pharma- also be growing. NIAID is enroll-
ceutical and biotechnology coming 4,800 people to prepare for
panies," says Therion's Panicali, future vaccine trials. Although this
who attended the Rockefeller con- group conducts no activism, its
ference, "and I think many of us, very existence means that people
even though we initially got into across the country are thinking
this for economic reasons, are about vaccines. And recently,
coming to the point where we're through a slew of media reports,
willing to cooperate. I'm willing to gay men are facing up to how
share any return on an AIDS vac- hard, almost impossible, it is to
cine with any group that can move maintain safer sex over a lifetime.
this thing forward. Because I know It remains to be seen whether this
I could do a lot more if I had the grassroots interest will coalesce
resources, and I don't just mean into activism that will push for a
financial, but clinical infrastruc- vaccine, the one solution that
ture, primates, everything. I have would actually end the epidemic.
PART III:
POLICING SEXUALITY
The essays in this section address the
various means by which governmental institutions have historically
policed deviant sexual behaviors and Identities, Specificallyj these
essays focus upon the often similarly stigmatized public sexualities of
gay men and prostitutes, arid their relationship to the state. Taken
together, the essays in this section reveal a profourid comrndnality
among various fohns of outlaw sexualities, a cominonality made
manifest through the mechanisms of state control, Frdin public health
initiatives to zoriihg laws, these methods of policing sexuality have a
continued impact upon the lives of those targeted by them,
Allan Berube's "History of Gay Bathhouses,'' written in 1985, has
been reprinted in this collection to illustrate the sitniiarities betweeh
today's public sex debates and those that took place during the 1980s,
This essay is a unique historical document not only ih its content, but
in its very existence. Originally submitted as a legal brief to the
California Supreme Court, it represents a specific effort by a historian/
activist to intervene in public policy during a time of intensified anti-gay
repression. By documenting the development of gay bathhouses into
essential coitimunity iristitutions, Berube constructs an alternative legal
argument for allowing them td remain open. The baths are not merely
places to have sex, he argues, but, along with gay bars, represent Some
of the first rheans of developing positive gay social and political
identities. As such, they deserve continued recognition not only for their
185
important place in gay and lesbian history, but also for their continued
potential as venues for organizing to fight the AIDS crisis.
In "Bathhouses and Brothels: Symbolic Sites in Discourse and
Practice," Priscilla Alexander explicitly links the public sexualities of
gay men and prostitutes and their relationship to the state. By drawing
parallels between early 20th-century public health initiatives against
brothels and the current debates around gay bathhouses, she examines
regulatory systems instituted in the name of combatting sexually trans-
mitted disease. Such systems, she argues, are symbolic measures aimed
at controlling deviant populations; as such, they can never be truly
effective public health interventions.
Carol Leigh (a.k.a. Scarlot Harlot) provides a contemporary look at
urban policymaking in "P.I.M.P. (Prostitutes In Municipal Politics)." Her
experience as a prostitutes' rights activist provides her with unique
insight into the political mechanisms at work in the continued battles
over prostitution in San Francisco. Her essay combines historical
analysis, street theater, testimony by prostitutes, and autobiography,
creating a compelling account of the relationship between legal repres-
sion and street prostitution.
Timothy J. Gilfoyle's essay, "From Soubrette Row to Show World:
The Contested Sexualities of Times Square, 1880-1995," documents the
changing sexual landscape of Times Square over the past century. He
links current efforts to remove adult entertainment from this larger-than-
life public space to past reform movements aimed at both indoor and
outdoor prostitution. By illuminating the history of a small piece of New
York's sex industry, his essay provides a means to contextualize current
reform movements aimed at sexually explicit commerce.
Finally, Marc E. Elovitz and P.J. Edwards demystify "The D.O.H.
[Department of Health] Papers," exposing the faulty judicial and
legislative logic that produces irrational and ineffective HIV prevention
measures. They show how, through enacting and enforcing public
health regulations, city governments take aim not only at deviant sexual
behavior and those who engage in it, but also, paradoxically, at public
health itself.
Allon B«rub4
THE HISTORY
OF GAY BATHHOUSES
I tvrote this declaration in one week

in 1984 and submitted it (in slightly different form) on November 5 of
that year to the California Superior Court on behalf of bathhouse
patrons. As a community-based historian, I wanted to inten>ene in the
public and legal debate over closing all the bathhouses, sex clubs, and
adult theaters in San Francisco. A year later, on December 16, 1985,
an adapted version was submitted to the New York State Supreme Cottrt
during the New York City government's campaign to close St. Marks
Baths in Manhattan. (The two declarations have been coinhined here
as one document.)
The dominant legal defense of gay baths at the time was based on a
right-to-privacy argument that attempted to avoid explicit discussions
of gay male sexuality and desire. I wanted to construct an altemative
defense of gay baths that was based on their long history as sexual
institutions, and on the right of gay citizens to use themfor associational
purposes that were sexual as ivell as social and political. The language
in the declaration uses terms and concepts, such as "gay community,"
that were prei>alent in the early 1980s among ivhitegay male activists
like myself, and other terms, such as "physical intimacy" rather than
"sex," that the attorneys believed would be more likely to reach and
persuade our intended audience of judges.
That audience turned out to be much broader. The declaration W€is
published almost in its entirety as a cover story in Coming Up!, a San
187
I- -
188 POLICING PUILIC SEX
Francisco lesbian and gay neivspaper which is now the San Francisco
Bay Times (December 1984), and was summarized in a long article
published in the San Francisco Examiner, the afternoon newspaperfor
theBay Area (November 15, 1984).
For centuries, society has stigmatized homosexual men and women as

sinners, criminals, and diseased because of their sexuality. Baths and
bars were the first institutions in the United States to give gay Americans,
despite these stigmas, a sense of pride in themselves and their sexuality.
As such, gay bars and baths are an integral part of gay political history.
Before there were any openly gay or lesbian leaders, political clubs,
books, films, newspapers, businesses, neighborhoods, churches, or
legally recognized gay rights, several generations of pioneers sponta-
neously created gay bathhouses and lesbian and gay bars. Tliese men
and women risked arrest, jail sentences, loss of families, loss of jobs,
beatiiigs, murders, and the humiliation that could lead to suicide in
order to transform public bars and bathhouses into safety zones where
it was safe to be gay. In a nation which has for generations mobilized
its institutions toward making gay people invisible, illegal, isolated,
ignorant, and silent, gay baths and bars became the first stages of a civil
rights movement for gay people in the United States.
For the gay community, gay bathhouses represent a major success
in a century-long struggle to overcome isolation and develop a sense
of community and pride in their sexuality, to gain their right to sexual
privacy, to win their right to associate with each other in public, and
to create "safety zones" where gay men could be sexual and affectionate
with each other with a minimal threat of violence, blackmail, loss of
employment, arrest, imprisonment, and humiliation.
This declaration is based on six years of research into gay American
history. The sources I have used include oral history interviews,
newspaper clippings, court records, police records, declassified military
and FBI documents, manuscript letters, diaries, published memoirs,
medical journals, and gay and lesbian publications.
Allan BArub4 1S9
The Early History of Gay Bathhousos

The transformation of Turkish baths, Russian baths, public baths, health
resorts, and spas into gay institutions began in the late 19th and early
20th centuries in the United States, In California as in other states, all
sex acts between men were illegal and condemned as "crimes against
nature." Thus, men having sex with each other had no legal right to
privacy. Records of California state appeals court cases around the turn
of the century contain many cases of men who were arrested after
landlords, housekeepers, neighbors, policemen, and YMCA janitors
drilled tiny holes in walls, peeped through keyholes, transoms and
windows, or broke down doors to discover men having sex with each
other. Because all sex acts between men were considered public and
illegal, gay men were forced to become sexual outlaws. They became
experts at stealing moments of privacy and at finding the cracks in
society where they could meet and not get caught,
These "cracks in society" expanded as the tepidly growing cities of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries created more and more public
places where men could l>e anonymous and intimate with each other.
Tliese included public parks at night; certain streets and alleys; empty
boxcars in train yards; remote areas of beaches; YMCA rooms, steam
rooms, and shower stalls; public rest rooms in department stores, train
stations, bus depots, parks, subway stations, and public libraries;
balconies of silent movie theaters; cheap hotel rooms; parked auto-
mobiles; and bathhouses. These locations were attractive because they
offered the protection of anonymity, a degree of privacy, and the
possibility of meeting men interested in sex. They were dangerous
because men who went there could be arrested, blackmailed, beaten,
robbed, or killed.
Despite the dangers, a growing number of men risked having sex
in semi-public places. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing into the
1920s, medical, legal, newspaper, and military reports document that a
number of locations in America's cities had become popular sexual
meeting places for "fairies," "queers," and "perverts," Tliese included
Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. (still popular today); Central Park,
the subway toilets. Riverside Drive, and 14tli Street in New York City;
the Common. Public Garden, and Esplanade in Boston; VMCAs in
nearly every city; and Bughouse Square and Union Station in Chicago.
190 POLICING PU8LIC SEX
In San Francisco, early popular spots included the Ferry Building, Union
Square, Market Street from the Embarcadero to 5th Street, the comer
of Powell and Market, the Embarcadero YMCA, the men's rooms in
Macy's and the Emporium, the streets in the Tenderloin, the balconies
of the Unique Theater and other movie houses on Market Street, the
all-night cafeterias and their toilets on Market Street between 3rd and
5th Streets, the Haman Baths, Sutro Turkish Baths, and the changing
booths at Sutro Baths near the Cliff House.
Bathhouses evolved into gay institutions not by themselves but in
the context of a slowly developing sexual landscape in the nation's
cities. Men—heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual—chose to meet
in the bathhouses as alternatives to other places, usually for reasons of
safety and anonymity.
Historical records beginning in the 1890s document the four major
stages in which bathhouses evolved into homosexual institutions:
Ordinary Bathhouses. Places where men would occasionally have
sex, but where it was unusual.
Favorite Spots. These bathhouses—and YMCAs—developed repu-
tations as "favorite spots" for men to have sex with each other. Word
got out that a certain manager, masseur, employee, or police officer
would look the other way when they were on duty, or that homosexuals
were known to gather there at certain hours, usually in the afternoon
or late at night. Some private bathhouse owners tried to prevent their
places from becoming popular homosexual spots, and called in the
police or hired thugs and private guards. Others did not discourage
their specialized clientele, paid off the cop on the neighborhood beat,
told the managers and employees to keep things discreet, and increased
their profits.
Early Gay Bathhouses. Mostly evolved in the 1920s and 1930s.
Physically, they were no different from other Turkish or Russian baths,
except that sex was permitted in closed and locked cubicles. These
places were subject to raids by vice squads, in which the employees,
managers, and owners could be arrested with their patrons. The owners
sometimes tried to protect their patrons from arrest, blackmail, and
violence if at all possible without hurting their business.
Modem Gay Bathhouses. In the 1950s and 1960s the first of these
places began to open. They were meant to be exclusively gay and
191
catered to the sexual and social needs of gay men. With the beginning
of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s, these bathhouses
underwent dramatic changes. Today there are approximately 200 gay
bathhouses in the United States, from Great Falls, Montana, and Toledo,
Ohio, to New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Using historical documents and oral history inter\'iews, I have been
able to piece together a sketchy picture of what the baths were like in
the first three stages of their emergence as gay meeting places. These
accounts describe why some men chose to go to the baths to meet
sexual partners rather than to other public places, how gay men and
public officials first found out about the "early gay bathhouses," how
the police kept baths under surveillance but let them stay of)en, and
how the baths were affected by the local politics of each city.
Many of the advantages of modern gay bathhouses were already
recognized in the newspaper, medical, and legal reports describing the
earliest "favorite spots": ' • ..
Safety. Patrons felt they were more protected from blackmail at the
baths than in other public places, the baths seemed to offer an
alternative to sex in the public parks, and there was additional safety
in numbers and in their identification as homosexual baths, because
those who would be offended by homosexual behavior would not go
there or would leave.
Democracy and Camaraderie. Some accounts describe "the early
gay bathhouses" as refuges from society's prejudice against homosexu-
als, and as oases of freedom and homosexual camaraderie. The clientele
was primarily homosexual and from a variety of occupations and
classes, temporarily "democratic" and equal in their nakedness. Mem-
bers of the staff, too, were sometimes homosexual, making these early
baths one of the first identifiably gay social and sexual institutions.
Privacy. Sex took place in an establishment separated from the
general citizenry. Tliis created the first urban zone of privacy, as well
as safety, for homosexual men.
Erotic Facilities. Cabins, steam rooms, dressing rooms, pools, and
hot air rooms were all available as places for meeting other patrons.
At primarily homosexual establishments, patrons could feel secure
that other patrons would not be offended by physical intimacy
between men.
193 P0LICIN6 PUBIIC SEX
A Social Environment. Old friendships could be renewed; "new

intimacies" were "ever in the air." Patrons socialized with each other in
the common areas.
Protection. The management and employees often tried to protect
the patrons from violence and blackmail; the police generally allowed
bathhouses to stay open because they were discreet "outlets for the
vast homosexual life ofthe city" and because some ofthe "best citizens"
went there,
Tho Early History of Gay Bathhousos In Now York City

Russian baths, Turkish baths, public baths, and health spas first
developed into "rendezvous for homosexuals" in Europe in the 19th
century, where health spas and mineral bath resorts are still more
popular than in North America. In 1908, Edward Stevenson, a gay New
Yorker living in Europe, reported that "at least fifty baths, in fifteen or
twenty capitals, have established, widely-circulated reputations, as
being homosexual meeting-places, among thomosexualsl who live in
the cities in question or travel around the world. In Paris, there are at
least a dozen baths that are homosexual rendezvous. Five or six are of
wide popularity. In London, there is a small group well-recognized."
Relying on his own experience and the experiences of his friends,
Edward Stevenson also described gay baths in the United States at the
turn of the century. "Resorts in the way of steambaths," he wrote,
are plentifully known—to the initiated. With many such resorts there
is no police interference, though their proceedings and patronage,
night by night, day by day, are perfectly plain, A special factor in
homosexual uses of vapor-bath establishments (in larger cities) is the
fact that in America these are kept open, and much patronized, during
all night-hours, and first morning ones; indeed, some are never closed
at all; in many examples a double staH^ of attendants being employed.
In most such baths, each client has always a separate dressing-room,
usually with a couch. What "goes on" is under the guests own lock
and key, and without surveillance. New York, Boston, Washington,
Chicago, St, Louis, San Francisco, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadel-
phia, are "homosexual capitals."
New York was among the first of American cities where gay bath-
houses opened. In 1908, Edward Stevenson explained that New York
City had several baths. In 1914 a gay professor in Denver wrote that
s 193
"among the many Turkish baths in New York, one is frequently visited
by homosexuals in the afternoon and one in the evening The Turki.sh
baths of America are generally a very safe place for homosexuals The
people you meet have not come here to blackmail. iHomosexuals] from
out of town are not at all reluctant to visit the baths, while people from
the town have to be more careful." In 1918 American artist Charles
Demuth painted an erotic watercolor of himself and other men at the
Lafayette Turkish Baths in Manhattan.
The Everard Turkish Baths, in Chelsea on West 28th Street, was one
of the earliest and longest lived gay baths in the United States. When
il opened at the beginning of the 20th century, it was one of the many
bathhouses visited by "bon vivants" to recover after a night out on the
town. By the 1920s, it had gained a reputation as a homosexual but
clandestine bathhouse. In his autobiography, British playwright Emlyn
Williams' description of his 1927 visit to the Everard Batlxs sounds
surprisingly modem. "Up some stairs." he wrote, "at a desk, an ashen bored
man in shirtsleeves produced a ledger crammed with illegible scrawls. I
added mine, paid my dollar, was handed key, towel and rol:)e, hung the
key on my wrist and mounted to a large flcxir as big as a warehouse and
as high: intersecting rows of 'private rooms," each windowless cell dark
except from a glimmer from above through wire-netting shredded witli
dust and containing a narrow workhouse bed.
"I took off my clothes," Williams continued, "hung them up, pulled
on the robe... and strolled down my passage to a large frosted window
glowing faintly from the street-lamp below." In the light from the
street-lamp, Williams saw men in robes walking down the passageways.
He saw a man outside a locked room who "put his ear to the door and
listened intently." He saw another man "stop at a door which was ajar,
give it a gentle push and peer inside; he might then either slide
noiselessly in and click the door shut, or move on." Lying on his cot in
his cubicle with his own door ajar, he heard in a nearby cubicle "a
casual whisper, a sigh lighter than thistle-down, a smothered moan.
Then appeasement: the snap of a lighter as two strangers sat back for
a smoke and polite murmured small talk, such as they might exchange
in a gym after a workout whicli has done something for them both."
Walking again, he saw a patron getting ready to leave, replacing his robe
with "hat, overcoat with velvet collar, spats, brief-case"—a btisinessman
"to be seen on weekday evenings in his hundreds on the sidewalks,

hailing a taxi to take him Co Grand Central and home to his wife in
Westchester County."
By the 1910s, the New York City Police Department occasionally
raided these early gay bathhouses. In 1916, for example, the New York
Society for the Prevention of Vice described a raid on "a well-known
downtown Turkish bath establishment for men." During September,
agents from the Society infiltrated the bathhouse at night and submitted
a "thorough and detailed report" to Deputy Police Commissioner
Dunham. Police inspectors raided the baths on Sunday, October 22, at
3:00 a.m. Thirty-seven men were arrested, including the manager, 33
patrons, and three employees. Twenty-five patrons were convicted and
sent to prison. On December 7, "while his examination was in progress
before the magistrate, the manager returned to his home and committed
suicide."
In April 1929, a report of a New York City Police raid on the Lafayette
Brothers' Turkish Baths in Manhattan was published in a German gay
magazine. Tlie raid occurred during a city-wide crackdown on "suspi-
cious" people. The night manager, who had apparently protected the
homosexual patrons on his shift, was arrested with the patrons,
A 26-year-oId eyewitness, a European visiting the U.S., described
the baths as "very well-known,.. especially as a place where like-
minded people meet." He entered the baths at 9:(X) p.m., paid $1 at the
door, undressed, and entered the steam room, where he had sex with
another man.
At about ten-thirty I go up to the dormitory and look for a bed. Chance
brings me together with a young, racy Sicilian, Unfortunately, we
hadn't noticed that there were eight detectives among the customers
of the baths Now it's midnight, and I'm already asleep, my friend
at my .side.
Ali at onee there's a whistle, someone yells "Hallo," and everyone
has to go to the front room. The bath is locked shut. Various people
were struck down, kicked, in shon, the brutality of these officials was
simply indescribable. A Swede standing next to me was struck on the
eye with a bunch of keys, and then he got hit in the back so thai two
of his ribs broke. There was a telephone call, and ihen policemen, even
more detectives, an inspector, and the captain of the detectives arrived,
"Put on your clothes," Everyone, from the night manager to the most
Allan BArubA 195
recent arrival, was put in the paddy wagon, taken to the station, and
jailed. By noon on Sunday we appeared before the magistrate's court
at 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street and were charged with things we hadn't
done. All of the forty-five people who were there were fined ten
dollars or two days in the workhouse, except for four who were
sentenced to six months, three weeks, two weeks and one month...
"This is the crudest treatment I've ever been through," the young man
concluded. "I would place the blame for this on the terrible furtiveness
and phony shame which prevails here in America..."
When these gay bathhouses emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, they
offered homosexual men a new option: they could meet and have sex
in a gay batlihouse, in addition to having sex with "normal" men in a
public bathhouse. Many men who came out before there were any gay
baths looked down on having sex with other gay men. When having
sex in the parks, restrooms, docks, and other public places, they
preferred "servicing" straight men.
It was a later generation of gay men who, partly by using the openly
gay bathhouses, learned to enjoy having sex with and loving other gay
men. At a time when no one was saying "gay is good," the creation of
an institution in which gay men were encouraged to appreciate each
other was a major step toward gay pride. Since then, several generations
of gay men—partly because of the opportunities provided them by gay
bathhouses and, later, gay bars—have learned to prefer sexual partners
who are also gay. The bathhouses, thus, are partly responsible for this
major change in the sexual behavior and self-acceptance of gay men.
These early gay baths went through dramatic changes during World
War II. Thousands of servicemen went to the baths in New York City,
the nation's East Coast Port of Embarkation, before shipping overseas
to the European War. Many were afraid they would never return, and
felt they deserved this one last chance to enjoy other men in the freedom
of the baths. The Everard Baths, the Mount Morris Baths in Harlem, the
Times Square Baths on 42nd Street, and the old St. Marks Baths, among
others, were popular spots during the war, "The place was jammed,"
recalled a longtime employee of the Everard Baths, "I mean in those
days if you were in your twenties you really, honest to God really,
didn't know how long you had to live. And so they came here and it
was fantastic. It was the best time in my life and this was the best place
I'd ever been and it was the same for most of the guys." In addition,
the Sloane House YMCA, as well as the Men's Residence Club Ca former
YMCA) on 56th Street, were so packed with gay servicemen and
civilians during World War II that they often resembled gay baths. The
Men's Residence Club contained a steam room, massage rooms,
showers, and a pool, as well as small rooms that were rented by the
night. "More and more people came down to the pool," wrote one
patron, Donald Vining, of the Residence Club in his wartime diary,
"until there were six in beside myself, four of whom I've been to bed
with. The more I thought about it, the funnier it struck me."
During the 1950s and early 1960s, an anti-homosexual panic swept
the country, inspired by McCarthyism, which in part targeted gay bars
and baths in many cities. State legislatures passed new laws against gay
bars. In New York, the State Liquor Authority made it illegal for a
bartender to serve homosexual patrons. In the summer of I960, nearly
every gay bar and restaurant in Manhattan was closed down. City police
departments, using entrapment techniques, stepped up arrests of gay
men and lesbians. Gay bathhouses were also targets. In February 1957,
for example. New York City police raided the old St. Marks Baths and
arrested 31 men, charging them with "immoral acts." The men arrested
included a social worker, a school teacher, a Transit Authority patrolman,
a stockbroker, a doctor, a tailor, a night club entertainer, an undertaker,
an interpreter, and a traffic consultant.
The Early History of Gay Bathhouses in San Francisco
In San Francisco, the first references to sex between men in the City's
Turkish baths began in the 1890s. One account noted that a small group
of homosexuals who frequented a certain Turkish baths temporarily
stayed away out of fear when San Francisco newspapers revealed the
sodomy angle of the Oscar Wilde trial in London. Another account, in
a male shipowner's diary from the 1890s, described his reaction when
a sherry dealer from London asked him where he could find a male
partner. The diarist wrote: "Got doorman at Fairmont iHotel] to arrange
meeting at Sutro's Turkish Baths..."
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, a few of these "favorite spots" in
San Francisco began to turn into predominantly gay bathhouses. These
are the earliest gay bathhouses in San Francisco that anyone alive today
Allan B4rubA 197
remembers. One was known as the Palace Baths near the Palace Hotel;
another was known as Jack's Baths on 3rd Street near Mission Street.
A man who frequented the baths in the 1920s and 1930s remembers
that Jack's Baths "may have been intended as a 'real' Turkish (style)
Baths," but it quickly developed into a gay bathhouse.
Sometime in the mid-thirties, a Jack G, opened a baths on Post St.,
between Polk and Van Ness. It had as many small cubicles (each with
cot, chair, closet, a locking door) as possible; a steam room, warm
room, masseurs, showers, T-room, tliough no pool By midnight on
Friday and Saturday nights, the Baths was filled to beyond capac-
ity— Someone spread the rumor that the U.C, football team came over
from Berkeley every Monday evening; the place was mobbed, though
it is doubtful if any of these athletes did appear. In those days, however,
many "men" (young, handsome, available, but still MEN), came for
servicing.
Not all San Francisco bathhouses in these early years made the
transition from straight to gay with as much acceptance as Jack's Baths.
In 1933, a New York City weekly ran an account of a San Francisco
bathhouse in the process of becoming primarily gay against the wishes
of the owners. Seizing the opportunity to demean homosexuals in its
pages, the weekly described an extremely dangerous situation in the
baths. Yet men persisted in patronizing the place, possibly in the hope that
it would eventually accept and protect them as other baths had done.
'In Frisco," this expose noted,
may be found a baths where queers gather who boast of this neat
hide-and-seek joint, and although the management aims towards
eliminating such patronage, the practice is carried on surreptitiously... to
the accompaniment of warnings by and for queer patrons iHomo-
sexuals say to each other;] "It's an all right place, but one must be
careful of the manager, he's rough"...and who wouldn't be! Many a
pansy, caught in the act of approach, has been tos.sed from this place
by a gang of wise-money boys who patronize the establishment in
hours of relaxation from guiding the destinies of their rackets. A martyr
among homos is the lad who died of a Fractured skull a few years
ago. Cracked on the head with a gin bottle while 'bathing," he was
accused posthumously of having attempted unnatural sex acts upon
his assailants.
191 POLICING PUBLIC S U
The fact that this murdered young man was considered a "martyr
among homos" suggests that, even as early as 1933, the creation of safe,
gay bathhouses was seen as a gay cause, and one in which the stakes
were extremely high. In these early efforts to transform the baths lie
the roots of a later, more explicitly political movement that tried to
create some safety and protection for gay and lesbian sexuality.
During World War II, thousands of servicemen went to the baths in
San Francisco, the nation's West Coast Port of Embarkation, before
shipping overseas to the Pacific War. The baths were an important
alternative to picking someone up in Union Square, the main gay
cruising park in the city, because they offered a safe and private place
at a time when hotel rooms downtown were impossible to find. They
were also a tjseful alternative to the gay bars that began to open in San
Francisco during the war, because many of the bars were declared
"off-limits to military personnel."
Jack's Baths, especially, is remembered by many servicemen w^ho
went there before fighting in the Pacific. Bob Ruffing, who served in
the Navy, learned alx)Ut Jack's by asking a bartender at the Claridge
Room, a discreet gay bar on Maiden Lane that was popular with sailors.
Trying to be noncommittal, the bartender ignored Bob's question, then
cautiously said, "Some of the people come in here and tell me about
something called Jack's." "I finally found out from him where Jack's
was," Bob recalls, 'and went there immediately. It's the same Jack's that
exists now, on Post. [Jack's was closed during the 1984 bathhouse
crackdown.) That was the best one then."
i3ob still fondly remembers what Jack's Baths was like during the
war. "It was good," he told me in an interview. "Very, very busy. They
didn't have an orgy room, just regular rooms. There wasn't much aaivity
in the hallways—you'd just leave your door open. It was all vety quiet,
but .still very active, I think it was all gay, or at least people who went
there knew it was gay. There was never any question about being
careful when making passes at certain people."
During one of his visits to Jack's Baths in 1944, Bob met another
Navy man with whom a mutual fondne.ss grew, "It seemed like a good
thing," Bob remembers. "We saw each other several times, outside of
Jack's Baths. We went back out to the Pacific. It seemed so good to
each of us that we decided to get together after the war to give it a
Allan BirubA 199
whirl. And it turned out to be a 15-year love affair, the major love affair
of my life. So nice things can come out of the baths."
During the 1950s, two major changes took place that affected gay
baths in San Francisco. For the first time, bathhouses, like the Club
Turkish Baths in the Tenderloin, opened with the intent of catering to
a homosexual clientele. Tliese were the city's first modem gay bath-
houses. But this happened at a time when an anti-homosexual panic
was sweeping the nation.
Bob Ruffing remembers how the San Francisco baths changed
during the McCarthy Era. "I used my real name when T went to Jack's
during the war," he told me. "It wasn't raided during the war. I'm sure
that the military knew it was there, just as they knew whorehouses
were there, and they served a purpose. No, there was no question of
any raid then. That came afterward. They raided the baths a few times.
When you went to the baths [in the 1950sl you just automatically (at
least I did) invented another name—never signed your own name—
because when they would raid the bars or the baths, they'd publi.sh the
complete list of people who were taken in, in the paper, in the
Examiner. That was a nasty period, the '50s and early '60s."
Despite the stepped-up attacks on gay baths and bars during the
1950s, which one local newspaper called a "war on homosexuals," more
baths—ând bars—slowly opened as explicitly gay institutions. In May
1954, possibly the first guide to San Francisco's gay bars and baths was
printed. It was a mimeographed sheet handed out at a meeting of the
Mattachine Society, San Francisco's first gay organization. Warning that
it was "Confidential and Unofficial," it listed Jack's Baihs, the Club Baths
on Turk, the Palace Batlis on 3rd Street, and the San Francisco Baths
on Ellis.
In the 1960s, a second generation of modem gay baths opened,
including Dave's Baths on Broadway (which moved from Sansome and
Washington and claimed to be the first gay-owned bathhouse in San
Francisco), the Baths on 21st Street, and the Ritch Street Baths. Sexual
activity began to decline in San Francisco's Embarcadero YMCA, along
with many YMCAs in other cities, which had earned reputations as
"favorite spots" for sexual activity iit lea.st as early as World War II. Men
who had frequented the Y attribute this decline to the opening of gay
baths during the same period. In March 1966, as more gay bathhouses
200 POLICING PUBIIC SIX
continued to open in San Francisco, the Assistant Police Chief

announced a "crackdown.,. on public baths.., suspected of tolerat-
ing. .. homosexual problems," Undercover police arrested a Methodist
minister at the 21st Street Baths for "making sexual advances to a
policeman," as well as a cterk who refused to call the police after the
arrest of his patron. The crackdown was short-lived, and the minister's
trial ended in a hung jury.
Bathhouses and Gay Liberation

In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, gay bathhouses went
through dramatic changes. During this period the Gay Liberation
Movement was bom after days of rioting in New York's Greenwich
Village, sparked by a routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay
bar in Sheridan Square. During the years following the Stonewall
Rebellion, many new bathhouses opened. No longer clandestine, this
new generation of batlihouses established themselves as a major gay
institution that could both shape and respond to the rapid social, sexual,
and political changes that were taking place. The following are
examples of some of these important changes:
• When the 1967 "Summer of Love" brought about a new communal
ethic among the hippie generation, "orgy rooms" were installed in
some bathhouses where group sex became more popular.
• Around 1970, the Club Baths—a newly-formed, national chain of
gay bathhouses—opened a bathhouse on First Avenue in Manhattan
at the site of an old Russian Baths. The Club Baths was Manhattan's
first openly gay-owned bathhouse. At the same time, the Continental
Baths opened on West 74th Street, offering a disco dance floor, a
Saturday night cabaret, a pool, and clean, spacious facilities that
could serve 1,000 men. One gay guide from ihe 1970s described
the Continental Baths as "a unique, total gay environment" that
"revolutionized the bath scene in New York." In the early 1970s, the
Everard Baths refurbished the premises after a fire and became an
openly gay bathhouse, ending decades of clandestine activity. The
East Side Sauna, Man's Country, Beacon Baths, Odyssey Baths,
Apollo Sauna, Broadway Baths, Wall Street Sauna, Sauna Bath and
Health Club, and The Barracks all opened as gay baths in Manhattan
in the 1970s. Most of these places, even those that were not
Allan BArubA 201
gay-owned, hired an all-gay staff. In 1977, new owners bought the

old St. Marks Baths, which was in decline, refurbished it, and
reop)ened it as a bathhouse designed for gay men. Tlie remainder
of the previous clientele—mostly older men who had lived in the
neighborhood for years—were directed to the Russian Baths on 10th
Street.
In January 1976, Representative Willie Brown's "consenting adult
sex bill" went into effect in California. As a result, gay bathhouses
and the sex that went on in them became legal for the first time.
In January 1978, to test whether this new Califomia law applied to
bathhouses, San Francisco pwlice officers from Northern Station
raided the Liberty Baths on Post Street and arrested three patrons
for "lewd conduct" in a public place. This was the first bathhouse
raid since the 1966 crackdown, but Police Chief Charles Gain denied
that the police were beginning a new crackdown. The District
Attorney's office dropped the charges against the three men.
"There's no question this was a private place," the DA's office said.
In the late 70s, with new technology that allowed the projection of
video tapes onto large screens, bathhouses began installing video
rooms where patrons could masturbate alone or with each other
while watching sex videos that many could not afford to have at
home. In fact, masturbation became a more acceptable practice in
the bathhouses partly as a result of these videos.
In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, several San Francisco bathhouses,
including Dave's, the Barracks, Ul>erty Baths, and the Bulldog Baths,
encouraged gay artists who were their employees or patrons to
decorate the walls with erotic murals. For some artists, these
provided the first opportunity to create and display their art for an
exclusively gay audience.
In the 1970s, fantasy environments were installed which recreated
the erotic situations that were still illegal and dangerous outside the
walls of the baths. Glory holes recreated the toilets. Mazes recreated
park bushes and undergrowth. Steam rooms and gyms recreated the
YMCAs. Video rooms recreated the balconies and back rows of
movie theaters. Indcxir trailer trucks recreated "the trucks," a cruising
area of trailer trucks parked along the waterfront at the end of
Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, Cells recreated and trans-

formed the environment of prisons and jails, where generations of
gay men had ended up for having sex in toilets, parks, and the
YMCA.
• In the 1970s, some bathhouses featured entertainers who appealed
to a gay male audience. The best known was Bette Midler, who
began her career, accompanied by Barry Manilow, performing for
gay men at the Continental Baths in New York City. Cab Calloway,
Tiny Tim, Dick Gregory, and John Davidson, among other enter-
tainers, also appeared at the Continental Baths' Saturday night
cabarets. In San Francisco, one bathhouse opened a "Starlite
Cabaret" which featured local singers and bands. Country-western
bands also began playing on "Western Night."
• Several bathhouses began to feature weekly "Movie Nights," where
they showed Hollywood films, especially gay cult classics such as
Some Like It Hot and The Women. At the same time, Hollywood
produced two major films situated in gay bathhouses; The Ritz—
modeled after New York's Continental Baths—and Saturday Night
At the Batbs.
• Many gay bathhouses threw parties for their members on major
holidays: Lesbian and Gay Pride Day, Halloween, New Year's Eve,
Christmas, and Valentine's Day. These parties were a tremendous
service to the gay men whose families liad rejected them and for
whom holidays represented a particularly depressing time of year.
Holiday parties at the baths, especially for the men who frequented
them regularly, could become a social event among familiar people
that affirmed their sexuality and offered a welcome alternative to
loneliness and isolation.
• Also in the 70s, some bathhouses offered confidential testing for
venereal disease (later called "sexually transmitted disease") on
special nights, in New York, the Beacon Baths offered VD check-ups
on Wednesday nights and the Club Baths offered testing every
Thursday night. When the St. Marks Baths opened as a gay-owned
establishment in the late 1970s, the New York City Department of
Public Health Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases conducted
on-site testing for syphilis and gonorrhea and recruited volunteers
203
for their Hepatitis B Vaccine Development Program. In San Fran-

cisco, the City Clinic conduaed free VD testing, usually by gay
health workers, in many of the baths on a regular basis.
• In the 1970s, as the San Francisco gay press began to come of age,
newspapers like Kalendar, Bay Area Reporter. The Sentinel, The
Cnisader, Databoy, The Voice, Coming Up!, and others were distrib-
uted free in the bathhouses as well as in the bars.
• Throughout the 1970s and 1980s gay bathhouses offered their
patrons a variety of new services: snack bars and cafes, dance floors
for disco and country-western dancing, theme nights such as Buddy
Night and Western Night, and discounts for students and service-
men. Some also served the gay community by sponsoring benefits
for community organizations. In 1972, for example, the Beacon
Baths in New York, which was not gay-owned, held benefits for
the newly formed Gay Activists Alliance.
• Another service offered in the bathhouses was voter registration.
During ihe 1980 election, the St. Marks Baths in New York, with the
assistance of the League of Women Voters, conducted a voter
registration drive on the premises. Voter registration cards were
handed out and mailed from the St, Marks Baths. This drive was the
first lime that some ofthe younger bathhouse patroas had registered
to vote. Again, during the 1985 primary election, the St. Marks Baths
printed and handed out on the premises 5,000 voter registration
buttons that said "VOTE FOR YOUR LIFE" and displayed posters
that said "VOTE FOR YOUR LIFE—REGISTER NOW!"
• The 1980s have witnessed even more dramatic changes at the baths.
With the increased popularity of exercise and body-building, gyms
and workout rooms were installed. In 1984, safe sex posters,
brochures, cards, and condoms have begun to be displayed and
distributed, and safe sex forums have been held on the premises.
Orgy rooms, mazes, and glory holes have been boarded up. Several
bathhouses have introduced "jack-off nights, and some have made
their facilities available to private gay male jack-off clubs.
The century of changes that gay bathhouses have undergone since
they first appeared in the United States, and their ability to survive
repeated campaigns to shut them down, demonstrates not only their
Advertisement, NewsWest,
October 17, 1975
Advertisement, California Scene
Vol. 3, No. 5, Summer 1972
Photo: Avedon
Design: Todd Frexler
Advertisement, 1982
Artvrork: Antonio Peroles
strength and resilience, but also their importance as an urban institution

that serves many needs.
Th« Urban Politics of Goy Bathhous* Raidi,

Closuras, and Survoiilanc* in Hisforicol Perspectivo
Since they were first discovered by city officials in the United States,
gay bathhouses and bars have been kept under surveillance and raided
by undercover pralice officers. Yet police departments have also toler-
ated gay baths and bars as pragmatic solutions to the difficult law
enforcement problem of controlling sex in public places. During
periodic "anti-vice drives," "clean-up campaigns," and "morals drives,"
bars and bathhouses have been harassed, raided, and shut down by
police, state liquor agents, district attorneys, military police, and
arsonists. During these drives, plainclothes police officers have com-
piled secret reports on the sexual behavior inside bars and baths,
including dancing, caressing, kissing, and invitations to one's home.
Plainclothes undercover officers have used entrapment techniques—
later declared unconstitutional by the courts—to entice gay men and
women into illegal sexual activities. The city and state used this sexual
"evidence" to close gay bars and baths in an attempt to deny homo-
sexuals any legal places to congregate.
Since the late 19th century, these urban campaigns against homo-
sexual meeting places have developed as a political strategy for
attaining specific political goals: election to office, larger police budgets,
and new laws. Their success at preventing homosexuals from gathering
in public or in stopping gay sexual acts has been at best short-lived.
These campaigns against homosexual institutions have occurred:
• preceding local elections, conventions, world's fairs, or Olympic
games;
• when a particular city agency—the police department, mayor's
office, health department, district attorney's office—is under attack
and needs to prove it has been doing a good job, wants to promote
new legislation, or wants to be awarded a larger budget or staff, and
creates an emergency situation to justify its requests; or
• when a moral crusader—a politician, eleaoral candidate, minister,
or anti-gay organization—uses the local press to sensationalize a
307
shocking event and feed p>opular prejudices to scapregoat homo-

sexuals as the cause of any number of problems, usually with the
result of diverting public attention away from the problem's real
cause.
As the lesbian and gay political movement has gathered momentum
and strength in the last 30 years in the United States, the rationale for
attacking bars and baths has changed in response. Until the last 15
years, the rhetoric used to attack these gay institutions alleged that they
threaten public morals, endanger public health, and encourage crime.
More recently, attacks on gay bars and baths have kept the rhetoric of
sin, disease, and crime, but have also become part of a more overt
strategy to attack the gay community's growing political power. The
goals of these political attacks on bars and baths are usually to discredit
and divide the gay community, to deny gay men and women places to
meet, and to make the gay and lesbian communities vulnerable to
further attacks by shocking the public with a sexuality it often doesn't
understand. These recent political attacks are based on the awareness
that gay baths and bars have developed into social and political
institutions that are vital to the survival of the gay community.
On the surface, the goals of the early anti-balh and anti-bar
campaigns in San Francisco and New York were to protect public
morals, health, and safety by:
• rounding up all homosexuals and driving them out of the city once
and for all;
• eliminating sex between men in public, semi-public, and even
private places;
• preventing homosexual men and women from meeting or socializ-
ing in public.
No campaign against gay bars or gay bathhouses has succeeded in
attaining these three goals. Bars and baths have remained open,
homosexuals have always stayed one step ahead of the police in finding
new places to meet or have sex, and gay men and lesbians have been
forced to become more politically aware and organized. These cam-
paigns have always failed to achieve their stated goals because the
social costs became too high, or the real goals were eventually achieved:
30S POLICING PUBLIC SEX
a new anti-gay law on the books, a larger budget for a government

agency, or a candidate's election to public office.
Historically, the social costs associated with the surveillance, raids, and
closure of gay baths and bars have always been unexpectedly high. These
costs are paid by gay and bisexual men and women, bathhouse and bar
owners, city governments, and the general public in different ways:
Gay Men and Women. Bath and bar patrons have been subjected
to arresLs,fines,police brutality, imprisonment, divorce and loss of child
custody, loss of jobs, beatings and murders at the hands of a panicked
public, isolation, humiliation, and, too often, suicide.
Bar and Bathhouse Owners. During campaigns against their estab-
lishments, owners have lost their licenses, businesses, and livelihood,
laid off employees, suffered a decline in business or damage to their
premises by police, and faced pressure from corrupt public officials to
engage in criminal activity in the form of pay-offs in order to stay in
business.
City Governments and Taxpayers. These must pay agents to
conduct surveillance of gay men and women and provide salaries for
a stepped-up police force and overtime for existing officers during raids
and closures, More ofi"icers must be assigned to conduct surveillance
and make arrests when bath and bar patrons are driven into public
places. The public is exposed to social and sexual behavior which some
people find offensive. Huge court and attorney costs result from
prosecution of those arrested. The costs of civil suits and appeals must
often be borne by taxpayers. In more recent years, cities have had to
pay the costs of repairing severe damage to public property in several
North American cities caused during riots in response to raids and
closures of bars and baths. Costly task forces and commissions have
been appointed to study the damage to property and violation of civil
rights that have accompanied campaigns against gay baths and bars.
And most importantly, cities have been faced witli the frightening task
of controlling public panics that have gotten out of hand, and with
restoring the morale of a city where all trust between the gay community
and the local government has broken down.
Allan Utuhi 309
The Social Costs and Results

of Campaigns Against Gay Bars and Baths
while the general public may quickly forget them, the stories of how
gay men and women survived or were destroyed in these bathhouse
and bar raids have been passed down from one generation to another,
told and retold as part of the unique history and culture of the lesbian
and gay communities. As a result, gay men and women carry with them
a lingering mistrust of government and its attempts to intervene in their
lives. Any government attempt to once again eliminate all bars or all
bathhouses or sex clubs, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot help
but take its place in the long history of government anacks on
homosexuals and their meeting places that has created this mistrust and
kept it alive. In addition, such a drastic measure as the closure of all
gay bathhouses cannot avoid the unexpected social costs that have
plagued city governments, the gay community, and the genera! public
during similar campaigns in the past, as the following examples show:
THE BAKER STREET CLUB, SAN FRANCISCO, 1918

• Goals. To round up all men associated with the Baker Street Club
and their friends.
• Targets. The Baker Street Club, its lessees and patrons, their friends.
• Agents. San Francisco Police Department Morals Squad, Army
Police, Army Intelligence, the courts.
• Description. In 1918, two men who had met at the YMCA leased
two flats at 2525 Baker Street, where they held private parties for
gay men and offered rooms for gay men to have sex in private. In
Febaiary, the San Francisco Police Department Morals Squad and
U.S. Army police put the Baker Street Club flats under surveillance.
They planted a cook as a spy to collect evidence of sexual activity.
On February 16, officers entered the premises and began what
newspapers called a "siege of the two flats." For a period of ten
days, as men entered the house, they were locked up in rooms as
prisoners and questioned until they signed confessions, gave the
names of their friends, and surrendered personal letters and address
books. Eleven men were arrested at the house, including an auditor
for the Standard Oil Company, various salesmen and clerks, two
singers, a broker, a soldier, and a retired merchant.
Using the names extracted from the arrested men, the San
Francisco morals squad began a campaign to round up a second
wave of homosexuals who could provide them with even more
names. They began to hunt down men in other cities and on military
bases. Eventually, in this second wave. 20 more men were arrested,
including the two cops on the l:>eat in the Baker Street neighborhood.
• Social/Financial Consequences
(1) The Gay Community. At least 31 men arrested, some of
whom lost their jobs, went to jail, or jumped bail to flee the city;
two attempted suicides.
(2) The City. Several months of trials in Superior Court, a
seven-week grand jury investigation, city and military surveillance
of the club for several weeks, a wave of anti-homosexual hysteria
that needed to be controlled.
• Results. The round-up had to stop when names of "prominent
citizens" were mentioned in court and turned in to the police. The
Baker Street Club was closed, but the Taylor Street Club apparently
was not investigated. A small number of defendants appealed their
convictions to the Califomia Supreme Court and were acquitted
several years later. The State Supreme Court ruled that the charges
brought against the arrested men—for committing acts of "fellatio"—
were invalid, because the California Legislature had just passed an
anti-Spanish law requiring that state law had to be written in the
English language, and the word "fellatio" could not be found in an
English dictionary.
WORLD WAR n MORALS DRIVE, SAN FRANOSCO, 1943

• Goals. To protect servicemen in the Bay Area from homosexuals
who were known to gather in public areas.
• Targets. Bars frequented by homosexual patrons. Union Square
(the city's main "cruising" park for gay men).
• Agents. San Francisco Police Department Morals Squad, a joint
Army and Navy Vice Control Board functioning within the 12th
Allan Birubi 211
Naval District and the Northern California Sector of the Western

Defer\se Command, District Provost Marshal, District Morale Officer,
San Francisco Health Department, State Board of Equalization.
Description. In May 1943 a joint Army and Navy Vice Control
Board was formed to crack down on vice, venereal disease, and
liquor license violations in Northern California "to protect service-
men," Targeted bars were placed under surveillance, and many had
their licenses suspended.
During the first wave, nearly all of the six or seven gay bars in
San Francisco were harassed or had their licenses suspended.
Patrons quickly moved to other bars that would accept their business.
Within a week or so, two bars in Chinatown became the new gay
spots. When police discovered that the gay bar crowd had relocated
to Chinatown, they sent in plainclothesmen to conduct surveillance.
During a second wave ofthe drive, they pressured the management
of Li Po's bar to refuse admittance to gay patrons, and the bar lost
all of its weekend business. Police raided The Rickshaw and arrested
24 patrons. Two lesbians fought back during the raid, and a small
riot ensued. Police also arrested dozens of men in Union Square.
For two weeks, the gay bar crowd had nowhere to go. Finally,
on a Saturday night, over 50 gay men showed up at the Top of the
Mark and converted this hotel bar into a gay bar. The Top of the
Mark thus earned the reputation as a "favorite spot" for gay nien for
the rest of the war.
Social/Financial Consequences
(1) The Gay Community. At least 50 arrests, several injuries
during a street brawl, suspended licenses or loss of business at
approximately ten bars that admitted gay patrons.
(2) The City. The creation of a floating and growing population
of gay bar patrons looking for new places to congregate; the cost
of mobilizing state, city, and military agents to conduct weeks of
surveillance and mass arrests; and undetermined numbers of trials
and Board of Equalization hearings.
Results. Union Square remained the main homosexual cruising
park throughout the war. Tlie gay bathhou.ses near Third Street and
Mission were not raided, possibly in the hope that the Union Square
crowd would move its sexual activity to the baths. The gay bar
crowd stayed one step ahead of the police, first moving to another
set of bars in Chinatown, then moving to the best hotel bars, where
they were subject to less police harassment.
BATHHOUSE RAIDS, TORONTO, 1981

• Goals. These raids followed a successful anti-gay campaign that
drove a pro-gay mayor out of office and ushered in an anti-gay
administration. As a secret undercover operation, the goals of the
raids were never clearly stated. But it seems likely they were an
attempt to test whether the recently politically active gay community
could be discredited and destroyed by attacking the bathhouses.
• Targets. All six gay bathhouses in Toronto.
• ^ e n t s . Toronto Municipal Police Officers, Toronto Municipal
Police Intelligence Bureau, Attorney General's Office.
• Description. On the evening of February 5, 1981. Toronto Police
raided four of the six gay bathhouses in the city. Undercover police
intelligence officers had placed all the bathhouses under surveil-
lance for a six-month period. Starting at 11 p.m., undercover police
officers entered the baihhou.ses and arrested 304 men in a three-
hour, city-wide raid.
Patrons were rounded up in ways designed to terrify and
humiliate them. At one bathhouse, men clad only in towels were
lined up in iJie snow on the street while they were questioned. In
another, patrons were herded into shower rooms and lined up
naked against the walls. Several patrons reported that one police
officer told his prisoners in the shower room, "Too bad the showers
aren I hooked up to the gas." A city-commissioned report following
the raids revealed that arresting officers scrutinized the genitals and
anuses of the arrested men.
The day after the raids, a crowd of 3,000 angry demonstrators
marched on the police station tliat had conducted the raids. They then
marched to the Onlario Parliament, where they iried to break down
the doors in a riot reminiscent of the rage expressed at San Francisco's
City Hall the night tlic courts gave Supervisor Dan White a light
sentence for the assassination of gay Supervisor Harvey Milk and
Mayor George Moscone. More arrests followed the demonstration.
Allan 8ArubA 213
On June 16, angered by the massive protests of the original raids,

police raided the remaining two bathhouses. Two thousand angry
demonstrators once again marched on the police station.
Social/Financial Consequences
(1) Tbe Gay Community. A total of 304 men were arrested in
the February and June raids. Police called the employers of many
of these men to ask if they knew their employees had been arrested.
As a result, many men lost their jobs. One bathhouse went out of
business as a result of the damages to its property.
(2) The City. Estimates of total cost to taxpayers of the police
operations and court proceedings ranged as high as $10 million.
These included over $35,000 of damages to the premises of the
bathhouses when police broke down doors, walls, and lockers during
the raid. A massive mobilization of police was required to monitor and
control three large protest demonstniUons.
An official investigation was commissioned by the city, in which
the police were strongly condemned for their actions, the right of
men to engage in consensual sex was confirmed, tlie practice of
conducting police surveillance of public parks and rest rooms was
attacked, and the city was urged to take emergency steps to rebuild
a climate of trust and cooperation between the city and the gay
community. i
Results. Of the 304 men arrested, the city was successml in
producing only one clear criminal conviction. Most of the raided
bathhouses are still open in 1984. The raids built support for the
gay community that had never existed before. A coalition of groups
was formed to defend the arrested men, with much support from
non-gay legal groups, churches, labor, minority groups, and teach-
ers' organizations. The bathhouse raids are remembered today as
the "turning point" in Canadian gay political history, creating a
powerful, organized, politically aware gay community. One Toronto
city councilman, a gay man, called the raids the gay equivalent of
"Crystal Night in Nazi Germany—when the Jews found out where
they were really at."
A Historicol Perspective
on the Bathhouse Closure, San Francisco, 1984
San Francisco has never attempted to close every gay bathhouse and
sex club in the city before. But from 1954 to 1965, the San Francisco
Police Department, the District Attorney's Office, State Alcoholic
Beverage Control agents, the Examiner, and the Grand Jury all joined
forces in an attempt to shut down all gay bars. By 1955, these agencies
had succeeded in pressuring the Califomia Legislature to pass a law
allowing the revocation of a bar's license if it had the reputation as a
"resort for sexual p)erverts."
The anti-gay-bar drive began in 1954 because, according to Police
Chief Michael Gaffney, "a small army of homosexuals had invaded the
city, many of them apparently driven here after other cities had been
closed to them by similar raids." During these years, massive drives
against gay and lesbian bars swept through most large American cities
as the bars developed into the major gay institution in the United States.
These national anti-homosexual campaigns created a growing popula-
tion of gay refugees moving from city to city looking for safe places to
live and meet.
During a major crackdown in San Francisco following the passage
of the "resorts for sex perverts" law, gay men and women drove to
Oakland, San Mateo, and San Jose. Police chiefs in these neighboring
communities complained of a "huge influx" of "undesirables" and
began conducting surveillance and raids of local bars whose weekend
crowds had suddenly swelled with gay San Franciscans.
By 1958, 15 of San Francisco's 20 gay bars had had their licenses
challenged, and hundreds of bar patrons had been arrested. In 1959,
one bar owner's appeal reached the California State Supreme Court,
which ruled that homosexuals had a right to gather in public and that
gay bars could remain licensed. But arrests and bar raids continued in
the early 1960s, with police sending in undercover agents looking for
"lewd acts" on the premises. By 1965, after hundreds of bar patrons
had been arrested, public opinion began to turn against the police and
in support of leaving gay bars alone, While many public officials still
wanted to eliminate gay bars, the new pragmatic approach was summed
up by the Assistant Distria Attorney: "It's better to have homosexuals
in one resort rather than spread out throughout the city."
Allan Berube 315
An unexpected consequence of this 10-year attempt to close all gay

bars was to transform the gay community into a politically aware, vocal
minority in hxa! politics. During the gay community's campaign to
defend the bars, the Tavern Guild (an ii.ssociatiun of gay bar ownen^
and bartenders) was formed, a gay press emerged and was distributed
through [he bai-s antl Ixiths. defense coiruTilttees were set up. those arrested
learned lo plead n(n guilty' in court, and the Council on Religion and
the Homosexual was formed. By 1965. city officials finally realized that
gay bars were a permanent part of the city and could not be eliminated
without tremendous social, financial, and tuiinan costs. In 19H4. more
than 120 lesbian and gay bars ure in operation in San Francisco.
Two weeks after the bathhouse closure in San Francisco, it is
impossible to predict what the social and financial costs will be.
However, a pattern is already taking shape which indicates that, as in
past campaigns against the bars, the unexpected costs to the city
threaten to become extremely high:
SAN FRANCISCO, 1984

• Goals. To stop the spread of AIDS by preventing gay men from
engaging in "high risk" sexual contact with each other. |
• Targets. Gay bathhouses, sex clubs, and adult bookstores.
• Agents. San Francisco Health Department. Mayor's OfJlce. private
undercover detectives, San Francisco Police Department, the courts.
• Social/Financial Costs
(1) Dispersion of gay bathhouse patrons.
OtttsideSan Francisco. A baihhouse owner in Oakland reported
that the u'eekend after the bathhouse closLire. his business inc reused
142 percent, indicating that, as In the 1956 cnickdown on guy bans,
.some bathhouse patrons prefer to relocate their sexual activity to
other bathhouses remaining open. This places the burden of
changing the sexual behavior of San Francisco residents onto our
neighboring city governments.
To Old Sexual Territories. Historically, the development of gay
bathhouses has offered gay men and the police a practical solution
to the danger and the law enforcement prolilems associaied with
sex in public places. A vivid example of how bathhouses have
served the needs of both gay men and police is found in a warning
to gay men visiting Los Angeles printed in a 1977 gay bar and bath
guide. It warned that the L.A.P.D, Police Chief "hates queers" and
watches for "sex acts in public and semi-public places Cruise
where you like, but don't have sex in toilets, parks, alleys, or parked
cars. Do as the locals do and use tlie gay establishments. There are so
many baths in L.A. because park and tearoom Itoiletl sex are so
dangerous."
Elimination of gay bathhouses should therefore re-create the
pre-bathhouse sexual landscape. Reports have already appeared in
the gay press, and stories are spreading through the gay community,
that street arrests have stepped up on Polk Street and South of
Market, and that mounted police have increased surveillance of
Buena Vista Park. This suggests that sexual activity that had occurred
in the baths is now occurring with more frequency in the parks and
streets, and that the burden of controlling this behavior is now
placed on the Police Depanment, If this is the case, then men who
were previously law-abiding in their sexual activity are now being
driven to criminal behavior, Bathhouse closure removes the legal
alternative to "outlaw" sex and encourages the practice of sex
outside the law.
Another "old territory" for sexual activity is the YMOV. Since the
degree of sexual activity in the YMCAs declined as gay bathhouses
opened, it might be expected that sexual activity in the YMCAs
would increa.se as bathhouses are closed. Tliis predictable outcome
has already taken place. On November 1, signs went up at the
Central YMCA in response to increased sexual activity in the steam
room and dry room following the bathhouse closure. "The Central
YMCA is not a bathhouse," the signs read. "We will not function as
one." The next day the steam rcxjm and dry rcxim were closed. On
November 3, they were reopened, but with the introduction of
continual surveillance of the facilities.
(2) Financial Costs. According to the Health Department's
supplemental budget request, the initial expense of hiring detectives
to conduct the surveillance that led to the closure of San Francisco's
bathhouses and sex clubs was $35,000, and an additional $25,000
has been requested for continued surveillance. To this must be
Allan Uruhi 217
added the costs of sending undercover San Francisco police officers

into the baths to compile the Mayor's secret bathhouse sex report.
Additional immediate costs include court costs following sex arrests,
the costs of filing the city's suit against the bathhouses, and the costs
of processing the bathhouse and sex club closures through the state
appeals courts, with the possibility that, as in the past, the bath-
houses will ultimately remain open.
(3J Political Consequences. As might be expected, bathhouse
closure has already forced portions of the gay community to
organize themselves around defending the baths, as the gay com-
munity has done in the past to defend the bars in New York and
San Francisco and the baths in Toronto. New gay organizations
include the Northern California Bathhouse Owners' Association, the
Adult Entertainment Association, the Community Partnership (a
coalition of gay community groups), and the Committee to Preserve
Our Sexual and Civil Liberties. In addition, anti-gay organizations
including the Moral Majority, Cops for Christ, and a group in San
Antonio, Texas, have begun to use the batliliouse closure to fuel
their anti-gay campaigns.
Conclusions
As a liistorian whose research has focused on the social effects of attacks
against gay institutions in the past, it is clear to me that the attempted
closure of the baths will only relocate the sexual activity that has taken
place in the baths. In addition, the unexpected social, financial, and
health costs to the gay community, the city, and the general public will
be high. Bathhouse closure will create more problems than it will solve.
To avoid unexpected social problems and still take strong measures
to halt the spread of AIDS, I suggest that:
1) Bathhouses should be used as a community resource to promote
safe sex and safe sex education. Bathhouses have undergone dramatic
clianges over the last 100 years, changes that gay men have sometimes
risked and lost their lives to bring about. They have become an integral
part of the gay community. In the last year they have changed even
more dramatically by taking measures to encourage safe sex practices
and education. The baths should be allowed to continue these rapid
changes in order to serve the community's needs during the present
health crisis. Tliey should entice gay men into them, especially if they
now engage in high-risk sex, so they can be exposed to more safe sex
education. They should function as erotic environments where safe sex
activity can be encouraged and where men can enjoy sexual intimacy
and affection in an environment that is safe, clean, and pro-gay.
2) Bathhouses should he preserved as zones of safety, privacy, and
peer support as long as gay men are attackedfor their sexuality. Harvey
Milk once called our society "fiercely heterosexual," a dangerous place
to be gay. Since his murder in 1988, things have not changed. Gay men
and lesbians are still assaulted and attacked every day for their sexuality.
A national survey recently discovered that over 90 percent of gay men
and lesbians have been physically attacked or otherwise victimized
because they were gay. Gay bathhouses still represent one of the very
few places where gay men can escape the anti-gay hostility that remains
out of control in our city and our nation.
3) A working relationship of cooperation and trust between the city
and the gay community is critical in thefightagainst AIDS. Bathhouse
closure, together with the sex arrests and political backlash that are likely
to follow, will make city agencies and the g3y community adversaries
once again. Tliis will increase mistrust and lack of compliance with
government health programs, Until recently, a remarkable aspect of the
fight against AIDS has been the unprecedented cooperative relationship
between the local government and the gay community in San Francisco.
The breakdown of that relationship will endanger lives and obstruct the
health measures necessary to halt the spread of AIDS.
To defend its case for closure, the San Francisco Health Department
has already begun to stigmatize segments of the gay community. It has
called bathhouse owners "merchants of death" and bathhouse patrons
"Evil Knievels of medicine." It has also revived the old rhetoric of crime
and disease that was used to attack the bars. Part of the old anti-gay
rhetoric was that "sick" people went to the bars to spread the "disease"
of homosexuality. In its press statement announcing closure of the
baths, the Health Department similarly portrayed the bathhouses as "not
fostering gay liberation" but instead "fostering disease and death." This
inflammatory rhetoric and scapegoating only adds to the gay commu-
nity's fears that it is once again under attack.
Recently, reports that the Centers for Disease Control has considered
establishing an HTLV-3 name registry have also increased gay men's
Allan BirubA 219
fears of government persecution. As a result of these fears, a University

of California-Berkeley epidemiological study that the gay community
desperately needs may now be doomed for lack of volunteers. The
bathhouse closure further increases mistrust of health authorities. Fears
have even been expressed that confidential bathhouse membership lists
might he used to discriminate against these men.
My research over the past five years has revealed that the gay
community's fears that the government will compile massive lists of
names, enforce quarantines, and establish detention camps for homo-
sexuals are justified. Both the Army and Navy after World War 11
compiled lists of over 10,000 men suspected of being homosexual. In
1956, the FBI compiled a 53-page list of homosexuals in San Francisco
and their friends. The federal government still has these lists. Several
times during World War II, the Navy Department considered a plan to
set up detention camps where homosexuals identified by the military
would be interned for the duration ofthe war, allegedly not to punish
them but to protect the nation.
As a historian, it is clear to me that yet another government campaign
to dismantle gay institutions, even in the well-intentioned anempt to
stop the spread of AIDS, will only backfire. Instead, the city should join
the gay community in using these institutions creatively. The city's goals
should include positive steps toward (1) dispelling fears that the city is
attacking the gay community, (2) rebuilding a working relationship of
trust and cooperation with the gay community, and (3) decreasing
scapegoating and restoring morale. Bathhouse closure, surveillance of
sexual activity, sex arrests, the compiling of lists of names, and
scapegoating will only undermine these goals.
Instead of wasting its time defending its bathhouses, its bars, and its
very right to exist, the gay community must be allowed to devote all of
its resources, including the bathhouses, toward promoting the research,
health programs, and safe sex educational measures that will save lives.
NOTES
Court declarations do not ordinarily include footnoces, so this note on sources has
been added to direct the reader to works that I consulted and quoted.
Sources for early accounts of gay bathhouses and ihe campaigns lo close them
include Edward I. Prime Stevenson iXavier Mayne, pseudonym). The Inter^xes: A
History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life iNapies?], privately printed [by
2 2 0 POLICING PUBLIC SEX
R. Rispoli, 1908?]. photo reprint (New York: Arno Press, 1975): Broadway Brevities,
a tabloid weekly (New York, 1933X Jonaihan iNed] Katz, Gay American History:
Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Crowell. 1976) and Gay/Lesbian
Almanac Wew York: Harper Colophon, 1983); Emlyn Williams, {•mtyti: An Early
Autobiography (1927-1935) (New York: Penguin, 1973; reprinted 1982); and Toio
Le Grand. "The Golden Age of Queens." series of anicles, untdenliReti San Francisco
gay newspaper circa 1970s.
Sources for World War II and 1950s accounts include Bois Burke newspaper
clipping colieaion from 1950s lo 1960s at the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of
Nonhern California Archives in San Francisco; Donald Vining, A Gay Diary:
}933-1946lHevj York: Pepys Press, 1979); John Nichols. "The Way II Was; Gay Ufe
in World War II America," QQ Magazine 7 (August 1975); and oral history interview
with Bob Ruffing by Allan Bmilse, May 1980. See also Bembe, Coming Out Under
Fire: The History of Gay Meit and Womeniu tf'or/rf War ruo (New York: Free Press,
1990), especially Chapter 4, "The Gang's All Here': The Gay Life and Vice Control."
For accounts of the Toronto bathhouse raids, see especially the coverage in The
Body Politic (Toronio. 1981).
Other sources include author'.s interview with the manager of St. Marks BaiJis,
Octol3er 1985; authors personal newspaper clipping collection from 1983 to 1985
on local campaigns to clo.se gay bathhouses; and various gay travel guides,
magazines, and newspapers from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Since this declaration was written, other histories of gay male life that dLscuss
bathhouses have been published, most notably Gay New York; Gender, Urban
Culture and ihe Making of the Gay Male World J890-1940by George Chauncey. Jr.
(New York: Basic Books, 1994).
Priscilla Alexander
BATHHOUSES
AND BROTHELS
Symbolic Sites
in Discourse and Practice
Such a sexual public health concern

[as AIDS] must cause the citizenry of this country to do everything in
their power to smash the homosexual movement in this country to
make sure these kinds of acts are criminalized.
—Dallas Doctors Against AIDS, '
[W]hen the sexual behavior of the individual stiirts to wreak havoc on

the health of the community... it is up to doctors and health organiza-
tions to try to stop it [by eliminating] the source of contagion.
—William Atchley, San Francisco
General Hospital, 1984^
[Prostitution] is now as certainly the abiding place and inexhaustible

source of... venereal disease, as the marshy swamp is the abode of the
malaria-carrying mosquito, or the polluted water supply of the typhoid
bacillus.
—-Levine L. Dock, Nurses"
Settlement, New York City, 1910'
I would argue that licensing, and strict medical supervision of prosti-

tution is much preferable to the deadly consequences of public
hypocrisy and neglea. . j
—Stephen C. Joseph, Former Health
Commissioner, New York City, .1992'*
221
Introduction
A major controversy in this age of AIDS has been whether or not to
close gay bathhouses as sites of contagion, just as earlier efforts to
control syphilis epidemics focused on brothels. Both approaches
scapegoat places as surrogates for the actors playing in the context of a
dreaded disease. The recent battles over the bathhouses have worried
some people that official closure would be followed, in due time, by
other repressive measures, as state attention shifted from the sites to the
actors, the not quite stated bur real targets of control efforts. And, indeed,
that is what happened in the early pan of this century, as cities and states
enacted and enforced red light abatement acts to close brothels and
red-liglit districts, syphilis continued unalâted, and one state after another
passed laws prohibiting prostitution. Despite the wave of refomis of sexual
law during tlie 1970s and 1980s that included tiepeal of laws prohibiting
fornication, adultery, and in many states, wxlomy, no stjite reversed the
prohibition of prostitution, and instead, many liave increased its inteasity.^
Thus, our relative freedom today as gay or bisexual people is fragile,
and the historic record is not particularly comforting.
In the published discourse on the bathhouse question, some have
framed the issue as a dichotomy lêtween "personal liberty." on the one
hand, and "public health," on the other. While some have described this
dichotomy as new, specific to our time,** the same splits occurred over
what to do about smallpox and tulierculosis, as well as syphilis, in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries,^ Thus, while 19th-century public
health functionaries in Paris specifically segregated prostitutes from
those whose rights needed to be considered or protected," in England,
feminists and abolitionists were successful in overturning the Contagious
Diseases Acts, which forced women "known to be common prostitutes"
to regi.ster and submit to regLilar, often brutal, vaginal examinations, and
quarantined those who were infected, Tlie feminist opposition was
based on the idea that such regulations violated the prostitutes' rights.'
Tn the battle over instituting similar regulations in the United States, the
combined forces of those concerned for the prostitutes' civil rights and
tliose who thought the European systems were a failure were successful
in blocking regulation. However, once that viaory was accomplished,
public health officials walked away, and those fenninists who still worried
about prostitutes' welfare were unable to block the ensuing prohibition.
Priicilla Alexander 223
The idea of confining registered and inspected women in regulated

brothels reappears with some regularity in this country, France, and
England, for example, even as no state legislator in this country is
prepared to consider repealing the existing prohibition of prostitution.
In the long term, no laws against mutually voluntary sexual behavior
liave succeeded in completely suppressing that behavior. Nor have laws
barring the sites of sexual traasgt^ssion ever succeeded in eliminating such
sites, If bathhouses are closed, some other site will take their place, just as
massage parlors, modeling studios, and escort services have taken the
place of visible brotliels. Meanwhile, clandestine brothels and prostitutes
operate in every town or city of any size worldwide. Tliroughout history,
wherever there has been a market, or some other site where people
congregate, prostitxttes have set up shop. Neither the demand for sexual
sea'ices, nor the willingness to supply those services is likely to disappear,
although the extent and form may change over time.
Th» BathhouM DcbaUs (San Francisco)

Before Stonewall, San FrancLsco had a long history of police invasions
into gay spaces, and one of the landmarks of gay history in the city was
a series of raids on bars in 1965, which resulted in one of the first open
gay protests in the city. As Allan Berube has written, bars and
bathhouses, walled off from the dangerous street, became a haven for
gay people—lesbians as well as gay men."^ Although tliere was always
the risk of a police raid, the raids were episodic, and much of the time
the world within was a safe place to dress as you wanted to," and to
meet with, touch, dance with the object of your desire, your love. I, who
catne out in 1973, missed the direct experience of that necessarily hidden
world, but I have many friends who lived througii it, and some who were
jailed for it. Moreover, even for those of us who did not experience the
years of police repression directly, the meaning of our illegality lingers on
and the threat of its return hangs over our lives. TlUs cloud colored the
1980s delyate around tlie bathhouse closures, which was also affected by
differing ways of coping with tlie stigma of lêing gay, The response to
lîng gay, or queer, or a whore, is not the same for all who fit under those
labels. At opposite extremes are those who celebrate the difference, the
deviation from the norm, and fling it at the dogs at our feet, and tliose
who want to seem "normal" in order to avoid their
They should be shut down.,.. They don't care that they might be killing
people, they are so greedy. Every one of them should be shut down.
—Bill Kraus, 1983''
Mayor Dianne Eeinstein was a conservative Democrat in a liberal
Democratic city. Whenever she ran for office, she courted the gay vote,
without which it is hard to win an election in San Francisco. Once
elected, however, her courtship always cooled, and her relationship
with the gay community has always been uneasy. For example, shortly
after one election, she told a Ladies' Home Journal Teponer that "gays
shouldn't flaunt their sexuality."" As the number of people with AIDS
in San Francisco mounted in the early 1980s, Feinstein took advantage
of the crisis to demand that the bathhouses—^which, as sites of overt
sexuality, had always made her uncomfortable—be closed. Mervyn
Silverman, however, then the Director of Public Health, was aware of
the unsuccessful history of attacking sites of prostitution to control
STDs, and mindful of the need to work cooperatively with any
community vulnerable to this dreadful disease,'^ Thus, in 1983 and
1984, under increasing pressure to close the bathhouses, he instead
required the management to post warning notices atx)ut AIDS. He was
still looking for alternatives to closure when Larry Littlejohn, sometime
gay rights activist, forced the issue by proposing to place a referendum
on the question on the city ballot, which would have engendered a
public battle few gay rights aaivists wanted.'^
By that time, community norms were beginning to change. For
example, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence had published the first
brochure promoting safer sex, some gay men were organizing what
became a popular series of "jerk-off' parties to encourage low-risk
sexual expression, the Stop AIDS project was talking to gay men on
the street, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation was planning
projects in the bathhouses,'"' Although some people challenged the idea
of safer sex, most notably the Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club and
political supporters of Harry Britt (Harvey Milk's successor as Supervi-
sor), many AIDS activists wanted to use the bathhouses (indoors,
contained, with walls for posters and table tops for baskets of condoms)
as sites of tniasformative communication. They knew that closing the
bathhouses would not stop casual sex, and thought it would be much
harder to promote, and especially to monitor, safer sex in parks and
Prisdlla Alexander 225
alleyways.'** We were wrong in thinking that one could not promote

safer sex under the open sky (or in truck stops and public restrooms),
as numerous projects around the wodd have done.'^ However, in the
end, the decision to close the bathhouses was made on political, not
public health, grounds. It was the need to avoid a citywide public
debate on the issue, and exhaustion at resisting Feinstein, that finally
convinced Silverman to order the bathhouses to close.
In some ways it is comparable to past history when cities tried to close
down houses of prostitution to control venereal disease. That didn't
work, and we don't think clo.sing down the bathhouses will work either.
People will just go elsewhere.
—Shirley Fannin, Associate Deputy Director, Communicable
Disease Control Program. Los Angeles Counly, 1984""
I became involved in the bathhouse debates because I wanted to
contribute what I knew about how earlier efforts to control sexually
transtTiitted diseases in Britain by controlling brothels, prostitution, and
prostitutes had failed while worsening prostitutes' lives. Since the late
18th and early 19th centuries, the traditional "public health" approach
has been either to regulate prostitution with mandatory licensing or
registration and testing of female prostitutes (the 19th-century European
model), or to close brothels -^ndprohihit prostitution (the U.S. mcxiel).^'
Neither approach has succeeded, then or now, in stemming epidemics
of syphilis and gonorrhea, and both may, in fact, contribute to their
intensity. This is particularly likely if laws and regulations, and their
enfotrement, drive sex workers away from health care providers out
of fear of being identified as infected, or force the industry further
underground to avoid the notice of the police. In addition, although
diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted infections is after-tlie-fact
and not preventative, both sex workers and clients are more willing to
take risks: the prostitutes because they figure that any infection will be
caught, and the clients because they assume the sex worker is "clean."
Such measures are rooted in the idea that prostitutes are the source of
STDs, rather than players in a complex web of people and behaviors.
That this point of view has not changed much within the medical
establishment has had serious repercussions in the struggle to deal with
AIDS. At its most extreme, it has led to a kind of magical thinking that,
for example, mass treating "prostitutes" (women) with antibiotics.
without bothering to make a specific diagnosis, will prevent STDs in

clients (men) and reduce their vulnerability to HTV infection.
Tho Scopogoating of ProstHutts

lUncontrolled prostitution made New York City al hotbed where...
syphilis may be cultivated and disseminated.
—William Sanger, MD, 1858"
ITlhcre should be no toleration of any "tenderloin" or "red light" district,
and... above all there should be the most relentless war on commer-
cialized vice.
—^Theodore Roosevelt, ^
As soon as epidemiologists began to think that AIDS was a sexually
transmitted disease, they defined prostitutes as a "reservoir" or "pool"
of infection, or a "core group of high frequency transmitters."^'* In 1985,
William Haseltine, a pathologist at the Dana Farber Institute in Boston,
testified before the U.S. Congress that 20 percent of prostitutes in
Germany were infected with HIV. Wlien epidemiologists working in
Germany wrote a letter to the Lancet contesting his assertions with data
from actual studies, Haseltine simply asserted that he was right, without
offering counterevidence to .substantiate his claims.^^ By 1987, California
and a number of other states were considering laws mandating testing
of anyone convicted on prostitution charges. By 1989, one woman in
Nevada was serving a 10-year sentence, another 20 years. By December
1994, 21 states had passed similar laws, 11 of which also made
prostitution a felony for anyone arrested after testing positive.^^ This
assumption that prostiaites (almost always conceptualized as female) are
the source of HIV or any other STD has serious consequences.
It is easy to scapegoat prostitutes for a number of reasons, not the
least of which is the history of stigmatization and criminalization of
prostitution and prostitutes. All 50 states in the United States define
prostitutes as criminals through laws prohibiting both soliciting and
engaging in prostitution, which is defined as sex in exchange for money
or other consideration or compensation. All states also prohibit a range
of activities associated with prostitution, including living off the earn-
ings of a prostitute (pimping), and running a sex work business
(pandering, procuring, running a "disorderly" hou.se).^" Until recently,
most, if not all, statutes explicitly defined prostitutes as female, although
Msdlla AlMandvr 227
as many as a third of street-based sex workers are male or transgender.

Despite the change to gender neutrality, however, the enforcement of
such laws continues to be discriminatory, and some states' laws
regarding the keeping of a disorderly house continue to ba.se their
definition of such a house on the presence of yf-mtrfe prostitutes within
it. In 1994, 85,783 p>eople were arrested in the United States on
prostitution-related charges, 61.4 percent of them women. Despite the
nationwide fanfare about crackdowns on clients (of which there are
five to eight times as many as sex workers), it is unlikely that many
more than 10 percent of those arrested are clients. Indeed, in 1993 in
New York State, 12,243 people were arrested on prostitution-related
charges (79.8 percent female), including 742 for promoting prostitution
(62.7 percent female), 1312 for patronizing a prostitute (99.1 percent
male), and 10,189 for soliciting, engaging, or agreeing to engage in
prostitution (91.2 percent female). Even with the specific law targeting
clients, the 1312 clients repre.sented only 10.7 percent of thase arrested.^
In the mid-1980s, police and district attorneys began to charge
female prostitutes with attempted murder or "reckle.ss endangerment"
because they had tested po.sitive for HIV, or the police thought they
had. In one case after another, the only evidence police have cited has
been that the women they so charged were standing on a street corner.
Indeed, when I reviewed stories written about these arrests from 1988
to the end of 1994,1 was struck by the difference in the way reporters
described cases involving men (not prostitutes) and women (especially
prostitutes). Tlie men who were arrested were said to have lied alxiut
their HIV status, engaged in unprotected sex, raped, and/or infected
someone. Many were involved in long-term relationships with women
to whom ihey lied and with whom they refused to use condoms, and
who became infected. The women charged, on the other hand, nearly
always had a history of arrests on prostitution charges by undercover
police officers. In those cases, reporters made no mention of whether
or not the woman had engaged in acts that could tninsmit HIV to a
client, or whether she used condoms. Nor did they mention whether or
not she had informed clients of her HIV status.® The journalists made
an assumption about her practices based not on knowledge of prostitu-
tion or the particular prostitute, but on assumptions about female
pollution and contagion. At least one of them should have known better.
In January 1985, two years before California's mandatory testing law

was passed, gay journalist Randy Shilts leamed that the police had
arrested a woman whom they suspected of being infected with HIV,
and went along when the police took her to San Francisco General
Hospital to have her tested. The AIDS clinic staff, being much more
sensitive to issues of confidentiality and informed consent than Shilts
or the police, refused to test her. Although Shilts wrote about the woman
at least twice in the San Francisco Chronicle and again in his book And
the Band Played On, after spending hours, perhaps days, talking to her,
he never mentioned whether or not she used condoms or engaged in
the sex practices—vaginal and anal sex—likely to provide an opportu-
nity for transmission to a client.^
In 1992, the El Paso County Health Department presented a poster
at the International Conference on AIDS in Amsterdam, discussing what
they called dilemmas posed by 19 "recalcitrant" individuals in Colorado
Springs. Tliey used three case studies to illustrate their concerns. One
case involved an Hrv+ man who "engaged in unprotected intercourse,
including anal intercourse, with his steady girlfriend... did not tell her
that he was HIV-infected and did not use condoms." The woman
became infected. The second case involved a woman diagnosed with
HIV infection while she was hospitalized for manic depression. The
authors reported that she had unprotected sex with a man several times
loefore telling him she was infected, and that her "roommate notified
police and health department officials that tshe] was both HIV positive
and mentally ill and that she brought 'dozens' of men lo their apartment,
that she had sex with these men and did not inform them that she was
infected or ask them to use condoms." The report did not indicate
whether or not she had infected anyone. The third case study involved
a woman who had been arrested more than 100 limes between 1978
and 1990 on a variety of drug and prostiiution-related cliarges. The
poster said she had "seroconverted in 1987," and in 1989 was served
with a Cease and Desist order, which prohibited her from engaging in
prostitution and needle sharing, orentering two designated geo-
graphic areas of the city where street prostitution occurs."-*' According
to the report, she repeatedly violated this order by "continuing to solicit
for prostitution and failing to report for counseling" until she was
arrested and charged, in 1991, under "a criminal statute which prohibits
PrlKlllo Alaxondvr 229
engaging in prostitution with knowledge of HIV infection." She was

convicted and sentenced to prison for three yeare. Like Shilts, the
authors never mentioned sex acts, condoms, or evidence of transmis-
sion to others;" it was enough for them, as it was for the police, that
she was in the proscribed neighborhood,*-^
In virtually all prostitution arrests, an undercover police officer seeks
out individuals he thinks are prostitutes, either waiting for them to offer
to engage in sex in exchange for money, or, as is more often the case,
soliciting them himself. In both California and New York, the prostitu-
tion law specifies that it is a crime to "agree" to engage in sex exchanged
for money, establishing entrapment as legal in this context,^
Considering all this, it is not hard to conclude that female prostitutes
are, in the collective mind, symbols on which to projea fear of disease,
pollution, contagion, and urban decay, and that the use of criminal law
to prosecute for HIV transmission or exposure is also essentially
symbolic. That is, It has little to do with reducing the spread of HIV,
and evetything to do with concepts of innocence and guilt, acceptable
and unacceptable sexuality," Not much has changed since World War
I in this country, when 30,000 women were incarcerated in an effort to
control the spread of VD,^ or even the 18th and 19th centuries, when
public health officials in Paris, the birthplace of modern scapegoating
of female prostitutes for disease, consiruaed thefirstformal registration
and testing scheme.
Th« Traditional Public Hoalth Approach I

Prior to the development of antibiotics in 1943, the primary focus of
public health measures to reduce the incidence of syphilis and gonor-
rhea was mandatory examination of prostitutes and confinement, or
quarantine, of those who appeared to l>e infected. In 19th-century Paris,
prostitutes, and any women the police thought might be prostitutes,"
had to register with the morals squad and submit to regular examina-
tions—either in the closed brothels (maisons closes) where they were
confined by government regulation, or at public health stations. It was
a system that lasted for more than a century, in clear violation of the
developing concept of human rights.^ According to modern hi.storians,
the system appears to have had little or no impact on sexually
transmitted diseases, since some women had repeated infections and
others did not, with little change over the years. Similar regulations
imposed in Italy and Britain in the 1860s were equally ineffectual. The
British experience with the Contagious Diseases Acts, first enacted in
1864, is a case in point. When the incidence of syphilis failed to decline
in the pon cities where the acts were already in force, the Parliament
extended the acts to additional cities in 1866 and 1869'^
In the United States, the approach was somewhat different. Com-
munity resistance in the 1870s had ended a program in St. Louis copied
from the French, and in 1914 Abraham Flexner argued in his trail-blaz-
ing study of Europe's systems that the licensing and testing was
wonhless, although thousands of women were caught up in its net.'"'
In.stead, the U.S. turned first to the tactic of closing the tolerated brothel
districts that existed in most U.S. cities, using syphilis as the pretext.
Wlien that failed to reduce the incidence of syphilis, one state after
another enacted laws prohibiting prostitution outright. These actions
pushed hundreds, if not thousands, of women first to migrate from one
city to another, looking for legal places to work, and then out onto the
streets as the brothels disappeared, where they were subject to rape as
well as arrest. In 1910, the U.S. Congress passed the Mann Act, which
prohibited anyone (men) from transporting anyone (women) across
state lines for "immoral purposes." Supposedly designed to prevent
"trafficking in women," or so-called "white slavery," it was enforced as
much against unmarried lovers as against prostitutes and managers. In
thai same year, the New York State legislature enacted the Page Law,
which, like today's HIV-related laws, mandated that anyone arrested
on prostitution charges be forcibly examined for syphilis. In effect, this
established a de facto licensing and testing system while keeping the
work itself, and the workers, illegal. Although the New York Court of
Appeals overturned the law a year later, it resurfaced in the guise of
both formal and informal regulations, particularly in cities and towns
near military bases. As Allan Brandt points out, "The crackdown on
prostitutes constituted the most concerted attack on civil liberties in the
name of public health in American history."'*'
Even today, with antibiotics, regularly scheduled diagnosis and
treatment of STDs among sex workere, whether mandatory or volun-
tary, prevents infection among neither the sex workers nor those who
have sex with them. For example, in Nairobi, Kenya, between July and
October 1981, women identified as "prostitutes" were examined on a
PrUcllla AUxoNdar 231
weekly basis, in a special sex workers' clinic, and treated if infeaed.

The average number of days between infections was 25.6 days, despite
their regular visits.*" Moreover, while these low-income women contin-
ued to attend the clinic regularly, the prevalence of HIV infection among
them increased from 4 percent in 1981 to 6l percent in 1985, and later
rose to more than 85 percent.'*^ j
In Indonesia, women who work in the sex industry not only have
to register and present themselves to be examined, they are routinely
given pjenicillin injections, irrespective of diagnosis. When a colleague
of mine at the World Health Organization (WHO) examined data
collected both on women who were pan of the regulatory system and
received the injections and on women who were not but came to the
clinic on their own, he discovered that the incidence of STD was higher
among the women routinely receiving penicillin.^ Perhaps l>ecause
they were being "treated," they were more willing to forego condoms
or engage in other risky behavior. Singapore requires all prostitutes to
register with the health authority and have regular STD check-ups,
although at most 50 percent of sex workers comply. Wlien the physician
in charge of the mandatory health scheme in Singapore started a
voluntary project for unregistered workers, he was surprised to find a
mucli lower prevalence and incidence of STD than among the women
required to participate. When he pursued the issue, he discovered that
the unregistered women, who worked in massage parlors, said they
provided mostly hand jobs and fellatio and used condoms routinely,
while the registered workers, who worked mostly in bars and night
clubs, .said they provided mostly vaginal sex, often unprotected. This
was despite extensive education in the clinic."*^
In Nevada, prior to AIDS the incidence of STD among women
working in the legal brothels was quite low, less than three percent per
year, probably due to a combination of a low prevalence of infection
among their clients and the use of condoms at least part of the time.
However, after the state enacted a law mandating condom use in the
brothels, the incidence dropped to about one percent per year.'"'
Thailand also instituted a "100% condom" program in sex work
establishments, complementing an unofficial, de facto registration and
testing system, although the results have been much less consistent,
possibly because of resistance by brothel and club owners."*^ The Thai
government claims that the program, which is enforced with threats of

closure if a worker gets an STD, is working. However, one knowledge-
able source told me that when the program was implemented, some
brothel owners beat up women who were diagnosed with an STD.
Another told me that when clients refuse to continue with a condom
after intercourse begins, some women consent to continue unsafely out
of fear of losing the money (the health ministry has advised brothels
to refund money to clients who refuse to use condoms). A tliird source
told me that women working in businesses catering to "sex tourists"
say that while the official establishment policy is "all condoms," women
who insist on using them when clients resist get fired.''^
In Uruguay, women who come for the mandatory weekly STD
exams sometimes douche immediately beforehand, hoping to avoid
being diagnosed with an STD. If they are infected, they lose their
licenses, without which tliey cannot work, although they have neither
sick pay nor workers' compensation to make up for the lost income.
In Senegal, too, prostitutes are required to register and report for regular
health checks, lose their licenses if infected, and face arrest if they work
witliout them. Since, like the women of Uruguay (and every other
country, for that matter), they also lack paid sick leave and workers'
compensation, they cross over the border into The Gambia to work.
Less than two percent of sex workers in Senegal actually register.'"'
The point of this brief overview is to suggest that such .sy.stems have
not worked in the past, do not work now, and are unlikely to work in
the future. A major reason for their failure is that, rather than being
designed to protect the prostitute's health, the systems are designed to
protect the clients from the prostitutes, whom the state defines as
polluted, a source of contagion. However, since such measures have
always failed to protect clients, not to mention other sexually active men,
their real purpose can only l3e symbolic. It is time for a new approach
to achieve the stated goals.'" Thirty thousand women paid for such
symbolism during World War I, and police in 21 states now have the
right to test the prostitutes they "sweep" off the streets, night after night.^^
Despite the fact that only a small number of men with AIDS deny any
risk factor except for sex with a female prostitute,"*" and although it does
not appear, from the published literature, that any specific prostitute has
been identified as the source of any specific client s infection in this
Prisdila AlMonder 233
country, prostitutes continue to be symbolic targets of "traditional public

health measures." Symbolic acts that defy reality are not worth ^
Symbolism or Public Healtb?

Conservatives have appealed to AIDS to authorize moral boundaries
that de-legitimate homosexuality. The juxtaposition of the figures of
the heierosexual family unit and the single, promiscuous homosexual
specifies a moral order privileging the former as healthy, good, right,
and .socially beneficial white discrediting the latter as diseased, abnor-
mal, wrong, perverse, and socially dangerous.
—Steven Seidman, ^*
Since AIDS is transmitted primarily by perverse homosexuals, your
name on my national petition to quarantine all homosexual estab-
lishments is crucial to your family's health and security These
disease carrying deviants wander the street unconcerned, possibly
making you their next victim. Wliat else can you expect from sex-crazed
degenerates but selfishness?
—American Family Association, '^
If bathhouses and brotliels have symbolic meaning for gay people
and prastitutes, they have even more for those on the political right. In
a time of economic crisis, reactionary ideologues use these sites as
symbols to exploit mainstream discomfort with homosexuality, sex in
general, clianges in the structure of the family, and/or urban decay. They
certainly have little or no interest in the welfare of gay men or fallen
women, as they both castigate them for "promiscuity," another symbolic
terrain, and deny them sanaion for their relationships.^^ When they argue
for bathhouse closure or mandatory testing and quarantine, it lias nothing
to do with improving the public health and everything to do with
identifying classes of people as beyond the pale, blaming tliem, punishing
tliem, and threatening them, using them as a model to keep heterosexuals
(or those who waver between homosexuality and heterosexual ity) in line.
Tlieir assaults on sexually explicit/erotic materials, whether for homosexu-
als or heterosexuals, only clarify their intent, which is to proscribe any
sexuality that is not conventional or that fails to reitiforce the traditional
ownership and control of sex, and of women, by straight men.
Homophobes and perhaps more well-meaning health ofncials will
ultimately push the logic to its ultimate extreme—if bathhouses, why
not movie houses, and if movie houses, why not gay bars, and if we close
all these dangerous places, why not criminalize the underlying conduct?
—Thomas Stoddard,
New York Civil Liberties Union, 1984^^
Reinstituting the prohibition of sodomy, where it has been decrimi-

nalized, is high on the right-wing agenda, an agenda aimed as much
at heterosexuals as homosexuals, since fundamentalists consider any
sexual deviation from the reproductive, missionary position hegemony
a threat to the "family" and "family values," major sites for the control
of women. For them, the bathhouses represent forbidden sex, dirty (i.e.,
anal) sex, promiscuity, a descent into a kind of hell, a deviation from
a 1950s fantasy that never existed in reality. The laws and regulations
they want to enact, to control or suppress voluntary sexual behavior,
are rooted in ideas of contagion and pollution ("moral" as well as
physical), and are clearly symbolic rather than rational.^ To be homo-
sexual or a prostitute is to deviate from the "norm" of society in a very
specific, sexual way, To the extent that society stigmatizes and/or
prohibits that deviation, state and culture work together in a pincer-like
fashion to remove from the stigmatized class any remnants of agency
or control over their lives. As an example of how this plays out on the
street, one New York City street worker told me that when women are
in good mental and physical shape, and are not dependent on drugs,
the police go to great lengths to arrest them. If they are trapped in a
drug dependency cycle, disheveled, and ill, the police tend to leave
them alone. But should tlie drug addict clean up her act, stop using
drugs, dress well, and appear strong and healthy, the police will again
seek her out for arrest in an effon to push her back into despair.^'' Even
in Germany, where prostitution is legal in parts of every city, the police
raid and close establishments with good working conditions on the
basis tliat they "encourage someone to work as a prostitute," while they
ignore the bad places to work, including those where workers are held
captive through debt bondage.*
Onewayof responding to this tension, if you are gay or a prostitute,
is to publicly deny that you are like the "others" (within or outside of
your specific community) that mainstream society labels "extreme," For
example, Thomas Stoddard, who understands so well the nature of the
repression of homosexuality and its effects, has said that he believes
Prifdllo Alexander 235
prostitution should remain a crime. Derek Jarman, direaor of a series

of films tliat explore sexual themes and meanings, once wrote a letter
to a British newspaper objecting to Sir Ian McKellan, an openly gay
actor, accepting the gift of knighthood, because of the repressive state
behind it. To support his argument that the state repression was wrong,
he said, "After all, we are not prostitutes." When Larry Littlejohn, or Bill
Kraus, or Randy Shilts says the bathhouses should be shut down, or
when Michelangelo Signorile says that we need to tell gay men to be
"responsible," it represents a public denial of the sexual self, internal-
ized as dirty, polluted, and diseased to begin with, and a concomitant
desire to identify with and be accepted by the world of the "normal."
Some prostitutes distinguish themselves from, and look down on,
women who perform in pornography, and vice versa, while some
independent, higher-income prostitutes distance them.selves from those
who work on tlie street. The public hostility of some women to clothes
designed to enhance women's erotic appeal, and the women who wear
them, is another example.'*'
Indeed, the women's movement has been divided for more'than a
decade over issues related to sexuality. At one end of the continuum
are women like Catherine Mackinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Kathleen
Barry, and Janice Raymond." who consider pornography to l>e the
cause of violence against women, view prostitution as a kind of
institutionalized gang rape, and want to eliminate sexual representation
and the trade of sex and money. At the other end are women who look
at sexuality as a terrain upon which to determine, and possibly to
redefine, who we are in our most profound selves,''"^ and see pornog-
raphy and prostitution as sites where the terrain, and the battle, are
most visible.*^ I believe that the repression of female sexuality is an
integral part of the long history of assigning women a second-class,
chattel, or slave caste status in most human .societies. Many feminists
have written about the institutionalization of patrilineal descent and the
division of women into good (wives) and bad (whores) in order to
ensure patrilineal inheritance.'''' Tlie division between whore and
madonna serves not only to guarantee that inheritance, but at the same
time to guarantee men the ability to have sex on their own terms, as
an act in isolation, outside of legal, social, and emotional constrictions.
Bui it punishes the woman who dares to violate those same constric-
tions to have sex with the unpunished man. It is almost a mirror image
of the way societies respond to rape; when a society, in the actions of
its law enforcement apparatus, condones rape, as most societies do, it
robs women of the right to say no to sex. When a society names and
condemns the prostitute, again through iLs law enforcement apparatus,
it robs women of the right to say yes to sex. But the right to say "no"
is meaningless unless it is matched by the right to say "yes," including
when money or "other consideration" is part of the process/'''
It seems to me that as women, we will never be able to assume an
equal role in the non-sexual realms of human society unless and until
we are able to determine, act on, explore, and name our sexuality in
all of its variations. If many of us continue to view sex as an imposition,
an intaision, a danger, and something from which to protect oneself
(and the "propaganda of rape," through which both patriarchs and
so-called 'radical" feminists tell us to live in fear, tells us we must do
that), how can we ever hope to impose on, intrude into, and endanger
the status quo in every other realm of our existence? As it stands now,
the sexual realm is frightening for many women, both physically and
morally. The "whore" has faced the label head-on, consciously entering
this dangerous realm. The state, however, walks in and says to the
whore, and to all women by implication, "you cannot, must not brazenly
walk outside, on the face of the earth, on the street." Those who would
repress female sexuality from within our own camp or caste, as the
anti-sex feminists would, must on some level be trying to buy
approval.''" When they oppose sex in its visible forms in order to be
seen as "chaste" and good, they "rescue" the prostitute-victim, but wipe
out the prostitute who claims agency in her own life/*"
To be gay, homosexual, homoerotic, is to challenge the socially
constructed divisions based on sex in another way, For the man, it is
to be like a woman, as it says in Leviticus, to take what .society defines
as a passive role (although how anyone could describe any engaged
,sex act as "passive" is beyond me), for which a man must be punished.
For the woman, it is to opt out of the relationship of dependence on
men (fathers, brothers, husbands), equally a threat to the established
gender division. For some of us who define ourselves as gay, our being
outside the convention is invigorating and rich, even if it is sometimes
threatening. For others of us, the threat is dominant, and so we have
Priidlla AlHondar 337
to show that we conform. To demonstrate the conformity, to prove that

we can act out the proper roles of women and men, and especially to
prove we are not "promiscuous," those of us who want that safety may
delineate as major issues the right to lê in the military, to get married,
to raise children. It is not that I think gay people should not marry or
join the military, it is that I don't want our right to take on these
commitments, roles, and relationships, the normal" components of
western life, to mean that we lose the right to reject them.
If we are afraid of our difference, if we believe that if we don t or
can't conform something terrible will happen to us, it becomes easy to
scapegoat the most extreme, outrageous members of our communities
(i.e., the drag queens, the leather boys, the women on the street with
short skirts, high heels, and fishnet stockings), and tell them to "stop
it" or "hide." It is this fear that made .some of our people call for the
closing of the bathhouses, chiming a symbolic abstinence or chaste-
ness, or collude with the scapegoating of prostitutes or "Patient Zero"
for AIDS. Those of us who want acceptance as "normal" may be willing
to give up something called "individLial liberty" in order to get it.
However, without the individual liberty to determine for ourselves who
we are, and choose whom to love and with whom to have sex, with
or without economic considerations, there can be no safety. Nor can
there be public health.
NOTES
1. Cited in Steven Seidman. Embattled Eros: Sexual Politics and Etbics in Contem-
porar}' America Wew York: RoiilleUge. t992), 160.
2. Cited in Ronald Bayer, Primte Acts, Social Consequences: AIDS and tbe Politics
of Public HealibWew York: Free Press, 1989). 48.
). Cited in Mnrk Thomas Ct)nnel!y. Tbe ResfKmse to Prostitution in tbe Progressive
Era (Chapel Hill, NC: tJniversity ot* North Oiroiina Pres.s. 19HO>, 6S.
4. Stephen C. Joseph, Dragon W'itbiu tbe Gates: Tbe Once and Future AIDS
Epidemic (New York; Carrol! & Graf Publishers, Inc.). 61.
5. As of December 1994, 21 states had enaaed laws mandating that anyone
convicted, or in some cases merely arre.stecl. on prosiitLition charges be te.sted
for evidence of HIV infection, and 11 had increased the prostitution charge to
a felony for anyone arrested after having iested posiiive.
6. Bayer, op cit., the chapter entitled "Sex and ihf Bathhouses: The Politics of
Privacy," 32-36. 38, 45. See also Ronald liayer. 'Public Heallh Policy and the
AIDS Epidemic; An End to HIV ExceptionalLsm.'" Mw England Journal of
Medicine 324 (May 23, 1991), 1500-1504, and a re.spon.se by SccHl Burris, "Public
23S POLICING PUBIIC SEX
Health: AIDS Exceptionalism' and the Law," The John Marshall law Review 27
(1994), 251-272.
7. For .smallpox, see Juditli Walzer Leavitt, "'Be Safe. Be Sure.': Epidemic Small-
pox,'" and Elizabeth Fee and Evelyn M, Hammonds, "Science. Politics, and ihe
Art of Persuasion," 95-114, in David Rosner, ed., Hiues of Sickness. Public Health
and Epidemics in Neu^ York C/O'(New Brunswick, NJ; Rutgers University Press,
1995); for tuberculosis, see Fee and Hammonds, op cit,, 155-196. For syphilis,
see Allan M. Brandt. No Magic Bullet: A Social History' of Venereal Disease in the
United States since t880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Alain
Corbin. Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850. ixzns.
Alan Sheridan (Cambridge; Harvard University Press. 1990); Richard Davenpon-
Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment: Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain
since tbe Renaissance (London: Fontana Press/HarperCollins. 1990); Mary
Gibson. Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860-1915 (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers tJniversity Press. 1986); Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth
Century Paris i?t\i\Qf:iou, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Linda Mahood,
The Magdalenes: Prostitution in tbe Nineteenth Century (London: Routiedge.
1990); Frank Mon, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England
Since /53C (London: Routiedge & Kegan Paul. 1987); and Judith R, Walkowitz.
Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1980),
•. Harsin. op cil., 89-90.
9. Walkowitz. op cit.
10. Allan Bembe, "The History of Gay Bathhouses," Coming Up.' (Decemlêr 1984),
15-19 (reprinted in thus volume). Although the bathhouses were not such a
feature in lesbians' lives in San Francisco, in Israel they are 3 common meeting
place for lesbians, who sliare the space with Orthodox women preparing for
Shabbat (Brenda Besdansky, personal communication).
n. In California, as in many other .states, there were laws on the books that
prohibited the wearing of apparel appropriate to the other gender. Butch
lesbians would wear three pieces of "female" clothing to ward off the police.
See Joan Nestle, ed,. The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butcb Reader (Boston:
Alyson Publications, 1992). See also Maijorie Garber. Vested Interests: Cross-
Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routiedge, 1992) and George
Chauncey. Jr. CayNeiv York- Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay
Male World, 1890-1940 Wew York: Basic Books. 1994).
12. I am thinking of tlie disputes within our community over the meaning of domestic
partnership, the desire to be included under the laws regulating marriage, and
the desire to be permitted to join or remain in the military. Some of us contend
we are "normal." bom this way and unable to help ourselves, and/or no different
from other people. Others of us think that we have chosen our sexual identity
to a large degree, wish to challenge what is normal, not conform to it. and
believe we should have equal rights regardless of our choice in this regard. It
is. perhaps, a difference encapsulated in the two terms "sexual orientation" and
"sexual preference." As a Jew. whose people tiave chosen over and over again
to remain Jewish in a hosiUe Christian world, I fall into the laner category.
Prisdlla AlMondsr 239
13. ^ndy S\\i\\s. And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
(New York; Si. Manin's Press, 1987), 305.
14. Feinstein was once quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle to ihe effea ihai she
was not about to be "run by prostitutes," in response to a question about some
horrendous example of law enforcement practices.
15. For example, Mervyn Silverman said during ihat lime,''C!osing the baths is not
the answer, even though it might make me look good to a lot of people in the
straight community— History .shows thai government generally has not been
very influemiaj in changing people's sexual habits" (cited in James Kinsella,
Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press. 1989)). He also said, "If you close the bathhouses,
people wilt simply go elsewhere to have unsafe sex" (ShilLs. op cit,, 3l6),
14. Bayer, 1989, op cit., 32-36, 38, 45; Ronald Bayer, "AIDS. Public Health, and Civil
Liberties: Consensus and Conflict in Policy." in Frederic G. Reamer, ed., AIDS
and Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); and Joseph, op cit
17. Dennis Altman, AIDS and the Neiv Puritanism (London: Pluto Press, 1986),
147-155.
It. Indeed, some studies have since found somewhat higher rates of unsafe
behavior in such public yet furtive sites, which are often frequented by men
with limited connection to the gay "community" (G. Bennett, S. Chapman, and
F. Bray, "Sexual Practices and Beats; AIDS-Related Sexual Practices in a Sample
of Homosexual and Bisexual Men in the Western Area of Sydney," Medical
Journal ofAustralia \5\:6iSc\>iember 18,1989), 3O9-14> than in the bathhouses
and sex clubs (C. Frutchey and A.M. Willuims. "Cultural Factors in Gay Male
Group Sexual Interactions: Findings and Implications for Planning HIV Preven-
tion Strategies," internationalCon/erenceon AIDS, abstract no. PoD 5181 (1992);
A.M. Petherbridge, M.W. Ross, R. Dwyer, J. Gold, and R. Walmsley, "Changes in
Attitudes and Behaviours in Sydney Bathhouse Patrons Between 1985 and 1991,"
Internationai Conference on AIDS, abstract no. PO-D06-3599 (1993); R. Bolton,
J. Vincke. and R. Mak, "Gay Saunas: Venues of HIV Transmission or AIDS
Prevention." International Conference on AIDS, abstract no. PoD 5172 (1992);
J. Pickering, T. Sharpton, and J. Thornhill, "Sexually Transmitted Diseases in San
Francisco Bay Area Men," International Conference on AIDS abstract no. MD
4066 (1991). Outreach to men in ihe public sites does appear to have some
impact. See P, Keen, U. Klemmer, and D. Madeddu, "Beats Project Outreach:
AIDS Prevention Education Among Men Who Have Sex with Men at Public Sex
Sites," International Conference on AIDS, abstract no. WC3O16 C1991).
!•. An early example of a sex work-related project is the Califomia Prostitutes
Education Project (CAL-PEP), which I helped develop in 1987 in San Francisco.
It remains the only government-funded project in the United States iliat is
designed and run by sex workers. In Canada, sex workers developed the
Prostitutes Safe Sex Project in Toronto, Ontario, while in Australia, sex workers
organized projects in vinually every city to provide health care as well as
STD/HIV prevention information and training, and to improve the safety and
the working conditions of sex work, all with government funding. In Germany,
the government funded .sex workers' organizations in Berlin, Frankfurt, and
many other citie,s to do outreach to the workers In the legal districts and
elsewhere, as did the Dutch government in Amsterdam. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
Programmo Pegaâo was formed by a former street youth/sex worker to do
outreach to young men turning tricks on the street, and the Associaâo de
Prostitutas do Estato de Rio De Janeiro and Prostitution and Civil Rights, two
organizations formed by sex workers, do outreach to brothel and street
prostitutes. Youth for Population Information and Communication, in Ghana,
was formed by a gay man to do outreach to young women and men working
on the street, and Fundacion Nimehuatzin was founded by a Nicaraguan lesbian
activLst to work on health care is.sue,s with lesbians, gay men, and male and
female sex workers. Projects reach truck drivers in tnick stops in a growing
number of countries, including India. Kenya. Nigeria, and Tanzania, and along
the routes traveled by truck drivers through Eastern Europe and Germany,
Wherever these projects exist, the use of co/idoms has increased substantially.
For more about the development of .sex work projeas. see my anicle. "Sex
Workers Fight AIDS: An International Perspective," in Beth E, Schneider and
Nancy Stoller. eds,, Women Resisting AIDS. Strategies of Empowerment (Phila-
delphiar Temple University Press, 1995).
20. Cited in Altman, op cit., 154.
21. At the time of the San Francisco debate, one of the only books on the subject
of regulation was Walkowitz. op cit.. which examined England's Contagious
Diseases Acts, Since then, a great deal more has been written about the
repre.ssive regulatory .systems in France and Italy, and on ihe development of
ihe U,S, prohibition, including Connelly, op cit,, and Rosen, op cit. For the
relationship between STD control campaigns and prohibition, see Brandt, 1985,
op cit.. and any ofthe numerous articles he has written on the subject. See note
7 for a more complete list of sources.
22. William W. Sanger. 'Lhe History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects
Tl^raughont the Wotid (\H'î^), cited in Connelly, op cit., 67,
23. Theodore Roosevelt. Autobiography, vol. 22 C1913), cited in Connelly, op cit., 83,
24. Francis A, Plummer and Elizabeth N, Ngugi, "Prostitutes and their Clients in the
Epidemiology and Control of Sexually Transmitted Diseases," in King K, Holmes,
Per-Anders Mardh, P, Frederick Spading, et al., eds.. Sexually Transmitted
Diseases. 2nd ed. ^ e w York: McGraw Hill, 1990), 71-75. Holmes's textbook is
the pre-eminent text in the field of sexually transmitted diseases. See also King
K, Holmes and Sevgi O. Aral, "Behavioral Interventions in Developing Coun-
tries," in Judith N, Wasserheit, Sevgi, O, Aral, and King K. Holmes. Researcb
Issues in Human Behavior and Sexually Trartsmitted Diseases in the AIDS Era
(Washington. DC: American Society for Microbiology. 1990. and Lourdes J,
D'Costa, Francis A. Plummer, Ian Bowmer. Lieve Fransen, Peter Plot, Allan R,
Ronald, and Herben Nsanze, "Pro,stitutes are a Major Reservoir of Sexually
Transmitted Diseases in Nairobi, Kenya," Sexually Transmitted Diseases 12:2
(April-June 1985). 64-67. Peter Piot is now the direaor of UNAIDS, and Lieve
Fransen is coordinator of AIDS programs for the European Community. See also
Frank A. Plummer, NicttJ.D, Nageikerke, Stephen Moses, Jackoniah O, Ndinya-
Achola,Job Bwayo, and Elizabeth Ngugi, "The Importance of Core Groupw in
Alnandtr 241
tlie Epidemiology and Control of HIV-l Infection." AIDS $ (suppl. 1) (1991),

S169-176.
15. See the letter by J. James. Michael A. Morgenstern, and John A. Hatten.
"HTLV-III/LAV-Antibody-Positive Soldiers in Berlin," plus Haselline's response,
in Lancet iU:l Oanuary 2, 1986), 55-56.
26. The earliest of such laws were enacted in 1986, the most receni in 1994. Lisa
Bowleg, AIDS Policy Center, Intergovernmental Health Policy Project, The
George Washington University, personal commimications, January 1995.
J7. An exception to the prohibiiion has been C3rved out for closed brothels in rural
counties of Ne\'ada, based on the maisons closes of the 19th and early 20[h
centuries in France. Women who work legally in brothels are denied freedom
of movement (they are required lo live in the brothels, not elsewhere in ihe
town, and must remain hidden from public view). In addition, they have to
register with the authorities and submit to weekly speculum exam.s and monthly
blood te.sts for a variety of sexually transmitted diseases, including IIIV infection,
31. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports (Wushinyfon, IX: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1995), 226. 283- New York Siate Division of
Criminal Justice Services, 1993 Crime and Justice Annual Report (Albany). 128.
29. Centers for Disease Control, AIDS Daily Summary: 1988-1994. and personal
communication from Lisa Bowleg, who has been monitoring these cases for
several years. Where the race of the accused is mentioned in these stories, the
male is a person of color and/or an immigrant from a southern country (for
example, a Haitian immigrant in Denmark). Although the race or ethnicity of
the women who have l>een charged is mentioned less often, it is probable that
a disproponionate number of the women targeted for this kind of prosecution
are women of color, given the racist enforcement of prostituiion laws.
In 1993, one district attorney charged a pro.stitute with "willfully endangering
the life of an undercover officer," which .struck me as a tacit admission tiiat the
officer had sex with ihe women he arrested, in violation of all police department
rules. Otherwise, ic was not clear how she willfully endangered his life.
30. Shiits, op cit,, 508-516. Some years later, another Cbronicte n;potter. Kaiy Butler,
interviewed me for an article on heterosexual transmission. I had told her lliat
27 men in the United States had been diagnosed with AIDS as a result of
heterosexual transmission, which she misrepresented in the article as 27 men
becoming infected through sex witb prostitutes. Duririg one of a series of
conversations with Butler, in an unsucces.sful attempt to get the paper to publLsh
a correction, she told me tliat Shilts had said about me, "Oh, you don'l have to
pay any attention to her." Although by 1984 it was clear tliat the risk of
transmission from female .sex workers to clients was low in industrialized
countries, it was 1989 Iwfore Shilts wrote an article exonerating prostitutes in the
United Stales, at least a year after Bruce Lambert of TbeNeif York Times (\\(\ so.
31. Note that white the order specified "needle sharing," not drug injecting, it
specified "prostituiion," not unpitJiected sex.
32. Donald E. Woodhou.se, Lovice Riffe, John IV Muth, and John J. Potteral,
"Restriction of Personal Behavior: Case Studies on Legal Measures to Protect the
Public Health," Intertiationat Conference on AIDS, abstntct PoD 5443 (1992).
John Potterat had been working with prostitutes in an STD clinic for at least 14
years at the time of this repon, It was only in the following year, 1993, tliat he
noticed that a significant proponion of the women who came to the clinic were
clinically depressed, and thought perhaps the clinic should offer counseling for
sex workers Oohn Potterat. personal communication).
31. In the early pan of his administration, San Francisco's Mayor Frank Jordan, a
former police chief, attempted to "control" prostitution with similar geographic
proscriptions. Anyone convicted of prostitution was prohihited from being in
the vicinity where the arrest took place, or even from taking a bus through the
vicinity. This did not stand up to constitutional challenge,
34. in New York City, according to women who work in one precinct in the Bronx,
rhe police entrap clients one night a week and female sex workers two nights
a week. In San Francisco, according to arrest repons I read in 1994, se\'eral
teams of men are involved on nights when they arrest the prostitutes, with one
officer on each team acting as "decoy" and the other joining in at the point of
arrest. On the nighis when they arrest the clients, one female officer works as
"decoy," while sLx to eight male ofRcers back her up. According to these same
arrest repons, one police officer assigned to the Vice Squad drove around the
city in a yellow cab, ostensibly k)oking for fares. When a woman flagged him
down, he wrote in the reports he filed, he would at first act as though he knew
her. then apologize for his error and tell her that he had dropped a fare off at
a hotel, a paraplegic man who was looking for a prostitute, and was she
interested. If she said she was, he arrested her for "agreeing to engage in sex
in exchange for money," One of the more depressing phone calls I received
when I worked at COYOTE (a sex workers' rights oi;ganization) was from a
woman who had been reiea.sed from jail that day after .serving time on a
prcstitution charge. As .she was walking down the street, the police olTicer who
had made the previous arrest called her over to his car and asked her if she
would give him a blow job if he gave her a certain amount of money. She
recognized him, but felt paialyzed by the knowledge that he was the police
officer who had arrested her before. She agreed. Needless to say, she was
arrested again. Other depressing calls came from women who were raped—on
or off the job—telling me the respon.se (or rather, lack of one) of the police
and/or district attorney. The most recent example, this one in New York City,
was of a woman who tried to report a rape to the police only to be told to "suck
my dick."
For a more in-depth discussion of legal issues, see Frederique Delacoste
and PrL-Jcilla Alexander, eds.. Sex W'ork- Writings hy Women in tbe Sex Industry
(PitLsburgh: Cleis Press, 1987), including my anicle. "Prostitution: A Difficult
Issue for Feminists." and Gail Pheterson, ed,. A Vindication ofthe Rights of
Wbores (Sennit: Seal Press, 1989). which includes the proceedings of the 1985
and 1986 World Whores Congresses.
35. For a discussion of AIDS and prostitution, see my article, "Prostitutes are Being
Scapegoated for Heterosexual AIDS," in Delacoste. and the chapter entitled
"Interventions for Female Pro.stitutes," in Heather G. Miller, Charles F. Turner,
and Lincoln E, Moses, eds.. AIDS: The Second Decade (Washington: National
AlHondar 243
Academy Press. 1990), 253-288. For a more recent discus,sion of the scapegoat-
ing, see Judith B. Cohen and Priscilla Alexander, "Female Sex Workers;
Scapegoats in the AIDS Epidemic." in Ann O'Leary and Lorena S. Jemmott, eds..
Women at Risk: Issues in the Primary Prei'ention of AIDS (New York; Plenum
Publishing Corp,. 1995).
M. Allan M, Brandt, "AIDS: From Social History to Social Policy." In Elizabeth Fee
and Daniel M. Fox. eds.. AIDS: The Burdens of Histor}-(Qerkeley: University of
California Press, 1988). 152.
37. Police as.sumed that any working-clas.s wotnan walking down a street by herself,
or living in a Ixiarding or lodging house or olher inexpensive housing in one
of the poor di.stricts of the city, was a prostitute. Moreover, any woman who
had sex with a man to whom she was not married was liable to be arresied and
forced to register as a prostitute. This same pattern of enforcement developed
whether the system was in France. Italy. England, or any colonies with
contagious diseases acts, near any army ba.ses in the United States, and in St.
Louis. Missouri, during its short-lived reglementary system. It is still the case in
Mombasa. Kenya, where a mandatory registration law left over from the colonial
period remains in effect. Prior to major conferences and tourist events, police
often conduct sweeps against prostitutes, as they did in Nairobi prior to the 1985
International Conference on Women, in Harare. Zimbabwe, in 1983 and 19SH3.
before the Commonwealth and World Bank conferences, and every year in the
United States Ijefore the football Super Bowl,
St. Prostitutes are generally excluded from considerations of human rights, and
both the .sex workers' righLs movement and the anti-prostitute abolitionist
movement are attempting [o frame a human rights analysis of prostitution. The
abolitionists say that prostitution, per se, is a violation of women's human rights
(or men's when .society, or Catherine Mackinnon. defines them as being "like
women." i.e,. "effeminate" and/or "receptive" panners in anal sex). The sex
workers' rights advocates, however, point out that it is the actions of the
state—the laws and regulations, and their enforcement—that constitute the
human rights violation,
39. These measures are a form of magical thinking, as people who support such
regulations believe that if only all "prostitutes" could be identified, examined,
and. if neces.sary, quarantined, the spread of infection could be controlled. In
the past, it rarely seemed to occur to tliem to focus on the broader issue of
sexuality, or to work to increase the safety of sexual acts, whetlier in the
commercial or the non-commercial sector. Even today, as the bathhouse debate
and the endless controversies over the public promotion of condoms vs. the
promotion of abstinence exemplify, too many governments continue to focus
on "control" and repression rather than "safety." For France, see Harsin, op cit.,
tables 14 and 16-20. and Corbin. op cit,; for Italy, see Gibson, op cit.. tables 6.1
and 6.2; and for England, see Walkowitz. op cit,. Davenport-Hines. op cit,, and
Mort. op cit. For a slightly different perspective, see Mahood, op cit,, which
examines the impact of prohibition, not regulation, coupled with forced testing
and quarantine in Scotland.
40. Abraham Flexner, Prostitution in Europe, introduction by John D, Rockefeller.
Jr. (New York: The Century Co., 1914). 395. Interestingly, in Paris, a city with a
populaiion of 2,888,110, he reported there were 6.387 registered prostitutes (387
in brothels. 6.0(X) others), but an estimated 5O,O(K)-6O,OOO when the unregistered
workers were included (173). Even allowing for some exaggeration, it is obvious
ihac most avoided the system. Given that ihe physicians who examined the
women often used only one spatula or speculum for many examinations, wiped
off on a rag or sponge between patients, it is likely that registered prostitutes
were more often infected than independents, or clandesttnes, as they were called
(216-217).
41, Allan M. Brandt. "A Historical Perspective." in Harlon L. Dalton and Scott Burris,
eds., AIDS and the Law: A Guide for the Public (New Haven: Yale University
Pres.s. 1987), 40.
42. Lourdes J. D'Costa, Francis A. Plummer, Ian Bowmer. Lieve Fransen, Peter Piot.
Allan R. Ronald, and Herben Nsanze. "Prostitutes are a Major Reservoir of
Sexually Transmitted Disease.s in Nairobi, Kenya," Sexually Transmitted Diseases
12:2 (April-June 1985), 64-67.
41. Peter Piot, Francis A. Plummer, M.A. Rey, Elizabeth Ngugi, et al., "Retrospeciive
Seroepidemiology of AIDS Virus Infeaion in Nairobi Popul;Hions," Journai of
Infectious Diseases 155:6 (June 1987), 1108-12. Joan Krelss. Elizabeth Ngugi.
King Holmes, et al., "Efficacy of Nonoxynol 9 Contraceptive Sponge Use in
Preventing Heterosexual Acquisition of HIV in Nairobi Prostitutes," yowma/ of
the American Medical Association 268:4 (July 22-29, 1992), AT7AS1. This is the
infamous study during which women advised to use the Today®Sponge became
infected at a faster rate than women told to use an inert lubricant. The study
was begun sometime in 1987; by January 1989. when Kreiss. et al.. submined
an abstract for the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, it was already
obvious there was a problem, yet they continued ihe study for an additional 18
months before a Data Safety and Monitoring Committee "recommended tha[ the
study be tenninated." When criticized for using the word "efficacy" in the title,
Kreiss responded that a short title indicating its failure to protea would be
"misleading," in comnist to the longer title that was a lie. Every epidemiologist
who knows about this study says there were "problems" with it; none have
commented publicly on its violation of international ethical guidelines (which
mandate stopping a .study if it becomes clear tliat there is a strong difference
either way. but especially if there is harm). When I discussed this with King
Holmes, which I did on a number of occasions, he said to me, "Well, they were
all going to die anyway," and argued tliat the results were not "statistically
significant." It is true that in statistical terms, it was not significant because the
number of women in the study was too small lo permit statistical power.
However, the higher incidence of seroconversion in the nnnox>noi-9 group
should have been a red flag, regardless. It wasn't.
44. Meyrig Horton. personal communication, 1990. Although the government claims
to have stopped the mass treatment program, observers who returned from
missions to Indonesia while I was working at WHO told me it was still in
operation. Mass treatment was also the practice in Vietnam during the war, when
the U.S. military operated brothels at military bases and gave women daily
Prif<illa Alaxandar 245
antibiotics to protea the soldiers. Although King Holmes challenges our

conclusions, Margo St, James and I watched Lhe movement of penicillin-resisiani
gonorrhea from Asia in the early 1970s towards Europe and the United States,
and concluded that this f>olicy was a major factor.
45. Roy Chan, personal communication, 1993- In addition to a false .sen.se of security
engendered by the regular examinations, another factor may have been pressure
from the bar and nightclub owners di.scouraging condom use. while the massage
parlor owners may have encouraged it. Decent working conditions are an
e.ssential prerequisite for safety,
46. Terry Ignacio. Nevada AIDS Coordinator, personal communication, 1989,
47. P Sawanpanyalen, PK, Ungchusak. S, Tlianpra,sert,suk, and P, Akarasewi, "HIV-l
Seroconversion Rates among Female Commercial .Sex Wijrkers. Chiang Mai,
Thailand: A Multi Cross-Sectional Study." AIDS 8:6 (June 1994), 825-829. W.
Rojanapithayakom, "Tlie One Hundred Percent Condom Programme in Thai-
land, an Update," International Conference on AIDS, abstract no. 478C (1994);
K, Limpakamjanarat, T.D, Mastro. S, Saisom, N.L Young, et at., "Incidence of
IlIV-l Subtype E in a Cohon of Female Prostitutes in Northern Thailand,"
International Conference on AIDS, 1994 (abstract no. PCOX'^), One should take
reports from Thailand with a grain of salt, as, depending on the source of the
information, pro.stitutes are either accepted or .stigmatized, the 100 percent
condom program either works or it doesn't, and there are anywhere from 80,000
to nvo million prostitutes working in Thailand,
41. Steve Kraus, personal communication, 1990, when he represented the Global
Programme on AIDS in Bangkok; Werasit Sittitrai, personal communication, 1993
(obviously, offering a refund to unhappy cllent.s increases the sex workers'
vulnerability); and sex therapist Joan Nelson, personal communication, 1995.
49. I lilda Abreu, director of Uruguay's mandatory health scheme, personal commu-
nication, 1992; Heien Pickering, an anthropologist working in The Gambia,
personal communication, 1991; Edwige Bienvenue, formerly on the staff of the
Senegalese STD program; and King Holmes. University of Wa.shington, Seattle,
personal communications, 1990,
M. See Prisciila Alexander. MakingSex Work Safer: A Guide to HIV/AIDS Prevention
Intetventiarts (Geneva: World He-alth Organization, Global Program on AIDS,
1993), draft. This guide proposes a model involving peer education and
community organizing, good, voluntary health care, and removal of legal and
other obstacles to safe working conditions (see aLso note 19).
51. Actually, most arrested prostitutes are charged with "loitering," which requires
no evidence of any particular act. Even those picked up on "soliciting" charges
are often merely given a citation telling them to appear in court on a certain
date. If they don't show up, the judge issues Ijench warrants, and if they are
arrested again, they can he jailed for failing to show up in court, again without
a need for evidence. Prostitutes are often granted probation, which means they
can be picked up at any time and jailed again, on any minor charge, for violating
"probation." In none of these situation.s, which probably represent a significant
minority or even majority of cases, is the te.st likely to be performed, Althou^
legislatures are eager to pass such laws, criminal ju.stice personnel are not so
anxious to carry them out.

52. As of September 1993, 123 adult males diagnosed with AIDS had identified
contaa with female prostitutes as their only risk factor; 293.642 adult/adolescent
males had been diagnosed with AIDS by that time. See Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, HI\'/ AIDS SunK'illance Report 5:3 (1993), 7. 17.
Although the CDC has stopped including this information in their surveillance
reports, earlier this year Tlieresa Hammett, Sur\eillance Data, told me that the
proportion had not changed. See also Kenneth G. Castro, Alan R. Lifson, Carol
R- White, Timothy J, Bush, Mary E. Chamberland. Anastasia M, Lekatsas. and
Harold W, Jaffee, "Investigations of AIDS Patients with No Previously Identified
Risk Factors, "y*'"'^'''*/'^'''^'"^^'^"'^^*''^'^'-^^'^"''"^" 259 (March 4, 1988).
1338-42. for a discussion of the CDC investigational process.
53. In 1993,1 anended a meeting organized by the lesbian/gay health liaison of the
New York City Department of Health to discuss the then-new regulatiotis
regarding sex clubs and bathhouses. The city council had voted to prohibit sex
in these establi.shments and to ban the operators from distributing condoms,
since to do so was to authorize unauthorized .sex. Those in attendance came
from a variety of establisliments. .some straight and some gay. including a
bondage and discipline house, a straight swingers' club, several gay sex clubs,
and several gay bathhouses, Tlie meeting was. for me. surreal, because everyone
knew that sex wa.s going to continue to take place, yet they were all anxious
to give the appearance of conforming to the new regulations, and wanted clarity
on a number of points so they would not make any mistakes.
54. Steven Seidman, Embattled Bros: Sexual Politics and Etbics in Contemporary
America (New York; Routiedge. 1992), especially -AIDS and the 'Homosexual
Question'; Tlie Gay Sexuality Debates," 159.
55. Cited in Cindy Patton, Sex and Cerms: The Politics of AIDS (Boston; South End
Press. 1985). 85,
56. As gay people, we fight for dome.stic pannership. immigration rights, and other
privileges accorded to those who conform. The is.sue of private, loving
relationships is a hotly contested terrain for prostitutes. a.s well, is society' labels
their lovers "pimps" and defines the relationships as felonies. For an example
of a particularly racist use of the word "promiscuous." see Daniel B. Hrdy.
"Cultural Practices Contributing to the Transmission of Human Immunodefi-
ciency Virus in Africa," Reviewsoj'irifectiotisDiseases9:6 ("November-December
1987). 1109-19.
57. Cited in Bayer. 1989, op cit,, 55.
51. This is not the first time tliat a .stated agenda has been used as a mask for another.
Anthony Comstock, the Secretary of llie New York Society for the Suppression
of Vice, convinced the Congress to pass a law in 1873 strengtliening the
prohibition of obscene literature, and to appoint him as a special postal agent.
The primary targets of the enforcers of his law were those who published
information about birth control, abonion. and women's sexuality, most notably
Margaret Sanger, founder of what became Planned Parenthood, who was
married to Williiim Sanger, the previously cited author of a bot)k on the history
of prostitution, Tlie primary moral targets were the women who were then, as
Prifcilla Alnandcr 247
now, demanding a more equitable share of roles, work, money, and power.
The legacy of hi.s work lasted unril 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Coun
overturned Conneaicut's law barring even married couples from buying
contraceptives. See John D'Emilioand Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A
History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), When
Congress passed the "Decency in Communications" law, which would bar any
discussion of sexuality on the Internet if it passed constitutional review, I was
quite surprised to learn that the Comstock law was still on the books. Senator
Henry Hyde, be.st known for preventing poor women from receiving federal
assi.stance if they need an abonion. managed to get an amendment passed
linking the new law to the old one, bringing us full circle to the hypocrisy of
19th-century, Viaorian America,
Sf. Adelaide Malliy, personal commulcation.
*0. Helga Bilitewsky and Dolores French, personal communication. In addition.
German prostitutes are not allowed to purchase health insurance, although
Germany is suppo.sed to have universal coverage. If a prostitute manages to
obtain health insurance by not revealing her occupation, she can not only lose
her insurance but also be prosecuted should her legal work come to light. Yet
the same government requires prostitutes to register and have regular "health"
checks. Clearly if prostitutes cannot have health insurance, the "health" checks
are not alx)Ut their health,
(1. Yet another example is one author's 502-page effon to defend Mary Magdalene
from the stigmatizing accusation of prostitution rather tlian to destigmatize the
association. See Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen.- Myth and Metaphor(.Uew York:
Riverhead Books. 1993),
62. Mackinnon antl Dworkin authored the anti-pornography ordinance that they
allege would have given women (or men who are like women, they say) the
right to sue for civil damages if they were "harmed" by pornography. In this
ordinance, as in more recent laws enacted in Minnesota and Florida to grant
the same right to women "coerced" into working as prostitutes (for example,
by offers of money or legal assistance or encouragement to join a prostitutes'
union), they contend that women are incapable ()f making up their own minds
(i,e,, they cannot consent, or if they tlo, it is not a defense to a charge of willful
harm), Raymond is the co-chair with Dorchen Leidholdt of the Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women, founded by Barry, which defines all prostitution as
'"trafficking•' and a.s forced, or if not forced, in error, Barry writes, "by refusing
to make a distinction between forced and voluntary pro.stitution.,, we refuse to
recognize prostitution as a profession" (Kathleen Barry, "UNESCO Reptjrt
Studie.s Prostitution.' WHISPER Newsletter. 1:3(1986-7), 1, cited in Shannon Bell,
Reading. Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body (Blooniingtonr Indiana
University Press, 1994), 125). In a more recent Ixxik. Barry contends that we
should not give condoms to prostitLites because if they use condoms, they are
more likdy to become infected with HIV than if they cease to be pro,stitutes,
Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution o/Sexuatity: V.K' Glolxil Exploitation of Women
(New York: New '^'ork University Press, 1995).
63. Barry thinks that prostitutes have no selves, that in learning liow to work tiiey
24S POLICING PUBLIC SEX
lose their selves and become nothing. She thinks thai the common practice of
adopting work names is pan of a process of the removal of the self, ignoring
its funaion in the management of the stigtna by providing a way to retain the
self, by defining an outer workplace self to protect the not-work self (Barry,
1994, 30-36). She i:s blind to the possibility' that one might choo.se a new name
to enhance one's appeal. Other people who have routinely changed their names
for work are actors and nuns.
M. Prostitution and pwrnography are sites where men (including legislators, police,
male managers) have been attempting to define and control female sexuality,
and where women (prostitutes, sirippers, models, and actors in pornography)
are and have been stmggling with and against misogynist ideas of it. In a small
sector of both forms of sex work and commerce, women as producers and
performers are beginning to construct alternate visions.
65. For an interesting perspective, see John C. Oildwell, Pat Caldwell, and Pat
Quiggin, "The Social Context of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa," Population and
Devetopment Revieu-15:2 (June 1989), 185-234. The authors delineate what they
call ihe Eurasi:m establishment of property rights through forcing women to
choose berween being good (virgins, chaste wives) or bad (whores), in contrast
to a broader range of gender constructions and a somewhat less restrictive
approach to female sexuality within or outside of marriage in sub-Saharan
African societies.
66. Since I have been citing .some of the works of the a nti-prostitute community, I
would like to provide an abbreviated list of some of the significant writing from
the pro-prostitute perspective, Works by sex workers include: Laurie Bell, ed..
Good Girt^Bud Girls. Feminists ami Sex Trade Workers Eace to Face (Seattle:
Seal Press, 1987); Frederique Delacosie and Priscilla Alexander, eds.. Sex Work-
Writings by Women in tbe Sex Industry (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1987); Gail
Pheterson, ed., ^ Vindicatioti of tbe Rigbts of Whores (Seattle: Seal Press, 1989):
Nickie Roberts. Wbores in History:- Prostitution in Western Society (London:
HarperCollins, 1992); and, of course, memoirs by activists in the movement,
including Norma Jean Almodovar, Cop to Call Girt: Wby I Left tbe LAPD to Make
an Honest Living as a Beverly Hills Prostitute (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1993), and Dolores French and Linda Lee, Working: My Life as a Prostitute Wew
York: E.P. Dulton, 1988). Observers who have written about our movement
include Shannon Bell, Reading. Writing, and Rewriting tbe Prostitute Body
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1994) and Valerie Jenness. Making It
Work: Tbe Prostitutes' Rigbts Movement in Perspective (New York: Aidine de
Gruyter, 1993). I would be remiss if 1 did not include some of the feminist
historians and amhropologisLs who have been among our strongest allies,
including Jill liarsin, whose Policing Prostitution in 19tb Century Paris (Pfmce-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1985) is, I think, the besi analysis of the
regulatory approach and was a major influence in my thinking about that issue;
Marilynn Wood Hill, Tbeir Sisters' Keepers: Prostitution in New York City.
7S30-/S70(Berkeley: University of CalifornLT Press. 1993); Thanh-DamTniong,
Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in Soutb-east Asia (London:
Zed Books, 1990); Luise White, Tbe Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial
AUxandcr 249
Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), who writes from the
perspective that prostitution is a form of reproductive labor and a means to
capital accumulation, a view I find very elucidating; and Christine Stansell, City
of Women: Sex and Class in Neiv York, 7 7S9-/S()0(Urbana: University of Chicago
Press, 1987), who addresses the o\-erlap and frequent contlation of working-
class female sexuality and prostitution. Some ofthe significant writing about
sexuality in general from a pro-sex perspective includes: Gcoiê Chauncey, Jr,
GayNeu' York: Gender, Urhan Culture, and the Making of tbe Gay Male World,
1890-1940 We^ York: Basic Books, 1994); Pat Califia, Public Sex: The Culture
of Radical Sex (Piusburgh. Cleis Press, 1994); John D'Emilio and Estelle B.
Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York;
Harper & Row, 1988); Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter. Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent
and Political Culture (New York; Routledge, 1995); Kate Ellis, Nan D, Hunter,
Beth Jaker, Barbara O'Dair. and Abby Tallmer (FACT Book Committee), Caught
Looking: Feminism, Pornography and Censorship (New York: Caught Looking,
Inc., 1986); Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural
Anxiety^Nev,- York: RouUedge, 1992); Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell. and Sharon
Thompson, Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (New York; Monthly
Review Press, 1983); and Carole S, Vance, ed.. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring
Female Sexuality. (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), Finally, I want to
include Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman S Right to Pomograpby (New York: Si.
Martin s Press, 1995), because she gives voice to the workers in pornography,
the performers, who are often left out of discussions alxiut pornography and
censorship,
67. It is an age-old dilemma that confronts the oppressed, as the history of "Coun
Jews" and "Uncle Toms" attests. Although the anti-.iiex feminists Ijelieve them-
selves to be ai the forefront of attacking the mainstream paradigm, in fact they
give ii the strongest support. Tliey say by their actions that women really don t
have sexual desire, as if being a "good girl" ever protected any individual woman
or the community of women within patriarchal society. In another, parallel
fashion, upper-class professional women who decry feminism, oppose affirm-
ative action, and identify with the traditional while male establishment have
contributed Op-Ed pieces to The New York Times on behalf of what they have
named the Independent Women's Fonim, an organization formed to show tliat
some women, primarily rich and white, suppon the status quo for the masses,
while they reap the benefits of the affirmative action that permitted ihetn to
become lawyers, corporate executives, and other professionals,
68. The anti-sex/anti-prostitute feminists have said, in numerous times and places,
that prostitutes who do not see themselves as victims are brainwashed and/or
have false consciousness. For a complex and enlightening exploration of the
whore stigma, see the writings of Gail Pheterson, including Vye Whore Stigma:
Female Dishonor and Male Unumrthiness (Amsier&dmi Dutch Ministry of Social
Affairs and Employment, Emancipation Policy Coordination. 1986), the first part
of which was reprinted in Social Textyi (Winter 1993), 39-64, and "The Social
Consequences of Unchastity," in Delacoste, op cit., 215-230.
Photo by Tracy Mostovoy
Carol Leigh
(a.lca. Scarlot Harlot)
P.I.M.P.
(Prostitutes
in Munidpai Poiitics)
Imagine growing up a girl in late

20th-century America. You may have been a victim of some type of
molestation or the target of unwanted sexual advances. Or maybe you
were just subjected to the usual propaganda about sex: sex is really for
boys. Girls comply to find love or to get attention.
Female sexuality is used to sell everything from autos to window
cleaner.
You leave home at an early age, very often (though not always)
because of abuse. You become involved in prostitution because of some
combination of the following:
1) someone talks you into it, sometimes coercively, sometimes not.
2) your friends and/or family do or did it.
3) there are few jobs through which you can support yourself, and
it's hard to survive.
4) rebels don't fare well at McDonald's.
Even if you are over 18, if you are living in the U.S. with little
education and few job skills, or if discrimination against your race,
gender identity, sexual orientation, etc. means you probably won't get
hired in a straight job or even an indoor prostitution job, or if everyone
you know works or hangs out on the streets, or if that's the only kind
of prostitution you've ever heard about because that's what you see on
the cop shows, talk shows, or TV news, then you might wind up
working on the street.
251
If you are under 16 or 17, the child labor laws can keep you from
finding another way to support yourself when you are on your own.
Many young women and young men engage in occasional prostitution
and more casual forms of survival sex. Attitudes are diverse, I have
spoken with a number of prostitutes who worked in their teens and
do not think back on this part of their lives with horror, I have met
others who do.
Some extricate themselves from a life that they portray as horrific,
while others come to embrace this particular sexual culture. Against a
backdrop of paradoxes and contradictions, public prostitution com-
bines the defiance of public sex with the drama of social hypocrisy,
A Public Woman
In the late 1970s I began working as a prostitute. Today I continue
working, while advocating for prostitutes' rights. Early on in my career
I came out as a "public woman," as prostitutes have sometimes been
called. As an artist, I was (and continue to be) a participant in public
life. Making art is cultural work. As a life artist, I document my life as
a prostitute through video, performance, and writing, as well as street
theater, civil disobedience, and other types of public participation.
As a prostitute, I have publicly announced my availability in an
ordinary manner, mostly through newspaper ads, I committed civil
disobedience by standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange and
announcing my rates, soliciting to the amusement of stockbrokers, local
ACT UP activists, members of PONY (Prostitutes of New York), and the
police: "Safe Sex For Sale, Fifty dollars for digital intercourse. That's a
hand job,,,"
"Street Prostitution"
In the 1990s, the policing of streets in the United States has emerged
as an urgent municipal concern, interpreted by some as testimony to
social dysfunction and class inequities, or as testimony to the unruly
characteristics of the poor and young. The sex industry has become a
primary target of law enforcement, with street prostitution attracting the
brunt of attacks on public, paid sexual expression.
In San Francisco, neighborhood merchant NIMBYs (Not In My Back
Yard coalitions) have been fuming with venom and conducting letter
Carol Leigh (a.k.a. Scarlot Harlot) 253
campaigns to San Francisco Supervisors to increase enforcement of laws

against prostitutes:
San Francisco's residential neighborhoods have been overwhelmed by
street crime in recent years. Chief among these life-endangering
criminal activities is street prostitution. It is the nature of the act itself
which destroys neighborhoods.'
(Never mind that most of those whose lives are endangered are
prostitutes themselves.)
In response to San Francisco's media and NIMBY campaign, one city
supervisor decided to tackle the "prostitution problem" head-on. The
San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution was organized by an icono-
clastic lawyer named Terence Hallinan. Hallinan is the son of Vincent
Hallinan, a communist who was a target of McCarthyism in the '50s, and
still well known as one of the most radical spirits in San Francisco.
Terence Hallinan was one of the more progressive members of the
Board of Supervisors and stood in opposition to the Mayor's punitive
"public order" programs. Ex-police chief and Mayor Frank Jordan
created "programs" to jail the homeless, and prostitution arfests almost
doubled during his final year in office.
Although Hallinan had previously taken the lead in defending the
rights of marginalized groups such as immigrants, transgendered
people, and the homeless, he was reluctant to propose the decriminali-
zation of prostitution, assuming that the city should control prostitutes
through a system of state-approved brothels. In a press release, he
announced his intention to study options for legalization, Nevada-style.
Prostitutes' advocates and women's groups quickly mobilized to
protest this strategy. Early on in the process I received a call from Jean
Paul Samaha, a gay rights advocate and aide to Supervisor Hallinan. I
began working with his office along with a group of allies from
women's rights and health advocacy organizations. We all agreed that
the agenda of this study group should examine law and social service
reform rather than "legalization." Decriminalization, or repeal of all laws
prohibiting prostitution, was clearly a more fruitful area of study than
"legalization," offering more autonomy and less surveillance. Legaliza-
tion usually refers to licensing or zoning systems, which inspire
numerous human rights and labor rights abuses wherever they have
been put into effect.
Prostitutes' rights advocates have been developing model programs

for peer-based services around the world. Some of this work was
initiated in San Francisco. Although peer-based programs for prostitutes
are not funded in the U.S. (agencies are not supposed to hire working
prostitutes), there is a strong movement which works with service
providers in San Francisco.
Several advocates provide expertise in San Francisco regarding legal
issues: Priscilla Alexander, formerly of the World Health Organization
and co-editor of Sex Work^ Margo St. James, founder of COYOTE (Call
Off Your Old Tired Ethics); as well as Rachel West of the US PROStitutes
Collective. Both St. James and West are associated with international
advocacy networks: Margo with the International Committee on
Prostitutes' Rights, which has held international congresses at the
European Parliament, and Rachel with the Prostitutes' Collective,
connected to the International Wages For Housework Campaign, which
has a broad-based analysis of the importance of recognizing and
valuing the work women do. San Francisco's role as a mecca for
bohemians, politicos, sexual libertines, and artists drew and nourished
the COYOTE breed of sex worker activists, including me.
Ultimately the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution included
diverse participation from groups such as NOW, the National Lawyers
Guild, Project A.W.A.R.E (Association for Women and AIDS Research
and Education), Asian AIDS Project, Center For Southeast Asian
Refugee Resettlement, Proactive Youth Coalition (Street Survival Project),
California Prevention Education Project, Transgender Services Coalition,
the public defender, the district attorney, the police department,
COYOTE, US PROStitutes Collective, the Commission on the Status of
Women, the Health Department, and six neighborhood/merchant
groups. There were 30 members in all, of which ten were former or
current prostitutes. The solid majority had prostitutes' best interests in
mind, with opposition coming only from "the neighbors," the mayor,
the vice cops, and the district attorney.
The current issue of street prostitution is largely absent from earlier
public discourse about prostitution. According to most histories of
prostitution, the movement to prohibit prostitution in the early 20th
century was led by a powerful coalition of religious activists and
suffragists. These groups managed to close down most of the off-street
Carol Leigh (a.k.a. Scarlot Harlot) 255
prostitution venues, brotliels, dance clubs, and call services by criminaliz-

ing prostitution. Ironically, their aaions produced current patterns of street
prostitution, as women were forced to find other venues for selling sex.'
In fact, "street prostitution" in its current forms did not become the
visible centerpiece of prostitution in the U.S. until legislators criminal-
ized most forms of indoor prostitution."* In this way the most public
rituals of prostitution have developed in direct response to earlier
repressive strategies. Contemporary hostility towards prostitution has
escalated as it has become more visible, resulting in increasing violence
towards prostitutes.'
"Whorebaiting"
The Examiner, a Hearst paper, played a major role in the criminalization
of prostitution in San Francisco in the early part of the 20th century.
During the early 1990s, the paper, which had been publishing scandal-
ous anti-prostitution ravings for a couple of years, began to play a part
in a critique of Hallinan's Task Force by publishing articles and op-ed
submissions by anti-prostitution feminists:
Now, instead of taking a serious look at prostitution, Terence Hallinan
trivializes the suffering by filling his Task Force with everything from
apologists for child sexual abuse to organized crime Nationwide
studies have repeatedly shown that prostitution is nothing like the
glamorous, sexy lifestyle portrayed by the spokeswomen at COYOTE.
Programs (to help women out of prostitution) must be administered by
qualified advocates... and not by the pimp apologists who call themselves
experts on prostitution...the city government can strike a blow against
the traffic in women by an aggressive policy of arresting and prosecuting
pimps and Johns, by toughening legislation on pandering (encouraging
or promoting prostitution) and by instituting a car seizure law... ^
For the record, in defense of the unrepentant whores of COYOTE:

1) COYOTE members express a range of attitudes towards prostitu-
tion, including some of the attitudes expressed in the above quotation.
The sex industry is an entertainment industry. Hollywood "glamorizes"
itself, as does Las Vegas. On the other hand, COYOTE was one of the
first organizations to discuss rape and police abuse in the context of
prostitution.
2) In terms of who is qualified to provide services, persons from a
variety of perspectives may be qualified, including those at COYOTE.
Some of the women I work with who want to get out of prostitution
reject services that condemn prostitution. Again we need varied
approaches, not monolithic analyses and scapegoating libel.
3) Pimp apologists... I won't deny it, like communists who are
forced to deny ever having read Marx. Legally, pimping is defined as
"living off the earnings of prostitution." So I admit it. All my call-girl
friends and I are legally defined as pimps if we do so much as share
clients. That stigmatizing epithet ignores the numbers of women's lives
invaded and ruined in the name of "protecting" women through
anti-pimping laws, and supports the state's "right" to send me to prison
for a felony just for sharing a client's phone number with a friend.
COP Watch
In the early 1990s, after many years of coalition-building in San
Francisco, I began organizing with a group of San Francisco progressive
activists and community-based health service providers. We formed a
group devoted to advocacy for the rights and needs of prostitutes,
particularly street workers. Our network included feminists, sex workers
from various venues, attorneys, health service providers, and employees
of alternative criminal justice programs. We distributed condoms and
legal information, and networked with prostitutes on the street. Police
abuse became one of our primary concerns. We called ourselves
COP—the Coalition on Prostitution.
For the last few years COP has been doing outreach on one of the
prostitution strolls. I have been going out regularly, basically getting to
know people on the streets while passing out condoms and info. I
regularly survey women, asking about needs for services, opinions
about the laws, and information on arrest patterns.
It isn't fair, some complain. There will be one woman in a miniskirt
on the corner, standing next to a group of five drug dealers. Passersby
will be tooting their horns, calling out, even throwing things from car
windows, and the police will arrest only the prostitute.
Quite a few women working on the street tell me that they
understand their rights. They know that they have the right to simply
stand or walk on the street. They know that they have a right to dress
however they want. Some insist that they do not step out in traffic or
make noise. They just stand there. Standing on the street corner just
can't be a crime, some tell me.
Carol Uigh (a.k.a. Starlot Harlot) 257
According to my understanding of the law as of 1996 in California,

standing there can be a crime, depending on what you are thinking at
the time. For instance, if you're thinking, "There's no food at home and
the kids are hungry, I better pick up a date tonight," then "standing
there" is a crime.
The WIPS (Women in Public Spaces) Preject

As a prostitute I had always envisioned tough female activists standing
on street corners in short skiits as an act of civil disobedience, I
mentioned this to some fellow activists who seemed to have an interest.
In conjunction with her Ph,D, research project, Esther Rosenthal, a
feminist sociologist, took me up on it. My goals dovetailed with her
project, which was to get a closer understanding of street prostitution.
Another friend, Carol Draizen, was a social worker and former "officer
of the court" (a diversion counselor for prostitutes who had been
arrested). Through her work within the legal system, Carol had
witnessed the adverse effects of criminalization on prostitutes over the
years. It became clear that through this project we could at least make
an effort to monitor the conduct of the cops,
"This is all about how women occupy and are prohibited from
occupying public space," said Rosenthal,
I called this project WIPS, Women in Public Space, We planned that
three of us would go out to the stroll, with two of us sitting in a car
with a video camera and wireless mike attached to the third woman,
who would stand on the street.
Prior to engaging in the project, I had been doing outreach on this
stroll for over a year. We conferred with a number of the women I
knew working on the streets, proceeding on the basis that the project
would be welcome. We were surprised to find that there was a great
deal of enthusiasm for the project. When we said the phrase, "looking
for police violations of prostitutes' rights," a number of women replied,
"You want to know about our rights being violated? My rights are
violated every day,"
We stationed ourselves at the most public and patrolled sector of
"High-track," San Francisco's hotel district, where prostitutes share the
streets with tourists, landmark theaters, and pricey fast-food joints. Before
starting the project, we prepared with a number of attorneys, including
the Sex Workers' Rights Committee of the National Lawyers Guild,
Through this ongoing project we are able to obtain documentation of

abuses of citizens who are usually considered beyond the scope of
human rights advocacy,
Esther stood for hours among the other women, turning away the
tricks, being videotaped by passing cars of teenagers, waiting to see
how the police would treat her. She wore high heels and a hemline
that exposed her thighs, I parked a few feet away with my video camera
and monitored her.
Police cars circled the block regularly and instructed Esther to move.
She would insist that she was not doing anything illegal. They threat-
ened her, "If you are still here when we return, we will take you down
to the station,"
"For what?" Esther asked,
"For solicitation,"
"But I'm not soliciting, I'm just waiting for someone,"
"You heard what I said. You'd better not be here when I come back,"
Laws Against Prostitution = Violonce Against Prostitutes
Gina is a Native American transgendered woman, warm, funny, and
very intelligent. She had just gotten out of prison when she had a n.m-in
with the police. She told one of the outreach workers on the street,
who called me at COP,
When I met her she said over and over that she hadn't done anything
wrong. She felt that, because she never agreed verbally to accept money
for sex, she should not have been subject to arrest. She did take money
from the officer, whereupon:
In a few seconds he flashed a brown wallet and tells me I'm under
arrest for prostitution,
"No, I'm not, I didn't do nothing, I did not agree to anything
verbally,"
"Get up against the wall. You're under arrest,"
"Why should I? For what reason, I did not do nothing wrong,"
He grabbed me. Since I did not get a clear look at any type of
badge, I got scared and I thought I was going to be raped and robbed,
[Gina also told me that an incident had happened a month or so prior
in which a rapist showed her a phony badge, said that she was under
arrest, then tried to rape and rob her,]
Carol Leigh (a.k.a. Scorlot Harlot) 259
I tried to get away, but he grabbed me by my hair and slammed

me against a brick building wall. I started struggling with him for fear
I would get hurt. He grabbed me by my hair and forcibly dragged me
for about three meters. He then called for assistance.
My head was stepped on aggressively while my right arm was being
twisted. I asked them to stop, that I was hurting. They both informed
me that I shouldn't have resisted, that if I would have cooperated, none
of this would have happened.
"We're going to let you know to cooperate the next time an officer
says you're under arrest."
I told them once again that I did nothing to be treated like this.
"When I say you're under arrest, I mean for you to shut up and put
your hands behind your back. Let this be a lesson to you and the other
individuals not to resist."
I was then handcuffed and physically beat with their fists in my
chest and ribs. I started to cry and asked if they would please stop.
One of the two insisted I turn my back towards them. When I did this
I was told, "Bitch, this is for you," and I was repeatedly kicked within
my upper right side chest.
One officer said he would call for transportation, and the other
officer kept telling me that he would like to take me north somewhere
and he would beat the shit out of me and leave me for dead. He then
told the other officer that the next person who resists should be shot,
and I told him to shoot me and just get it over with.'
She was yanked up, then forced to the ground again, when the
transport arrived. She asked to go to the hospital, and they told her to
shut up. They took her on a frightening ride over the steepest hills
(apparently this is a frequent tactic) and did not give her a seat belt.
The following day she went to the hospital on her own and was told
that her ribs were crushed. She suffered additional injuries, some of
which were sustained by the bumpy ride.
Institutionalized violence against prostitutes is familiar to me as well.
In 1979 I was raped while working at a massage parlor. The effect of
criminalization on prostitutes' safety became apparent to me as I
realized that there was no way I could call the police. The fact was, the
police would bust our massage parlor, and my co-workers would be
out on the streets. These same rapists had been to several parlors in
town, and there was little I could do to stop them. I vowed to devote
my energies to changing the laws and working with prostitutes to
organize to protect ourselves.
I am appalled that the state assumes jurisdiction over my sexuality.

To me, cops seem like rapists with badges. I read the newspapers:
"Ex-Cop Linked to Hooker Slayings" a n d "Rapist Lures Prostitutes with
Phony Police ID." The serial killers are the police—or at least there's
n o way to tell the difference.
In 1992, Maggie's, Toronto's Prostitutes' Community Project, per-
formed a study of violence against prostitutes. Of 100 cases of reported
rape and battery, five percent of the rapists identified themselves as
police in order to 'disarm' the prostitutes. (This does not include those
w h o actually were p o l i c e . /
Prostitution busts are a form of rape. W h e n an emissary of the
government (a cop) coerces m e to engage in fondling and petting
through fraud (pretending to b e a client), then arrests m e for my sexual
behavior, I call that institutionalized rape. My mantras:
LAWS THAT PUNISH PROSTITUTES ARE CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN.
THE ARREST AND INSTTTUTIONAUZED HARASSMENT OF PROSTITUTES

ARE ATROCITIES.
Punitive Legislation Increasing

During the late '80s, Democrat Willie Brown, then California's Speaker
of the House and later the mayor of San Francisco, sponsored a law
requiring mandatory HIV testing for prostitutes and a felony prison
sentence for agreeing to do a hand job if you are HIV+. Since treatment
for HIV-related illness is almost nonexistent in prison, a felony convic-
tion can be tantamount to a death sentence. Twenty-eight states have
similar legislation.
"Civil remedies" have become a recent trend in enforcement and
litigation. This tactic has been promoted by lawyers-cum-legislators,
cities, police, and anti-prostitution feminists as the "new tool for public
order." Civil suits can be used punitively (by the government and
individuals), and require less of a burden of proof than criminal law.
Seizure of property is the newest legal remedy for such offenses, and
provides a way for the state to extract their share of the profits by
confiscating all earnings based on so-called crimes. This includes drug
offenses as well as prostitution. Police have more at stake with these
economic incentives, and they are highly motivated to hunt down
"recalcitrants." These incentives also tend to trigger greed and over-
Carol Loigh (a.k.a. Scarlot Harlot) 261
enthusiasm. Officers who are ordinarily restrained by constitutional

prohibitions on illegal search and seizure under criminal law wield
much greater power under these new statutes.
Contemporary prostitution-prohibitionist feminists working within
the criminal justice system in San Francisco are breeding a new set of
"retraining centers" for Johns. Here, the police blackmail the clients, by,
upon arrest, presenting the D.A.'s offer not to press charges if the John
takes a $500 seminar. "John school" is very educational, including
testimonies by ex-prostitutes about how much they hated prostitution.
(Personally, I have a few choice words I'd like to share, but they
shouldn't arrest the clients.)
Arresting clients is usually more of a propaganda campaign for the
police than a real priority. Client arrests have gone up 25 percent
according to the local police department, but many of the prostitutes
tell me that women are still being detained, without the paperwork. In
the '70s there was a similar rash of news stories about an increase in
the arrest of clients. However, this had no long-term effect on the arrest
ratio—prostitutes are still arrested much more often than clients. If the
police department were comprised of a majority of women the figures
might change, but some prostitutes say that women cops can be worse.
While some male officers are friendly and actually supportive, women
report that female officers may be less friendly and less likely to let a
known prostitute continue working. And there is an underlying prob-
lem regarding re-educating Johns in order to take away a hooker's
business: it causes many prostitutes to work longer hours and take extra
risks to make the money they need.
Recently, in Minnesota, a group of prohibitionists wrote and man-
aged to pass legislation (HR2519) prescribing civil remedies against
anyone who "entices" someone into prostitution. This civil remedy
bypasses the proof required in the criminal justice system and stretches
the meaning of coercion to include a wider range of circumstances than
usually exists in the legal definition of coercion. Offering unionization
was listed as one of the "sins."
Organized prostitution is a prime target of the law. Living off the
earnings of a prostitute (a.k.a. pimping) is a felony in most states.
Although police should enforce laws against persons who abuse,
coerce, force, kidnap, or commit violence against prostitutes, criminal-
izing "living off the earnings" makes it impossible to spend one's money
on family, friends, or lovers. This strategy increases the marginalization
of prostitutes by criminalizing their relationships.
These laws apply to me, and I take them personally. As a call girl,
it is almost impossible not to share a client's phone number with a
friend. Prostitutes work together, giving referrals and sharing apart-
ments as a way to organize to protect ourselves. In fact, prostitutes'
rights groups try to make the sex business safer by encouraging
communication between sex workers. Laws against pimping threaten
all our communications and supports.
Prostitutes, especially the most visible prostitutes working on the
streets, are again emerging as primary symbols of suffering and need,
of the mythic malevolence of women, of "criminals and deviants."
Society, the laws, and the police attack the public display of women's
sexuality and sexually assertive presence. Erotic performers and
prostitutes, as well as any public erotic image, are cast as a prime enemy
of an idealized social order that is based on middle-class concepts of
"decorum" and cotiformity. This century—this millennium—is coming
to an end in an atmosphere of fear, with society seeking unfair revenge
on the poor, the sick, and the strange.
NOTES
1. San Francisco Task Force Interim Report 1994, Statement by Neighborhood
Group Activist.
2. Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, eds.. Sex Work: Writings by Women
in the Sex Industry (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1987).
3. Ruth Rosen, Lost Sisterhood (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1982), xii.
4. Barbara Meil Hobson, Uneasy Virtue (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
5. Priscilla Alexander, "Prostitution: A Difficult Issue for Feminists," in Sex Work, 201.
6. San Francisco Examiner, February 18, 1994, A-23.
7. From a statement written by Gina, personal communication, which she intended
to submit to the Office of Citizen Complaints. This report is indicative of
occasional occurrences within a context of repeated verbal harassment and
arrests of young women, women of color, and transgendered women.
8. "Police Response To Reports of Violence Against Prostitutes," Maggie's, The
Toronto Prostitutes' Community Service Project, submitted September 25, 1992,
to the Police Services Board, Toronto.
Timothy J. Gilfoyle
FROM
SOUBRETTE ROW
TO SHOW WORID
The Contested Sexualities
of Times Square, 1880-1995
In 1995, New York City outlawed

sexually oriented adult businesses in certain neighborhoods. Pre-
viously, New York's zoning laws had treated adult stores and similar
entertainment venues—bookshops, video outlets, theaters, topless
bars—like any other commercial enterprise. Such businesses were
permissible in any area zoned for commercial or manufacturing use.
The history of New York is replete with reform crusades to obliterate
the most public forms of commercial sex from its streets,' Passage of
the 1995 law, however, ushered in a new era in Gotham's long history
of commercial sex. The city statute marked the most aggressive effort
in New York City history to utilize municipal or state power to restrict
land and property use in regards to sexual behavior.
Nowhere did these efforts take on more real and symbolic meaning
than Times Square, Real estate interests involved in "redeveloping" the
Times Square area from 1980 to 1995 read like a who's who in New
York real estate history, Bruce Eichner, William Zeckendorf, Jr,, Jack
Rudin, George Klein, Harry Macklowe, and others worked in conjunc-
tion with city officials and the Urban Development Corporation to make
the "Great White Way" great again, "We want to bring fantasy back to
Times Square," said City Planning Commission Chair Herbert Sturz in
1986, "and replace much of the grim reality that currently exists," In
1995, fantasy indeed replaced reality—Michael Eisner and the Disney
263
Corporation announced they would build a new hotel and renovate a

historic theater on 42nd Street,^
Cultural conflicts regarding entertainment and sexual behavior in
Times Square harken back to the late 19th century, long before the
intersection of Broadway, 42nd Street, and Seventh Avenue was so
christened. For almost 200 years, commercialized sexuality has been an
integral part of New York's thriving leisure economy. From brothels,
theaters, concert saloons, and dime museums in the 19th century to
massage parlors, cabarets, and "call girl" services in the 20th, erotic
entertainment for hire has remained an ever-present reality of New
York's "underground" economy. Sex has long been treated as a
commodity, bought and sold in the urban entertainment marketplace.
In the 20th century. Times Square has repeatedly served as the cultural
battleground for these and other competing forms of leisure, entertain-
ment, and sexuality,'
The early history of the Times Square neighborhood never hinted at
its evolution into New York's premier sex district. From 1830 to I860, real
estate entrepreneurs Clement Clarke Moore and William B, Astor led the
movement to develop the West Side north of I4th Street into an elite
suburban community, Astor alone built approximately 200 brownstone
houses nortliwest of Longacre Square (renamed Times Square in 1904)
from West 44th to 47th Streets, By I860, magnificent row houses lined the
area, prompting one observer to describe the neighborhood as having "a
superior class of residents than those on the East Side of town,"''
After the Civil War, however, the quiet residential atmosphere of
this area was upset by the forces of commerce and industry. Beginning
with the Academy of Music's opening on Union Square in 1854, leading
theaters migrated north along Broadway, Many moved into the once
elite, row-house neighborhoods of Chelsea and Madison Square, By
1870, 23rd Street, with the Grand Opera House, Booth's Theater, Koster
and Bial's, and Madison Square Garden, was the major theater district.
And the concurrent opening of elevated railroad lines encouraged New
York's leading entertainment institutions to abandon their older down-
town surroundings. By 1885, Herald Square and 34th Street became a
nightlife district, "Crowds throng the sidewalks," wrote James McCabe,
The "lights of the omnibuses and carriages dart to and fro along the
roadway like myriads of fire-flies; the great hotels, the theatres and
Timothy J. Gilfoyle 265
restaurants, send out their blaze of gas-lamps, and are alive with
visitors All sorts of people are out, and the scene is enlivening beyond
description." One police officer remembered that "tlie Tenderloin drew
to its streets most of the visitors and the best people in the city."^
Furthermore, industrialization in lower Manhattan forced prostitu-
tion, along with entertainment, residential, and other less profitable land
uses, uptown. After 1865, for example, the cast iron factories designed
by Griffith Thomas, Henry Fernbach, and James Duckworth rapidly
replaced the brothels along Mercer, Wooster, Greene, and Crosby
Streets (known as Soho today). Real estate in this mid-19th century sex
district doubled and tripled in value betu'een 1850 and 1880, hastening
the conversion from residential to industrial use. A sanitary inspector
making his rounds in the neighborhood concluded that the "large
number of houses of prostitution... for which this district was... so
notorious... [were] rapidly disappearing from this section of the
city,... being soon crowded out by the encroachments of mercantile
business." Similarly, George Ellington admitted in 1869 that Mercer
Street property was so expensive that "warehouses of immense pro-
portions [were] taking the places of the houses where scenes of revelry
were once enacted."^
"Revelry" and "vice" meant one thing in 19th-century Gotham:
female prostitution. This most commercialized form of sex quickly
followed the uptown migration of leisure institutions. As entertainment
and commerce made the neighborhood undesirable, wealthy New
Yorkers abandoned their well-built brownstones for newer ones
uptown. Landlords who were unable to attract middle-class residents
had two choices: subdivide the houses into multiple-family dwellings
for working-class tenants, or lease to agents who would in turn rent to
prostitutes who could afford the higher rents. The plentiful neighbor-
hood theaters made the latter option the most promising, profit-wise.
Thus, the former domiciles of middle-class respectability were trans-
formed into brothels. "[H]ouses of prostitution," remembered one
Tenderloin police officer, soon "lined up in an unbroken row of
brownstone fronts."^
After 1880, no single block was preeminent in Tenderloin prostitu-
tion. West 31st and West 32nd Streets, for example, were populated
with at least 19 brothels apiece in the 1880s and had a minimum of ten
each during the following decade. The honky-tonk atmosphere around

Longacre Square to the north earned it the nickname of "Thieves' Lair,"
Images of crime, however, did little to discourage investments in sex.
In 1889, court testimony revealed that Nathaniel Niles, president of the
Tradesmen's National Bank, owned a brothel on West 43rd Street off
Seventh Avenue run by the prominent Elize Purret, better known as
"the French Madam,"*
More blatant, if not controversial, were the string of a dozen brothels
lining West 39th and West 40th Streets, Beginning in 1883 with the
opening of the Metropolitan Opera House, these "parlor houses"
thrived. Patrons, as well as nearby residents, consistently complained
about the streetwalkers soliciting men entering and exiting the opera
house. West 39th Street, in particular, drew attention for its French-run
bordellos. Dubbed "Soubrette Row" during the 1880s,' these houses
were so famous that they, according to one observer, "were known all
over the country,"'"
The Metropolitan Opera House not only attracted chic forms of
prostitution, but illicit narcotics as well. By the late 1880s, opium dens,
or "swell joints" for an elite clientele, appeared in the vicinity of West
39th and 40th Streets, "Those who run the joints pay handsome rents,"
claimed one reporter, "They only admit those whom they know. They
run things so quietly that there is little chance of any of the other tenants
finding out the character of the place," After the more "public" places
were raided and closed down after 1890, they were replaced by "vast
numbers" of "private joints,"" Robert Howe, in particular, opened
opium dens in apartments "of the better class" adjacent to the Metro-
politan Opera House, Casino Theatre, and Oriental Hotel, Like many
"uptown joints," Howe's was "furnished and decorated with a sensuous
magnificence,,, in marked contrast to the filthy squalor of the tiny
rooms in the rear tenements" of Chinatown, Smokers only came after
midnight to avoid attracting attention. Patrons included "high-class
crooks," "green-goods men," "bunco steerers," the "demimonde," as well
as actors, clerks, bookmakers, theatrical men, lawyers and journalists,'^
The movement of hotels and theaters up Broadway into the
Longacre Square neighborhood continued after the opening of the
Metropolitan Opera, When the new subway line opened in 1904, The
New York Times moved to Longacre Square and convinced the city to
rename it Times Square." The uptown movement of elite leisure

institutions precipitated an expansion of New York's Tenderloin, push-
ing its northern border to West 42nd Street. "As everyone knows,"
former police chief William McAdoo aptly concluded in 1906, "the city
is being rebuilt, and vice moves ahead of business."
For some, commercial sex defined the midtown area. The Rev.
Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., for example, contended that his West 40th
Street church was in "the most notorious red-light district in New York
City." There, "harlots would stand across the street on Sunday evenings
in unbuttoned Mother Hubbards [a style of dress] soliciting men as they
left our service." A block away and adjacent to the Metropolitan Opera,
Tammany Hall's Archibald Hadden ran the popular and prostitute-filled
German Village and Denver Hotel. Sometime after 1901, the sobriquet
of "Soubrette Row" moved to West 43rd Street, a block where almost
every house was a brothel and which was directly across from the future
headquarters of the New York Times. Not surprisingly, Broadway from
West 27th to 68th Streets was described as a two-mile parade of pairient
commerce with "ten to twenty prostitutes... seen nightly on every
block." Even the Times lamented that "the glittering splendor of 'the
Great White Way' does not symbolize the best spirit of the people of
New York."'"
More so than any other phenomenon, these neighborhoods and
their so-called "illegitimate" activities embodied what critics labeled the
"negative vitality" of the city. By the onset of the 20th century,
commercial sex in the 42nd Street neighborhood, like other parts of
New York, was organized around three distinct subcultures. Female
prostitutes themselves formed the most visible and controversial
element, usually subjected to the most severe penalties by law enforce-
ment agencies. Second, a "sporting male" culture celebrating male
heterosexual activity grew more public. Not only was this behavior
tolerated by many municipal authorities, but it was an increasingly
prominent form of expressing masculinity and male identification.
Finally, the high demand for sexual services induced numerous entre-
preneurs to systematically organize various leisure institutions, thereby
controlling significant portions of this underground economy.''
By 1885, prostitutes were a prominent and visible part of the
midtown Manhattan neighborhood. In 1888, for example, residents
complained that prostitutes dominated certain blocks near Longacre

Square. One house on West 40th Street sold liquor without a license
and was, lamented one neighbor, "a place in which 'fast women' [were]
allowed to prey upon humanity at will." Most importantly, "children of
tender years have to pass up and down the stairs and consequently
pass the door of this pest house [continually]." Retired carpenter George
Stone remarked that men came "into my house and sat down in the
parlor, imagining that they were in one of these resorts, and refused to
leave when ordered to do so, calling my wife and daughter all sorts of
vile names, and using the most profane language." By year's end, the
"reputable residents" of West 40th Street organized a property owners
association specifically "to drive these people away at any cost."'^
Two blocks south, another resident charged that brothels sponsored
"disgusting magic lantern exhibitions... given for the benefit of the
neighbors on the opposite side of the street." Observers claimed that
ten years earlier, the neighborhood had been free of prostitutes. Now,
they were virtually everywhere. And after buying a residence on West
39th Street in 1892, Dean Osgood was surprised to learn that his
neighbors comprised numerous prostitutes. Behind his house, women
in a 38th Street brothel "used to dance naked; the shades... up and all
such performances" in full view.'^
Before 1900, the subculture of prostitutes was fluid and revolved
around the brothel. The most successful madams remained in business
for significant periods of time. May Livingston, for instance, ran two
houses on West 40th Street and another on West 45th Street for many
years. Similarly, Annie Grey ran three houses, all on West 46th Street,
including one that remained open for three decades. Most women,
however, rarely remained in any one establishment longer than several
months. Prostitutes like C.A. Lawrence were typical. Most times she
streetwalked along Broadway between Times and Herald Squares. But
when business was slow, she moved uptown and worked in Harlem.'*
Inside, brothel prostitutes performed at seemingly fantastic rates.
According to account books in one 50-cent house, one prostitute
copulated with 273 men in two weeks, an average of 19 per day (her
high was 28 in a day), earning $136.50 for the house. She managed to
keep $68.25, from which she paid for board and expenses. Two other
prostitutes in the same house saw an average of 120 and 185 men each
week, respectively, one seeing as many as 49 in one day. The surprising

volume was contingent upon each woman's willingness to work
16-hour days. In other examples, Madge Williams made $58 one
evening in 1909 and "French Viola," $25 per week, usually after
accommodating 180 clients, Incongaiously, she admitted "drift[ing] into
the business because of the easy time,""
By the 20th century, the prostitute subculture in the Tenderloin had
a high proportion of immigrants. For example, of the 464 women found
in Tenderloin hotels in one Committee of Fourteen survey, 30 percent
were French, 20 percent Jewish, and 6 percent German, Of those
remaining, at least 38 percent were American-born, including 18
percent Irish-American and 7 percent African-American, When investi-
gators counted 187 women in 32 boardinghouses and brothels in the
Tenderloin, only 13 percent were American-born, Over half (51
percent) were Jewish, and more than a third (36 percent) French,^"
Race and ethnicity divided the subculture of prostitutes, African-
Americans, for instance, remained segregated to the periphery of Times
Square, The streets from West 37th to 43rd, west of Seventh Avenue,
were known for their large numbers of black prostitutes. One observer
noted in 1913 that "every night, from seven o'clock to about four in the
morning they [the prostitutes] stand and sit outside of their houses very
irrespectably dressed, and speak to all men who pass, especially white
men, and take them up to their flats, "^' "To make men follow them,"
remembered Adam Clayton Powell, Sr,, "prostitutes would snatch their
hats and am into hallways," On other occasions, they were downright
intimidating, "Numerous colored women walk up and down the street,"
wrote one citizen, "blocking the passage of white men and boys, and
in some cases force them into the gutter, in order for them to get clear
of them," In his opinion, the women were "increasing and becoming
bolder all the time,"^^
Women of other ethnic origins also inhabited separate spaces. This
was most noticeable with the French, One investigator concluded this
was due to more than just language, "The French girls in these houses,"
he wrote, "resort to unnatural practices and as a result the other girls
will not associate or eat with them. This is the general reputation of
French gids: that they will resort to lower practices than any other class, "^'
Tlie popularity of prostitution also produced a distinct subculture
for males that often cut across class divisions. For approximately four
decades, "sporting men" in the Tenderloin and elsewhere celebrated
personal autonomy, promiscuity, extramarital sex, and physical isolation
from the nation's strict Victorian mores. "Sporting men" admired and
rewarded displays of "rough masculinity"—prizefighting and pugilism,
street gangs and heavy drinking, verbal bravado and sexual aggres-
sion.^'* The emphasis on physical prowess combined with the increasing
commercialization of leisure produced a distinct male world with its
own set of sexual norms. Since sex with women was something to buy
for many men, a variety of erotic behaviors was consistently available
for purchase in the urban marketplace.
Sporting male culture was never homogeneous. Yet its popularity
among males of educated and middle-class status generated consider-
able attention by the end of the 19th century. Howard Crosby of the
Society for the Prevention of Crime, for example, lamented that "the
vilest haunts" in New York were frequented by "sons of our best-
esteemed citizens—merchants' and bankers' clerks, book-keepers,
and tellers of banks, employees of insurance offices, city, county, and
State officeholders." Even the female physician Elizabeth Blackwell
complained that the sporting male lifestyle was so popular that "young
women of the middle and upper classes... are brought by these customs
of society, into direct competition with prostitutes.""
This pattern of male sexual license grew more pronounced by the
turn of the century. When questioned about the widespread prostitu-
tion in New York, for example. Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck defended
it. "I think those boys do now what I did when I was a boy," he
asserted. Similarly, the Society for the Suppression of Vice complained
of the sexual displays in theaters and "low play houses." "Matters
which were formerly relegated to disorderly houses," concluded one
report, "received the patronage of so-called decent society."
At the turn of the century, sporting men were more willing than
ever to admit their sexual activities. For example, during the Mazet
Committee investigations of municipal corruption in 1899, testimony
revealed that nearly 200 men complained to the police of being robbed
by prostitutes during an encounter. Nearly two-thirds of the clients (64
percent) lived in the city, and more than a quarter (28 percent) in the
same ward as the prostitute. Philandering was so tolerated that many
felt no compulsion to conceal their behavior. When George Kneeland

concluded that the daily clientele of New York's prostitutes exceeded
150,000 by 1913, he claimed that
There are thousands of these men in New York. No home ties restrain
them; no home associations fill their time or thought. Their rooms are
fit only to sleep in; close friends they have are few or none. You can
watch them on the streets any evening. Hour after hour they gaze at
the passing throng; at length they fling themselves into the current—no
longer silent or alone.
Prostitution was such "an accepted fact of city life," concluded one
police officer, that "there seemed little that could be done to check it."^^
Moreover, Tenderloin prostitution was among the best organized
parts of Gotham's underground economy. "Startling as is the assertion,"
claimed police captain Thomas Byrnes in 1886, "it is nevertheless true,
that the traffic in female virtue is as much a regular business, system-
atically carried on for gain, in the city of New York, as is the trade in
boots and shoes, dry goods and groceries." By the 20th century, the
organization of commercial sex impressed even the most critical. "It is
surely no exaggeration to maintain," concluded George Kneeland in
1913, "that prostitution in New York City is widely and openly exploited
as a business enterprise."^'
Reform investigations increasingly identified entrepreneurs of the
Tenderloin economy with foreign elements. For example, in one
investigation, reformer Frances Kellor noted that many of the Jewish
vice organizers from the Lower East Side, especially the Independent
Benevolent Association, had moved into the Times Square area. In
addition, examinations of the Tenderloin by the Committee of Fourteen
in 1910 and 1912 found over 50 French-operated houses and resorts,
more than double the number of those identified as Jewish or black.
More so than Jewish pimps, a French syndicate actively recruited French
prostitutes abroad, many entering as wives, relatives, or maids of their
pimp or recruiter.^*
The French syndicate included numerous proprietors of French
restaurants and was headquartered in the Tenderloin. Restaurant owner
Maurice Chevalier, for example, was known for his close associations
with this syhdicate. Frances Kellor concluded that the French syndicate
received less attention because of their experience in more tolerant
French cities, allowing them to run "their business as nearly compatible

with the rules laid down by the police department." Their compliance
with local politicians and police convinced the Women's Municipal
League and the City Club that such activity "could not exist without the
connivance or acquiescence of the party in power," and blamed
Tammany Hall."' "As far as the business end of this trade is concerned,"
concluded Kellor in 1907, "one might safely leave out all other nations."
In another investigation two years later, antiprostitution reformer Hattie
Ross complained that "syndicate" establishments dominated West 4lst
Street "where they never were before."'"
Even after 1900, when the brothel was declining in popularity,
profits remained substantial. George Kneeland's 1913 survey of 30
one-dollar brothels in the Tenderloin found that the average monthly
profit was $2,069, or almost $25,000 annually. Similarly, eight five-dollar
houses averaged $ 1,415, or nearly $17,000 annually. Frances Kellor
discovered even higher profits in 1907, figuring that landlords of
Tenderloin brothels made as much as $800 per week in profit, a rate
that brought their annual lucre to $41,600.''
Despite these profits, brothels were not the most lucrative form of
commercial sex after 1900. Hotels rapidly became the most profitable
habitats of prostitutes. Moving north along Broadway, the Delavan at 40th
Street, a favorite of "sporting men and race track toughs," was run by Tom
O'Rourke and filled with 50 "cadets" and 30 female prostitutes of all
tiationalities. The popularity of these and Raines Law hotels prompted
brothel madams to refer to them resentfully as "charity places."'^
In the heyday of the Tenderloin, therefore, various "underworld"
establishments interacted with elite institutions of culture. The Metro-
politan Opera House, Broadway theaters, and exclusive restaurants were
neighbors to rows of public brothels, Raines Law hotels, and opium
dens. The "robber barons" and parvenus who built the Opera House
shared its front sidewalk with streetwalkers. As an entertainment district,
the Tenderloin was never homogeneous in its patronage and available
forms of leisure. In contrast to the prescriptive Victorian literature of
the era, social elites shared the streets and institutions of the neighbor-
hood with more ribald elements of New York's sexual underworld.''
This situation did not come to pass without opposition. But through-
out most of the 19th century, attacks were sporadic, largely ineffectual.
and centered upon "disorderly" brothels, "low dives," and concert

saloons. The Ladies Female Moral Reform Society in the 1830s, the Five
Points House of Industry in the 1850s, and the mayoral administrations
of William R, Grace and Abram S, Hewitt in the 1880s conducted
well-publicized antiprostitution campaigns that proved short-lived and
without lasting impact,'"* Beginning with the Rev, Charles Parkhurst in
1892, however, a sustained movement emerged, producing a series of
state investigations and purity reform organizations that survived into
the Great Depression,
Although he never made it to Longacre Square during his famed
nocturnal journey through New York's underworld in 1892, Parkhurst
later attacked the rampant Tenderloin prostitution. For example, when
Dean Osgood's complaints about West 39th Street fell upon deaf ears
at the police station, he went to Parkhurst, "The Society [for the
Prevention of Crime] went to work there with their detectives," he
gratefully proclaimed, "and the doctor himself took a personal hand,"
After organizing public meetings and media coverage, arrests and
brothel closings became more frequent, Parkhurst considered the police
so corrupt and ineffectual regarding commercial sex that he instructed
his organizations, the Society for the Prevention of Crime (SPC) and the
City Vigilance League, to "take the initiative in these matters,"''
Parkhurst's campaign benefited from already existing but disparate
reform organizations. The, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children (SPCC) in the 1880s, fearing the historic association of the
theater with prostitution, engaged in a lengthy campaign to prohibit
children from performing in city theaters. Eventually, the SPCC success-
fully lobbied for a child exhibition law in 1892 that restricted the stage
activities of children under l6,"^ Some organized property owners and
community associations also exerted scattered resistance to prostitution,
Parkhurst and his legions also assumed law enforcement powers
and bypassed the police, building upon the tradition of earlier anti-
prostitution and preventive societies. Some criticized this policy, "By
granting to private associations the powers that rightfully belong to
the police you have destroyed the morale of the force," testified
Assemblyman Wauhope Lynn, "You have delegated to the Society for
the Prevention of Vice, the S,P,C,, the S,P,C,C,, and the S,P,C,A, powers
that rightfully belong to the police,"'^ Most importantly, Parkhurst's
campaign did not dissipate as had earlier antiprostitution efforts. For

more than a decade afterwards, investigations of the New York
underworld remained a fixture in New York politics. Continuing with
the Lexow Committee in 1894 and the Mazet Committee five years later,
the sexual reform mantle passed to the Committee of Fifteen in 1900
and ultimately to the Committee of Fourteen in 1905,^
A "citizens association" allied with the Anti-Saloon League, the
Committee of Fourteen captained the most extensive and successful
antiprostitution campaign in New York's history. For a quarter-century,
the Committee marshaled its many resources in the most concerted
effort to eliminate conspicuous displays of sexuality in Times Square,
theaters, and cabarets. Initially concerned with streetwalkers and Raines
Law hotels, the Committee eventually expanded its definition of
"commercialized prostitution" to include certain theatrical perform-
ances, cabarets, venereal disease, homosexuality, and burlesque,''
Shortly after its birth, the organization lobbied successfully for the
Ambler Law of 1905, eliminating the majority of Raines Law hotels,"*"
Citywide, the Committee made on-site investigations, presented evi-
dence of violations to the Department of Excise, and pressured
brewers supplying saloons, real estate owners, the Tenement House
Department, and the police. In Times Square, the Committee closed
numerous brothels and,hotels on West 40th and 4lst Streets, In 1910,
the Committee convinced District Attorney Charles Whitman to prose-
cute remaining "vice resorts" and institute a special grand jury chaired
by John D, Rockefeller, Jr, Over the next two decades. Committee
investigators visited restaurants, dance halls, cabarets, massage parlors,
tenement houses, and any other institution sponsoring some variety of
commercial sex, "[C]onstant vigilance is necessary," wrote General
Secretary Frederick Whitin, "for a change of police policy might easily
be followed by the renewed activity of repressed forms of the evil,"'*'
The Committee of Fourteen's success was the product of a constel-
lation of factors and timing. First, they were a critical element of the
Progressive political movement to reform New York's law enforcement
system. Appearing at a moment in New York history that also saw the
adoption of Women's Night Court, probation and parole, juvenile and
family court, and the indeterminate sentence, the Committee forced
sexual politics and especially commercialized sex to the forefront of
rimothy J. Gilfoyle 275
the reform agenda. Furthermore, upon contributing to the reorganiza-

tion of the municipal court system, the district attorney's office, and the
police, the Committee focused on some of the larger structural causes
of commercial sex."*^
Second, the practice of crimefighting and law enforcement regarding
sexuality changed noticeably. Before 1910, New York's police were
greatly politicized and often enjoyed arbitrary power on the street. "The
individual policeman was respected and feared in the '90s much more
tlian he is to-day," wrote Cornelius Willemse in 1931. "They were powerful
fearless men, mostly of Irish birth, and they dispensed the law with the
night-stick, seldom bothering to make arrests." In addition, a majority
of officers were members of political clubs affiliated with Tammany
Hall. Reformers like Frank Moss considered the police depanment to
be "the most perfect machine ever invented in this city. It knows every
prostitute, it knows every house, and no prostitute, no gambler, can
live for a moment in any place in the city without being known. "'*'
The Committee of Fourteen responded to this municipal coopera-
tion with underworld institutions by assuming some law enforcement
responsibilities. When investigating tenement house prostitution, for
example, the Committee gave its list of suspect buildings to the
Tenement House Department, who in turn provided the Committee
with the owners of record. Bypassing the police, the Committee
contacted owners, informed them of the violations and the conse-
quences of failure to comply with the Tenement House Law of 1901.
By World War I, the Committee, not the police, were performing
undercover investigations of prostitution near military training camps.'*''
In essence, the public regulation of commercial sex was being
shared with a private body by the second decade of the century. The
Committee of Fourteen, in its own words, served as a self-appointed
and "necessary adjunct in the broad scheme of law enforcement for the
civic welfare." As in other U.S. cities, police policy shifted away from
social control to crime fighting. Less concerned with moral issues and
more with serious crime, police abdicated the regulation of sexuality
to private reform bodies like the Committee.'*'
Such pressure affected the police in unprecedented ways. Police
captains, some affiliated with Tammany Hall, actively began suppress-
ing the most visible forms of prostitution in their precincts after 1900.
On the street, police officers began subpoenaing, instead of arresting

and fining, prostitutes, thereby avoiding the necessity for bail and
undermining corrupt bondsmen in cahoots with dishonest police
officers.^* By World War I, police commissioners like Richard E. Enright
actively supported the suppression of prostitution and other varieties
of commercial sex. And in 1929, the Police Department created a Crime
Prevention Bureau to supervise dance halls, nightclubs, and pool
rooms, while vigilantly suppressing speakeasies and resorts identified
with prostitution.•*'
Third, the Committee of Fourteen departed from earlier antiprosti-
tution groups by attacking the absolute sanctity of private property.
Suppbrter George Kneeland admitted that "any group of citizens which
hopes successfully to combat prostitution must study the uses of
property, especially real property, in such commerce." Kneeland com-
plained that "so many respectable owners of property seem to have no
conception of their legal and moral responsibilities." Similarly, a
Committee report concurred that there "can be no prostitution without
the use of property for that purpose, and property cannot systematically
be so used without the consent or collusion of owners and agents."
A fourth departure from past reform groups was the Committee's
efforts to force centralized trade associations to reverse their tolerant
attitudes towards commercial sex. Most notably, brewers supplying
disorderly saloons and hotels were compelled to discontinue their
support. At the turn of the century, brewers had controlled the retail
liquor trade and an estimated 80-90 percent of the city's more than
11,000 saloons through the so-called "chattel mortgages" they issued.
Historically, they tolerated, and in some cases encouraged, commercial
sex for the sake of profits. But in 1908, the New York Brewers
Association agreed to cooperate with the Committee for the first time.
Joined by Jacob Ruppert, Jr. and the Brewers Board of Trade, the most
powerful breweries severed their ties with illegal saloons and aban-
doned repeated excise law violators. Likewise, the surety companies
that provided bonds and private security for landlords, real estate
agents, and saloons similarly retracted their tolerant policies.''*
Finally, the Committee of Fourteen was not a single-handed agent
of change in Times Square. New economic forces also contributed to
this new organization of leisure. Most notably, the completion of new
transit centers in mid-Manhattan transformed the neighborhood. The

Independent Rapid Transit system (1904), Pennsylvania Station (1910),
and Grand Central Terminal (1913) stimulated a real estate boom. After
1910, corporations began migrating uptown from Wall Street, relocating
in the midtown area. In addition, clusters of hotels appeared near these
important transit sites. By 1929, the 42nd Street Property Owners and
Merchants Association recognized that midtown Manhattan was "a vast
centralization of business and of pleasure," The new hub of a growing
mass transit system. Times Square attracted theaters, hotels, advertisers,
tourists, and related industries, remaking the 42nd Street area into New
York's foremost entertainment district. Speaking about the dangers of
prostitution to this new economic activity. Chamber of Commerce
President Charles Stewart Smith warned not about venereal disease but
rather about lost profits, "New York is the most expensive place in the
world in which to do business," he proclaimed in 1901, "and business
will seek a more favorable atmosphere unless we purge the city,""*'
The Committee of Fourteen was neither isolated nor unique in its
efforts to restrict public expressions of sexuality. In 1905, for example,
the campaign to repress public prostitution outside of theaters moved
inside when Anthony Comstock successfully closed George Bernard
Shaw's play "Mrs, Warren's Profession" after a single performance.
Likewise, in 1907, Richard Strauss's "Salome" ceased to play at the
Metropolitan Opera House after one show, A few years later, the
Columbia Theatre was attacked for displaying women in flesh-colored
tights. Similarly, in 1913, William Hammerstein and two associates were
arrested for presenting the "immoral" "Dance of Fortune" at Hammer-
stein's Victoria Theatre, The Committee on Public Morals of the
American Federation of Catholic Societies complained about the shows
at the Princess Theatre as "a mass of grewsome [sic] filth," And burlesque
house owners like Morton Minsky charged that a "theatrical double
standard" tolerated partial nudity in places like Ziegfeld's before World
War I but not thereafter,'"
More so than other reformers, the Committee of Fourteen recog-
nized that efforts to eradicate prostitution and public displays of sex
usually fell upon deaf ears. Moral suasion did little to change sexual
behavior or thwart the underground economy. The Committee con-
cluded that only by restricting marketplace behavior would such carnal
activity decline. Thus, landlords, brewers, bondsmen, and theaters, the

very institutions that directly and indirectly profited from and protected
prostitution, were singled out for action. Certain underworld entre-
preneurial activities once accepted or tolerated—renting to prostitutes,
supplying prostitute-filled saloons with liquor and protective bonds,
permitting solicitation—were criminalized. For these progressive re-
formers, laissez-faire in the marketplace did not extend to the nightclub.
Ultimately, these forces produced a new kind of entertainment
district in Times Square. By World War I, prostitution in New York was
a clandestine, camouflaged activity. As one Bureau of Social Hygiene
report concluded: "In 1912, prostitution was open, organized, aggres-
sive and prosperous; in 1916, it is furtive, disorganized, precarious,
unsuccessful."'' Near Times Square, the numerous furnished rooming
houses from 37th to 42nd Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues
were closed to prostitutes. On the eve of World War I, the Committee
of Fourteen insisted that New York had "less open vice than any other
of the world's largest cities." Reformer Raymond Fosdick concurred,
stating "that for a city of its size... [New York] is the cleanest city in
the world.""
This new kind of entertainment district differed in several ways from
the older Tenderloin and its subculture of sporting men, prostitutes,
and underworld businessmen. First, sexuality was regulated by central-
ized, citywide agencies like the Committee of Fourteen. Municipal
police and ward politicians, with their decentralized, local control of
prostitution, relinquished power to these new authorities. Second, the
power of local, ward-based officials ranging from politician to judge to
police officer was weakened by centralized law enforcement, a product
of Progressive reform. Finally, entertainment institutions that previously
encouraged, or at least tolerated, an independent sporting male culture
changed. This transformation was epitomized by Jacob Ruppert, who
had cooperated with the Committee of Fourteen to break the associa-
tion of saloons with commercial sex. He later purchased the New York
Yankees, transforming another "sporting male" institution into one with
a wider audience.
Theater owner-producers like Oscar Hammerstein, David Belasco,
Augustin Daly, Florenz Ziegfeld, and the Schubert brothers, hoping to
attract an affluent, middle-class patronage, never opposed efforts to
remove commercial sex from the neighborhood. Their new theaters

and palaces of amusement, splashed in a sea of electric lights,
transformed Broadway into the Great White Way, References to the
neighborhood as the Tenderloin declined, replaced by a new name.
Times Square, As electricity replaced gas, 42nd Street emerged as one
of the nation's first centers of mass culture and "cosmopolitan" enter-
tainment, available to young and old, male and female, resident and
visitor alike. The aggressive, commercialized sexual aura of the
Tenderloin gave way to a more sexually pristine Times Square,"
The most noticeable impact was on the institutions of commercial
sex. Brothels, for example, were replaced by "call houses," During the
1870s, 70 percent of Gotham's prostitution could be found in brothels,
furnished rooming houses, or "panel" houses. Even by the final decade
of the century, approximately 66 percent of New York's prostitutes
worked in some kind of parlor house environment. But with the rise
ofthe Raines Law hotels after 1896, the general movement of prostitutes
into hotels in Times Square and other areas, and the decline in
municipal toleration, brothel prostitution diminished throughout the
city. From 1900 to 1910, for instance, only 22 percent of New York's
commercial sex was in such establishments. By the following decade,
the figure was less than 10 percent. As one report concluded, "disorderly
women,,, largely resorted to flats and cheaper apartment houses to
continue their business," Even streetwalkers were less brazen and more
hesitant to openly approach men on the street,'''
These changes transformed the subculture of prostitutes. As brothels
vanished, prostitutes had to work on their own, often becoming
dependent on pimps. In hotels, restaurants, and cabarets, prostitutes
operated the "team way," relying upon bellboys, waiters, taxi drivers,
and pimps to recruit customers. Prostitutes in Maurice Chevalier's
Restaurant, for example, were introduced to prospective customers only
through third parties. One investigator found "an elderly woman and
a young girl of about sixteen,,, Iwho] were mother and daughter;,,, the
daughter is soliciting men while the mother acts as a cover to her,"
Hotels were even required by police to secure the names of male
customers with no baggage, as well as prove that the women with them
were their wives. Increasingly forced underground, call girls grew more
prominent. Throughout the 1920s, Committee of Fourteen investigators
filed numerous reports on specific women working via telephone.

Other Times Square prostitutes even worked out of taxis. Charging five
dollars for sex and three dollars for the taxi, increasing numbers of
streetwalkers abandoned hotels, furnished rooming houses, and apart-
ments for the automobile. As one hotel clerk declared in 1918, taxis
were "nothing but floating whore houses,"''
This transformation in the prostitute subculture reflected a profound
change in the sexual underworld of Times Square, Reformers remembered
1920 as "the low water mark in prostitution," By the end of the decade.
Times Square did not even rank among the leading neighborhoods for
sexually related crimes, "The Tenderloin, enticing its victims of both
sexes with its dismal gayety," remarked City Club President Richard S,
Childs in 1926, "is only a memory, and the red lights are gone,"'*
Chest-pounding aside, prostitution and commercialized sexuality
never disappeared from Times Square, In numerous cases, sexual entre-
preneurs in this underground economy simply altered their methods of
business. For example, Harry Salvin of the Tokio Restaurant and Cabaret
agreed to exclude all prostitutes, promising to dismiss doormen,
captains, or head waiters who allowed unescorted women to enter or
dance. And cabaret performers were no longer permitted to mix with
audiences. Likewise, Morton Lein of the Pekin promised to eliminate
"objectionable" cabaret performances, using "every endeavor to pre-
vent prostitutes from frequenting the place, accompanied or unaccom-
panied," Lein instructed his doormen to prohibit streetwalkers and other
"such women" from entering, as well as permitting no men to dance
with unescorted women. By 1929, the Committee claimed that their
activities against speakeasies with prostitutes "in the Times Square area
had driven some of them into the Harlem section,"'^
As prostitution in Times Square became less public after 1920, the
Committee widened its scope of concern. Law enforcement investiga-
tions soon included speakeasies and homosexual activity. In 1927, for
example, investigators learned that the Times Square Building was a
"hangout for fairies and go-getters," Sailors in particular were attracted
to the locale, A concessionaire in the building claimed "that whenever
the fleet comes into town, every sailor,,, comes to the Times Square
Building, It seems to be common knowledge among the sailors that the
Times Square Building is the place to go if they want to meet any
Timothy J. Gilfoyl* 281
fairies."'* The Committee eveti lobbied for criminalizing the double

standard. Beginning in 1923, the organization supported passage of a
"customer amendment," legislation designed to "hold the man who
pays a woman for immoral relations equally guilty with the woman
who accepts payment for such acts."^'
Other reformers were more repulsed by the happenings inside
Times Square theaters than on the streets outside. Mae West, for
example, was sentenced to ten days in jail for producing and starring
in her play "Sex." In the following years, police officials like James P.
Sinnott actively worked to prevent other West productions like "The
Drag" and "Pleasure Man," as well as such plays as "Jarnegan," from
opening on Broadway. Preventive organizations like the Society for the
Suppression of Vice actively monitored on-stage activities in Gotham's
"legitimate" theaters.*
The "closeted" forms of prostitution that emerged after 1920 meant
that the "rough" sexuality and male amusement of the Tenderloin days
no longer commanded a marked, visible presence in Times Square. As
historian Lewis Erenberg has shown, upper-class glamour merged with
lower-class bravado and sexuality. Even newer underworld groups
promoting commercial sex, such as Lucky Luciano's organized crime
network, operated in clandestine and secretive ways. Yet, as long as
Times Square remained Gotham's transit, tourist, and entertainment
center, certain illegal leisure activities for the neighborhood's short-term
population flourished. The opening of the Lincoln Tunnel in 1937 only
enhanced this trend.^'
Indeed, the increasingly mobile male population after World War II
generated more complaints about the "decline" of Times Square. The
new Port Authority Bus Terminal in 1950 further supplemented the
commuting population migrating through the neighborhood. By 1959,
police reports claimed that although Times Square housed no brothels
and few nightclubs, massage parlors and a street-level drug trade thrived.^^
Public sexuality in Times Square grew more pronounced after 1967.
That year, the City Council ended licensing requirements for massage
parlors. The weak city economy in the early 1970s increased the
midtown vacancy rate, forcing many landlords to extend leases to sex
businesses in hopes of averting foreclosure. By 1976, massage parlors
were the popular place of business for prostitutes, with at least 94 such
establishments dotting the Times Square vicinity. Equally controversial

was the elegant new pornography "playhouse." Richard Basciano's
Show World Center opened in 1977 at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.
It offered an upscale, pristine, illuminated physical setting for males in
search of visual and perhaps other forms of sexual titillation. Only a
block north of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Show World entertained
an estimated 4,000 patrons daily with erotica ranging from printed porn-
ography to strip-tease spectacles. Characteristically, one writer dubbed
the Times Square vicinity "Hell's Bedroom" and "Hell's Bathroom."*'
Efforts to "clean up" Times Square manifested little change prior to
1985.^ Yet again, major transformations in midtown real estate and
leisure patterns proved more influential than public fears about com-
mercial sex. Indeed, in the two decades preceding passage of the 1995
zoning restrictions. New York witnessed a decrease in the number of
adult entertainment venues, many of them located in Times Square. In
1977, for example, 245 such enterprises—adult theaters, massage
parlors, bookstores, and peep shows—operated in the city. By 1993,
the number dropped more than a quarter to 177, barely greater than
the level in 1976. In Times Square alone, adult stores decreased from
96 to 35 between 1977 and 1987.^' Many of the topless bars, not only
in Times Square but in Queens and the Upper East Side, prospered for
a decade or more, quietly becoming parts of their neighborhood
streetscapes. Furthermore, while the media's attention riveted on the
"dangers" lurking about Times Square, few complained about the
ubiquitous adult movies found in video stores or escort services
advertising in the Yellow Pages. In a moment of candor, Midtown
Enforcement Office Director William Daly admitted in 1994 that "the
East Side has more houses of prostitution than Times Square."*
The inconsistency between public pronouncements of sexual
exploitation on the one hand and actual sexual behavior on the other
should hardly surprise anyone familiar with the history of Times Square.
Indeed, three themes emerge from the cultural tensions regarding
sexuality in New York's major entertainment zone. First, periodic efforts
to reform or "clean up" Times Square consistently ignored the major
economic factors affecting the commercial health of the neighborhood.
More often than not, the "decline" of Times Square was the byproduct
of larger and specific economic forces—the depression of the 1930s,
Timothy J. Gilloyle 283
World War II, the real estate downturn in the early 1970s—than any
growing tolerance for certain forms of public sexuality or "deviant"
behavior. Between 1975 and 1995, for example, real estate forces were
dramatically reconfigured in New York, The appearance of semiprivate
"business improvement districts" gave certain property owners greater
influence over commercial areas. The Times Square Business Improve-
ment District, in particular, supported 1994 restrictions barring adult
businesses from opening within 500 feet of one another to prevent
clustering,^^ Likewise, the growing number of condominium and coop-
erative apartments generated more concerns by new property owners
about the impact of adult entertainment activity. Previously, residents
in largely rental neighborhoods had simply moved away,^
Second, commercial sex in its myriad forms was a fluid and changing
phenomenon. For most of its history. Times Square has remained a
center for commercial sexuality. The most earnest and sincere cam-
paigns to remove or eliminate blatant, offensive sexual behavior from
Times Square have usually failed. And even short-term success has
produced unintended consequences,^ Critical efforts to change the
sexual landscape of Times Square have succeeded only in eliminating
certain illicit/orw5 of sexuality, never commercial sex itself. Paradoxi-
cally, the 20th century is ending much like it began, with a cultural
contest over the "proper" limits of sexual behavior in Times Square,
Finally, the opponents of commercial sex after 1980 have departed
in one significant way from their "anti-vice" predecessors a century
earlier. Specifically, they are less concerned with prostitution. The
greatest opposition to adult, male entertainments has attacked the
perpetrators of visualized sexuality. For Women Against Pornography
and their supporters, sexual danger and exploitation are located in
video stores and theaters. Whereas the Rev, Charles Parkhurst, the
Committee of Fourteen, and their acolytes earlier in the 20th century
assailed the actual sexual behavior of males in brothels, reformers at
the end of the century have been preoccupied with representations of
such behavior in video arcades, Deviancy in the 1990s is defined less
by an act and more by an image. For the antagonists of commercial
sex. Show World has replaced Soubrette Row,
2 8 4 POUCING PUBLIC SEX
NOTES
1. On the toleration of commercial sex businesses, see the New York Times
(hereafter Times), Sept, 11, 1994, On the history of antiprostitution reform in
New York City, see Charles W, Gardner, The Doctor and the Devil: A Startling
Expose of Municipal Corruption (New York: Gardner & Co,, 1894); Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg, "Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman; A Case Study in
Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America," American Quarterly 23
(1971), 562-584, and Disorderly Conduct: Visions ofGender in Victorian America
(New York: Knopf, 1985), 109-128; Edward J, Bristow, Prostitution and Preju-
dice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery, 1870-]939(.New York: Schocken,
1983); Arthur A, Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The
Kehillah Experiment, 1908-1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970);
Jeremy P, Felt, "Vice Reform as a Political Technique: The Committee of Fifteen
in New York, 1900-1901," New York History "iA (1973), 24-51; and Timothy J,
Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization
of Sex, 1790-1920 (.Nevj York: W,W, Norton, 1992), 181-196, 298-306, and "The
Moral Origins of Political Surveillance: The Preventive Society in New York City,
1867-1918," American Quarterly 38 (1986), 637-652,
2. Times, Jan. 5, 1986 (Sturz), Efforts by public officials and private developers to
"redevelop" Times Square have received extensive coverage in the popular
media. The best early summaries and reactions include: Times, April 18, 1982;
Jan, 26, 1984; May 12, 1984; June 1, 25, 28, 1984; Jan, 5, 1986; Sept, 1, 1988;
"Times Square Plan Raises Questions," Metropolis, March 1984; and "Testaments
to Times Square," Metropolis, June 1984, For critical views of the Times Square
redevelopment plan, see Thomas Bender, "Ruining Times Square," Times, March
3, 1984; and D,D, Guttenplan, "Debacle on 42nd Street," The Village Voice, May
7, 1985, On physical changes in the Times Square area, see Times, July 6, 1988,
On resistance of theater owners with a comprehensive chart detailing the major
Broadway theaters, see Times, Nov, 22, 1987,
3. On the development of "nightlife" in New York, see Lewis A, Erenberg, Steppin'
Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) and William R, Taylor, ed,.
Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads ofthe World
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991), The Times Square and 42nd Street
area is, like most city neighborhoods, fluid and imprecise. Generally, it refers
to the ten blocks from West 37th Street to West 47th Street, berween Sixth and
Eighth Avenues,
4. Charles Lockwood, Manhattan Moves Uptown (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976),
250-252, On Clement Clarke Moore, see Elliot Willensky and Norval White, A.I A.
Guide to New York City CNew York: Macmillan, 1978), 104,
5. Cornelius Willemse, Beyond the Green Lights (New York: Knopf, 1931), 83-84;
and James D, McCabe, Jr, New York by Sunlight and Gaslight (Philadelphia:
Hubbard Brothers, 1882), 153, 250-252, On theaters, see Michael Brown, "Times
Square," Preservation 1 Qariuary 1982), 5-6, and Robert A, M, Stern, Gregory
Gilmartin, and John Massengale, Neiv York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and
Urbanism, 1890-1915 Qê^ York: Rizzoli, 1983), 303-308,
Timothy J. Gilloyle 285
6. George Ellington, Tbe Women ofNew York, or tbe Under-World of tbe Great City
(Burlington, IA: Root and Smith, 1869), 232; and Citizens Association of New
York, Sanitary Condition oftbe City, Report oftbe Council ofHygiene and Public
Health (New York: D. Appleton, 1866), 24-26.
7. Willemse, Green Lights,8Q-S5; George J. Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution
in New York City (New York: 1917), 4-5.
8. On Purret (sometimes Porret) and Niles, see //erfl/c/clipping, April 1, 1889, vol.
59; July 18, 1889 clipping, vol. 62, both in New York City District Attorney
Scrapbook, New York City Municipal Archives and Records Center (hereafter
DAS). Both were also charged with owning and operating the Caf6 Bijou at 40
W. 29th Street. On Longacre Square, see Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin,
Thomas Mellins, New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between tbe Two
World Wars (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 87-88, 229, and Stern et al.. New York
1900, 203-208.
9. A "soubrette" was a coquettish young woman or actress in stage comedies. By
the early 20th century, soubrettes were equated with burlesque and the youngest
featured women on the program. See Morton Minsky and Milt Machlin, Minsky's
Burlesque: A Fast and Funny Look at America's Bawdiest Era (New York: Arbor
House, 1986), 7. For a report of an abortionist on Soubrette Row, see Morning
/ojirwfl/clipping, Aug. 2, 1891, vol. 88, DAS.
10. The brothels were between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. See Affidavits for 311
West 44th Street, March 1901, Box 24; Clippings, August 30, 1901, Box 45, both
in Committee of Fifteen Papers, New York Public Library (hereafter C15P). Since
this collection has been reorganized since I examined it, box numbers cited in
this essay may not agree with the current catalogue system. On the French
houses at 245, 247, and 249 West 39th Street, see Investigator's Report (1905?),
Box 91, Lillian Wald Papers, Columbia University. For complaints about 252,
257, 259, 261, 266, 268 West 39th Street, see New York State Assembly, Special
Committee Appointed to Investigate Public Officers and Departments of the City
of New York (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1900) (hereafter Mazet Committee), II:
1468-73,1558-64. The most prominent landlords on Soubrette Row were Charles
Moffett and his son Edward. For stories on Soubrette Row, see Morningfoumal
(?) clipping, Nov. 28, 1894, vol. 134; Sept. 8, 1896, clipping, vol. 159; Aug. 19,
1899, clipping, vol. 183; Morning Telegraph cWpping, Dec. 8, 1900, vol. 195, all
in DAS. On the Metropolitan Opera House, see Paul E. Eisler, The Metropolitan
Opera: The First Twenty-Five Years, 1883-1908 (Cmlon-on-Hudson, NY: North
River Press, 1984), 1-19, and John Frederick Cone, First Rival oftbe Metropolitan
Opera (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 1-5, 29.
11. July 25, 1891, clipping, vol. 88, DAS.
12. Howe employed aliases of Ralph Howell, Harry A. Hamberg, and Harry DeFord.
His place was on West 39th Street. See July 24, 25, 1891, clippings, vol. 88, DAS.
For the term "swell joints," see Aug. 11,1899, clipping, vol. 183, DAS. After being
closed down, Howe ran another opulent opium den under the Hamberg alias
on West 46th Street, off Seventh Avenue, with Sammy Goldstein and James
McNally. See Louis Beck, New Yorks Chinatown (New York: 1898), 168-75. For
more on opium dens in New York's late 19th-century underground economy.
286 POllCiNG PUBIIC SEX
see Timothy J, Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket's Tale: George Appo and the Victorian
Underworlds of New yonfe(New York: W,W, Norton, forthcoming),
13. Wiilemse, Green Lights, 83-84, On Charles Frohman as "the most active and
enterprising entrepreneur" in the United States, see Independent^^ (1903), 1984,
14. Times, July 21, 1907; Adam Clayton Powell, Sr,, Against the Tide: An Autobio-
graphy (New York: R,R, Smith, 1938), 49, The "movement" of Soubrette Row
from West 39th to West 43rd was uncertain and imprecise. The designation may
have been applied to both blocks simultaneously in the early 20th century. West
39th Street was still called Soubrette Row in late 1900, See Nov, 22, 1900,
clipping; Morning Telegraph clipping, Dec, 8, 1900, both in vol, 195, DAS, This
revises my earlier findings in City of Eros, 205, 208, and "Policing of Sexuality,"
in Taylor, Inventing Times Square, 299-300, On West 39th and 40th Street
brothels, see the many letters to Mayors Hewitt and Grant in Mayors' Papers,
New York City Municipal Archives and Records Center (hereafter MP), Boxes
87-HAS-28, 87-HAS-32, 87-HAS-33, 87-HAS-39, 87-HAS-40; letters to Inspector
Byrnes in MP 89-GTF-14; letters to Mayor Gaynor in MP GWJ-17, GWJ-35,
GWJ-36, GWJ-37, GWJ-56; Investigators' Reports, 1905 (?), Box 91, Wald Papers;
Cases for 1911, Box 13, Community Service Society Papers, Columbia University
(hereafter CSS), Streetwalkers usually charged one dollar per customer. The
more expensive brothels in the late 19th century charged berween five and ten
dollars per customer. The Denver Hotel, 209 West 40th Street, and the German
Village, 147 West 40th Street, were operated by Hadden, who escaped punish-
ment after at least three unsuccessful prosecutions. He was represented by
George H, Engel, special counsel to Thomas Foley, Second District Tammany
leader and New York County Sheriff, See Confidential Bulletin, December 19,
1913, Box 3; Reports, 1913, Box 28, both in Committee of Fourteen Papers, New
York Public Library (hereafter C14P); Police Commissioner to Woods, February
11, 1914, MP Box MJP-17; Confidential Bulletin, September 9, 1914, THC-Pros-
titution Folder, Box 168, CSS; Theodore A, BIngham, "The Organized Criminals
of New York," McClure'sM (1909), 66, On 563 Seventh Avenue (tenement), see
Affidavits for Seventh Avenue and Broadway, 1901, Box 21, C15P, On police
arresting prostitutes along Seventh Avenue, see Police Commissioner to Gaynor,
December 3, 1910, MP GWJ-18,
15. More detailed discussions of these interrelated subcultures can be found in
Gilfoyle, City of Eros.
16. "A Resident of Fortieth Street" to Hewitt, April 15, 1888, MP 87-HAS-32 ("fast
women"); 5Wrclipping, Sept, 26, 1888, vol, 53 (Stone; "any cost"), DAS,
17. Stone lived at 202 West 40th Street, See Murphy to Murray, September 30, 1888,
Evening ITorWclipping, September 1888, MP 87-HAS-33; "Neighbor" to Hewitt,
July 1888, MP 87-HAS-33 ("lantern exhibitions"). The brothels were at 203 and
205 West 38th Street, For other complaints of prostitution berween West 37th
and 42nd Streets prior to 1890, see "Resident" to Hewitt, July 12, 1888, MP
87-HAS-33; "An Honest Citizen" to Hewitt, May 29,1887, MP 87-HAS-38, Osgood
owned 270-272 West 39th Street, See Mazet Committee, 1551-55, The best
coverage of the West 40th Street Property Owners' Association is in Star
clipping. Sept, 26, 1888, vol, 53, DAS,
Timothy J. GMfoyle 287
18. Typed Information, Houses and Resorts of Prostitution, Arranged According to

Street, 1910, and February 1, 1912, Box 28, C14P. Livingston ran 210, 214 West
40th Street, and 150 West 45th Street. Grey operated 114, 206, and 214 West 46th
Street, the latter for 30 years. On Lawrence, see Handwritten Report, July 6,
1913, Box 28, C14R
19. On the 50-cent houses, see Booth, The White Slave Traffic, Supplement, in Box
2 Chute Papers. On Williams, see Typed Information, Houses and Resorts of
Prostitution, Arranged According to Street, 1910, Report for 138 West 32nd Street.
On French Viola, see Undated Report on 144 West 32nd Street, Box 91, Wald
Papers.
20. Compiled from Undated Raines Law Hotel Reports and Undated Boarding House
and Parlor House Repons, Box 91, Wald Papers.
21. Acting Police Commissioner to Gaynor, July 22, 1913, MP GWJ-74; Fahey to
Police Commissioner, October 25, 1910, MP GW)-17; Police Commissioner to
Mitchel, March 11, 1914, MP MJP-18. On clubs and cafes, see Typed List of
Houses, Arranged According to Streets, 1910; Report of Mrs. A.M. White, April
2, 1910; Report of William Pogue, April 6, 1911; Anonymous Report, March 17,
1910, all in Box 28, C14P.
22. Powell, Against the Tide, 49; Letter of "A Citizen" attached to Police Commis-
sioner to Gaynor ("gutter"), July 26, 1913, MP GWJ-73; Investigator Reports
(Marshall's), 1910, Box 28, C14P. On West 53rd Street, see Jervis Anderson, This
Was Harlem.- A Cultural Portrait, 1900-1950(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1981), 30-32.
23. On French houses on West 39th Street, see Investigator's Report; Frances Kellor
Report, October 17, 1907, quotes pages 1, 6, 9, all in Box 91, Wald Papers.
24. For the antebellum origins of this, see Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 119-42; Elliott J.
Gorn, " 'Good-Bye Boys, I Die a True American': Homicide, Nativism, and
Working-Class Culture in Antebellum New York City," Journal of American
History 74 (1987), 388-410; and Elliott J. Gorn, We Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle
Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).
25. Society for the Prevention of Crime, Third Report (New York: 1879), 20-21;
Elizabeth Blackwell, Counsel to Parents on the Moral Educationof Their Children
(New York: Brentano's, 1881), 72-73, 50-51; Willemse, Green Lights, 68-69
("roisterers"); National Police Gazette, August 28, 1880 (Bowery).
26. Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution, 109-111; Willemse, Green Lights, 69
("accepted fact"); Mazet Committee, 2461-79, 2504-17.
27. Thomas Byrnes, 1886^Professional Criminals of America (New York: Cassell
& Co., 1886), xxi; Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution, 50-51.
28. Report of Hattie Ross, 1909, Folder 150, Harriet Laidlaw Papers, Schlesinger
Library, Harvard University; U.S. Senate Immigrant Commission, Importing
Women for Immoral Purposes, Sixty-first Congress, Second Session, Document
No. 196 (Washington, DC: 1909), 14-19; Typed Information, Houses and Resorts
of Prostitution, Arranged According to Street, 1910, and February 1, 1912, Box
28, C14P. The Committee found that 53 houses were French-am or housed
primarily French women, 25 were Jewish, 25 African-American, seven Italian,
two Greek, two Chinese, two Swedish, and one Irish.
29. Ibid.
30. Kellor Manuscript, pages 1-3, Box 91, Wald Papers; Ross Report, Folder 150,
Harriet Laidlaw Papers. On Ross, "a colored missionary," see William McAdoo,
Guarding a Great City (New York: 1906), 100. On the I.B.A. and Jewish
proslitution in Times Square, see Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 165-173.
275-276. On Jewish leadership in commercialized entertainment in New York
at the turn of the century, see Lary May, Screening Out tbe Past (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980); Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural
History of American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975), 30-32, 41-47.
Frank Moss was one of the earliest to charge that prostitution and other illegal
enterprises were controlled by "syndicates," many of which were linked to
Tammany Hall officials. For a detailed account by Moss, see Herald clipping,
March 9, 1900, vol. 189, DAS. This revises my earlier argument claiming that
antiprostitution reformers ignored syndicate prostitution before 1912. See
Gilfoyle, "Policing of Sexuality," 413. On "organized" crime and prostitution, see
O«r/oo;b(December 1917), in Box 96, C14P; Jenna Weismann Joselit, Our Gang:
fetvisb Crime and tbe New York Jewish Community, 7POO-7P4O (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1983), 75-84; Goren, Neiv York Jews and tbe Quest for
Community, 148-158; and Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution, 155.
31. Kneeland estimated that the citywide annual profits were about $2 million. See
Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution, 128-130; Kellor Manuscript, p. 9, Box
91, Wald Papers.
32. Undated Reports for 245-249 West 39th Street; The National, 3 Irving Place;
Metropolitan Hotel and Winter Garden, 278 Third Avenue; and Wundling's
Hotel, 39 Third Avenue, all in Box 91, Wald Papers ("charity"); Kneeland,
Commercialized Prostitution, 39-40. "Cadets" were usually young males who
recruited, seduced, or sometimes even forced young women into prostitution.
Many functioned as pimps for the prostitutes in the hotels. See Raines Law Hotel
Reports, 1905 (?); Raines Law II Folder; Raines Law III Folder, all in Box 91,
Wald Papers. Authored by State Senator John Raines and passed by the state in
1896, the "Raines Law": (1) raised excise license fees to $1,200, (2) put excise
licenses under state control, (3) required a $1800 bond from all saloon keepers
that would be forfeited upon any violation of the law, and (4) restricted Sunday
liquor sales to hotels with ten or more beds. Unexpectedly, saloons divided rear
and upstairs space into small "rooms" and took out hotel licenses, thereby
converting saloons into houses of prostitution.
33. In this manner New York mirrored other 18th- and 19th-century Western cities
that frequently integrated the business of leisure and entertainment with that of
sex. At the Palais Royal in Paris, Vauxhall Gardens and the Mall of St. James's
Park in London, the Prater in Vienna, and the Paseo in Mexico City, female
prostitutes publicly mingled with the affluent. See Mark Girouard, Cities and
People. A Social and Architectural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1982), 186-188, 192-193, 203-204, 237. For more on Paris, see Orest
Ranum, Paris in tbe Age of Absolutism (New York: Wiley, 1968), 12; and Jill
Harsin, Tbe Policing of Prostitution in Nineteentb-Century Paris (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1985), 141, l63.
Timothy J. Gilfoyla 289
34. On these antiprostitution campaigns, see Smith-Rosenberg, "Beauty, the Beast,

and the Militant Woman," 562-84, and Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 181-85.
35. Parkhurst to Police Commissioners, January 16, 1894, MP 89-GTF-14; City
Vigilant (October 1894); Parkhurst to Capt. James Price, January 16, 1894, MP
89-GTF-14 ("attitudinizing"). On Parkhurst, see Gardner, The Doctor and the
Devil. On Osgood, see Mazet Committee, 1551-55.
36. For examples, see the correspondence between the SPCC and various mayors,
1892, MP 88-GHJ-49; 1893-94, MP 89-GTF-16; 1895-97, MP 90-SWI-49. Mayor
Gilroy frequently rejected the SPCC's opposition and gave permission for the
children to perform. The law prohibited rope walking, gymnastics, wrestling,
contortionists, acrobatics, begging, soliciting alms, singing or dancing in a
wandering exhibition, an immoral or indecent exhibition, and presenting a
deformity or unnatural physical formation by any child under age 16. The mayor
retained power to permit singing and dancing at concerts. See Laws of 1892,
Chap. 309, penal code 292. For more on the SPCC, see Gilfoyle, "The Moral
Origins of Political Surveillance," 637-52.
37. Clipping of February 6,1901, Box 34, C15P. The S.P.C.A. was the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
38. Although the Committee of Fifteen lasted only two years, its membership and
mission were a precursor of the Committee of Fourteen in 1905. For more on
the Committee of Fifteen, see Felt, "Vice Reform as a Political Technique," 24-51;
Sun clipping, Oct. 4, 1900; Oct. 12, 1900, clipping, both in vol. 194; World
clipping, Dec. 3, 1900, vol. 195, both in DAS. Memberships of both committees
are listed in Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 418-19.
39. Dn the Committee and venereal disease, see Committee of Fourteen, Annual
Report for 1923 (New York: 1924), A-d. On broadening the definition of
"commercialized prostitution," see Annual Report for 1924 (New York: 1925),
10-12. More research needs to be done on the specific "citizens associations"
that appeared after 1885 to fight landlords, police, and other forces tolerating
blatant prostitution. The most prominent was the Owners and Business Men's
Association of West 27th Street, founded in 1885 and led by the antiprostitution
crusader Frank Moss. Some of the latter's campaign was, in part, racially
motivated and targeted black, but not white, prostitutes. See WorldQt) clipping,
Sept. 23, 1885, vol. 12; Oct. 7, 1885, clipping, vol. 12; Oct. 12, 1885, dipping;
Tribune and other clippings, Oct. 15 and 21,1885; WorWclipping, Oct. 28,1885;
rn*««eclipping, Nov., 12, 1885, all in vol. 14, all in DAS. For other examples,
see World dipping, Oct. 22, 1900 (for Bayard and Christie Streets), vol. 194,
DAS.
40. The Ambler Law required hotels built after 1901 and over 35 feet high to be
fireproof, with walls three inches thick, rooms at least 30 square feet, and doors
opening onto hallways, thus eliminating most Raines Law hotels. See dippings
from 1905 in Box 96, C14P.
41. Frederick H. Whitin, "Obstacles to Vice Repression," Social Hygiene 2 (1916),
146-150. On Rockefeller's support, see Whitin to Hinman, January 11,1911, Box
1, C14P; American, May 26, 1910; and Evening World, May 20, 1910, both in
Box 96, C14P. On violations in the Times Square area, see "Violations and Protest
Lists," 1905-1918, Box 44, C14P.
42. Committee of Fourteen, Annual Reportfor 1923,13-15. On Progressive reform,
see David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: Tbe Asylum and Its
Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). The onset of
World War I precipitated a brief reappearance of overt, public sexuality in Times
Square. For examples, see J.A.S. Report on "Street Conditions," 1918; Report of
D.O., May 5, 1919, both in Box 33, C14P.
43. Lexow Committee, I V, 4495-98; Willemse, Green Ligbts, 20. For similar
descriptions of the police, see McAdoo, Guarding a Great City, 17-69, 185-192,
328-349. Theodore Roosevelt ordered all policemen, upon being named police
commissioners, to resign from political clubs as required by law. See Herald,
May 17, 1895, in Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress, Reel 454,
Series 15.
44. Evening Post, March 11, 1918; World, March 12, 1918, in Box 96, C14P. On
tenements, see the correspondence among the Committee of Fourteen, the
Tenement House Department, and the various landlords from 1914 to 1928, Box
23, C14P.
45. Committee of Fourteen, Annual Report for 1925 (New York: 1926), 8; Annual
Report for 1926 (New York: 1927), 21; Annual Report for 1930(New York: 1931),
20-31. For one example of this trend after 1920, see Eugene J. Watts, "Police
Response to Crime and Disorder in Twentieth-Century St. Louis," Journal of
American History 70 (1983), 341-356. Although the Committee of Fourteen
stressed its willingness to cooperate with police officials in its annual reports
(see Annual Report for 1925,14-19), private papers indicate numerous disagree-
ments between investigators' findings and weak law enforcement by the police.
46. On Tammany's antiprostitution campaign and its impact on policing, see World
clippings, Nov. 16,1900, Dec. 4,1900; Nov. 18,1900, clipping;/o«rn«/clipping,
Nov. 26, 1900, all in vol. 195, DAS. On subpoenaing, see Evening Sun, Nov. 26,
1906, in Box 96, C14P. On changing police policy, see Committee of Fourteen,
Annual Reportfor 1924, 8-9; Annual Report for 1929(New York: 1930), 32.
47. Committee of Fourteen, Annual Report for 1929, 10-11. Enright was police
commissioner from 1917 to 1925. See Committee of Fourteen, Annual Report
for 1925, 14-17.
48. Committee of Fourteen, Annual Report (New York: 1916), 12. On the liquor
industry, see George Kneeland, "Commercialized Vice and the Liquor Traffic,"
Social Hygiene 2 (1916), 69-90; The Standard, May 15, 1909; Collier's (n.d.);
World, March 15, 1908; Tribune, March 15, 1908; and clipping, August 24, 1909,
all in Box 96, C14P. See also the voluminous correspondence between the
Committee and individual brewers supplying "disorderly saloons" from 1910 to
1918 in Boxes 2, 3, and 17, C14P.
49. Martin Clary, Mid-Manhattan: Tbe Multimillion Area (New York: Forty-second
Street Property Owners and Merchants Association, 1929), 22-23, 27. On Smith,
see clipping of Nov. 28-29, 1901, Box 31, C15P.
$0. Minsky and Machlin, Minsky's Burlesque, 26, 43, 60, 80, 139, 145. On sexual
themes at The Princess, see clipping from Brooklyn Eagle, September 28, 1913;
Police Commissioner to Kline, October 14,1913, MP GWJ-76, The Princess was

located at 35>th Street and Sixth Avenue, On outrage over "Aphrodite" and the
depiction of courtesans and the "promiscuous intermingling of semi-nude
negroes and half-naked women" at the Century Theater, see New Yorkjoumal,
Dec, 2, 1919, Box 33, C14P, On I, B, Seney's complaints of The Columbia, see
Police Commissioner to Mayor, Feb, 24, 1911, MP G>XJ-33, The Columbia
Theater was at 47th Street and Broadway, The police did not consider this play
immoral. On Hammerstein, see Police Commissioner to Gaynor, Feb, 26, 1913,
MP GWJ-13, During these years the federal government attempted to forbid
Maxim Gorky's entrance into the United States, and the New York Public Library
moved to restrict some of George Bernard Shaw's writings. In 1906 Comstock
raided the Art Students League and the Herman Knoedler Gallery for painting
and displaying nudes. And in 1914 Margaret Sanger was compelled to flee New
York and the United States to avoid prosecution for her militant advocacy of
birth control. See Hal Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian
America (Lawrence, KS: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977), 264-65, and Ellen
Chesler, Woman of Valor Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in
AmericaCNew York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 73-127,
51. Outlook, Dec, 1917, in Box 96, C14P,
52. Raymond B, Fosdick, "Prostitution and the Police," Social Hygiene 2 (1916), 16;
Committee ofFourteen,/4wn«fl//?ôrt(New York: 1922), 10, and Annual Report
for 1924, 7-8,
53. For an example of the declining reference of "Tenderloin," see Kneeland,
Commercialized Prostitution, 37, which refers to it only once. On censorship
as a vehicle to protect youths, women, and the poor from "threatening" sexual
images, see Walter Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modem
Culture (New York: Viking, 1987),
54. Report on "Street Conditions," Seventh Avenue, 34th to 42nd Streets, Feb, 6 and
19, 1918, Box 33, C14P, The percentage distribution of the various institutional
forms of prostitution was based on compiling all reported addresses from 1870
to 1920, For a specific breakdown and list of sources, see Gilfoyle, City of Eros,
384-85, 394,
55. On Chevalier and other French and Belgian proprietors, see Committee of
Fourteen to Chief Inspector John Daly, Nov, 27, 1918, Box 17, C14P; Report of
J,S,, Sept, 1-5, 1915, Aug, 29-31, 1919, Box 34, C14P, For more on decline of
prostitution, see Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 306-15, The most conspicuous prostitution
moved north of 50th Street, See Investigators' Reports, 1900-1918, Box 17, C14P,
On furnished-room houses and hotels, see Report on "Street Conditions,"
Seventh Avenue, 34th to 42nd Streets, February 6 and 19, 1918, Box 33, C14P,
The suppression of streetwalkers and brothels in Times Square increased nearby
tenement prostitution, but most of this remained underground and secret. See
Madge Headley, Secretary of Tenement House Committee of Charity Organiza-
tion Society to Bailey Burret, June 24, 1914, File 60, Box 23, CSS, For arrests,
see Committee of Fourteen Folder, 1920, Box 109, CSS; and THC-Prostitution
Folder, Jan, 29, 1914, Box 168, CSS, From 1927 to 1929, Committee of Fourteen
investigators found only 32 addresses with prostitution. See Investigators'
Reports, 1927-1929, Box 36, C14P. On call girls, see Investigators Reports,
1927-1928, Box 36, C14P. The first example of a "call girl" I found was at 48 East
29th Street in 1901. See Affidavit for 203 West 48th Street, March 4, 1901, C15P.
56. Only 11 percent of arrests for sexually related incidents occurred in Times
Square, 20 percent were in Harlem, 16 percent in Washington Heights, 15
percent in the Upper West Side, and 12 percent in the Lower and Middle West
Side. See Committee of Fourteen, Annual Report for 1929, 35. On the decline,
see Annual Report for 1927 (.New York: 1928), 41-42 ("mark").
57. Committee of Fourteen, Annual Report for 1929, 57; Lein to Committee of
Fourteen, Sept. 21,1918, Box 17, C14P. Salvin to Committee, Sept. 23,1918, Box
17, C14P. The Tokio was at 141-143 West 45th Street. Other reports show that
The Tokio still allowed prostitutes. See Investigator's Report, Jan. 11, 1919, Box
17; J.A.S. Report, 1918; Charles Briggs Report, 1918; Report of D.O., May 5,1919,
all in Box 33, C14P. For similar letters, see Gaillard W. Boag of the Moulin Rouge
to Committee of Fourteen, Sept. 30, 1918; and Abram Bernheim, saloon at 681
Eighth Avenue, Sept. 25, 1913, both in Box 17, C14P.
58. Miscellaneous Report, March 2,1927, Box 36, C14P. The Committee of Fourteen
expressed its concern over homosexuality for the first time publicly in 1929,
noting that of the 392 nightclubs and speakeasies investigated more than once,
13 catered to homosexuals. See Annual Report for 1928CNew York: 1929), 12.
On speakeasy investigations, see Investigators Reports, 1927-1928, Box 36, C14P.
On the gay enclave in Times Square after 1920, see George Chauncey, Jr., Gay
New York: Gender, Urhan Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World,
1890-1940(.New York: Basic Books, 1994), 301-20, and "The Policed: Gay Men's
Strategies of Everyday Resistance," in Inventing Times Square, 315-28.
59. Committee of Fourteen, Annual Reportfor 1925, 20-26; Annual Reportfor 1923,
3-8; Annual Reportfor 1924, 15-35; Annual Reportfor 1926, 24-25, 36; Annual
Report for 1927, 1. Interestingly, the "customer amendment" was opposed by
Lawrence Veiller of the Charity Organization Society, Police Commissioner
Richard Enright, and the Society for the Prevention of Crime because of the
difficulties it presented in prosecuting prostitutes and the potential for police
abuse. See Annual Reportfor 1925, 21.
60. On efforts to censor Mae West productions, see Sinnott to Walker, April 8,1927,
Box 34; Sinnott to Walker, Sept. 25,1928; Bolan to Secretary, Oct. 9,1928; Sinnott
to Walker, all in Box 44, all in MP; June Sochen, Mae West: She Who Laughs,
Lasts (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1992), 38-48. For preventive
societies monitoring the Shubert and other theaters after 1920, see Richard
Wightman Fox, "The Discipline of Amusement," in Inventing Times Square,
83-85.
61. For an insightful analysis of the relationship of sexuality and nightlife in Times
Square, see Lewis Erenberg, "Impresarios of Broadway Nightlife," in Inventing
Times Square, 158-177. On the changing male world of Times Square after 1930,
see William R. Taylor, "Broadway: The Place that Words Built," in ibid, esp.
225-29. On the dmg trade after 1920, see "Vice in New York," Fortune, July
1939. On prostitution in New York and Times Square after 1920, see Elizabeth
A. Clement, "Trick or Treat: Prostitution and Working-Class Women's Sexuality
Timothy J. GilfoyU 293
in New York City, 1900-1940" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, in

progress).
62. W.G. Rogers and Mildred Weston, Carnival Crossroads: The Story of Times
Square (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, I960), 158-163.
63. On Show World Center, see Dick Oliver, "The King of Porn," West Side Spirit,
March 18, 1985. A wide, range of ethnographic, sociological, and journalistic
studies of Times Square appeared after I960. See Gail Sheehy, "Cleaning Up
Hell's Bathroom," New York, Nov. 13, 1972, and "The Landlords of Hell's
Bedroom," New York, Nov. 20, 1972; David Allen Karp, "Public Sexuality and
Hiding Behavior; A Study of Times Square Sexual Community" (Ph.D. disserta-
tion. New York University, 1971); Charles A. Sundholm, "The Pornographic
Arcade: Ethnographic Notes on Moral Men in Immoral Places," Urban Life and
Culture 2 (1973); William Kornblum, ed., "West 42nd Street: 'The Bright Light
Zone,'" unpublished study. City University of New York, 1978; Bruce Fisher, D.
Kelly Weisberg, and Toby Marotta, Report on Adolescent Male Prostitution (San
Francisco: Urban and Rural Systems Associates, 1982); Brown, "Times Square,"
9-24; Thomas Glynn, "The Business of Sex in Times Square," 24-31: Josh Alan
Friedman, Tales of Times Square (New York: Delacourt Press, 1986); and
Laurence Selenick, "Private Parts in Public Places," in Inventing Times Square,
329-353. On the effect of the AIDS epidemic on street prostitution, see Barbara
Goldsmith, "Women on the Edge," New Yorker, April 16, 1993.
64. In 1981, the 42nd Street Development Project was announced, a joint undertak-
ing of the New York State Urban Development Corporation and New York City.
65. Task Force on the Regulation of Sex-Related Businesses, "Sex-Related Businesses
in Manhattan: A Report to Manhattan Borough President Ruth W. Messinger"
(August 1994), 27, 33. The number of adult establishments increased from 131
in 1984 to 177 in 1993. See Times, Sept. 11, 1994. There were 151 X-rated
establishments in 1976. See Times, Sept. 25, 1994. Also see City of New York
Office of Midtown Enforcement, Annual Report for 1986 (New York: Mayor's
Office, 1987) and Annual Report for 1987(New York: Mayor's Office, 1988).
66. Times, Sept. 25,1994; May 1,1994 (Daly). On the Times Square building boom,
see Times, July 6, 1988. According to Adult Video News, pornography in 1995
was a $2.5 billion industry, accounting for over 25 percent of all video rentals
and sales in the U.S. See Adult Video News, quoted in Susan Faludi, "The Money
Shot," New Yorker, Oct. 30, 1995. Opponents of adult stores and entertainment
increasingly associated pornography with other criminalized activities, in par-
ticular drug dealing and violence. Yet few of these critics supported outlawing
bars or Off-Track Betting parlors that created similar sorts of nuisances. During
the 1980s, New York police annually arrested between 15,000 and 20,000 women
for prostitution. Over 90 percent of the arrests were made on the street, leaving
call-girl, escort, and other "indoor" prostitution services without impediment.
See Times, Nov. 14, 1984.
6T. Times, Sept. 11, 1994.
68. For a brief summary of studies that examine the impact of adult enterprises on
property values, see "Sex-Related Businesses in Manhattan," 16-19.
69. Segregating adult entertainments to industrial and nonresidential areas may
result in more severe problems. When Boston created its "Combat Zone" in 1973
as a vehicle to control commercial sex, the neighborhood became a more
dangerous, crime-ridden area, and this affected adjoining areas. See Barbara
Milman, "New Rules for the Oldest Profession: Should We Change Our
Prostitution Laws?" Harvard Woman's Law Journal i (1980), 54-59,
Man E. Elovitz
and P.J. Edwards
THE D.O.H. PAPERS

Regulating Public Sex
in Mew York City
loday, municipal authorities employ

obscenity and public decency laws to regulate sexuality, but the AIDS
epidemic seems to have intensified the demand to regulate sex and
raised the stakes of this historical debate. In the early years of the
epidemic, epidemiologists identified homosexual men who engaged in
anonymous sex with multiple partners as being at highest risk for both
becoming infected with HIV and transmitting the disease to others.
These findings threatened the exuberant gay male sexuality that had
emerged in the 1970s and early 1980s. Stonewall had led to a vastly
increased number of sites of sexual activity—some overtly public, like
parks, others covertly public, like bathhouses. In the mid-1980s the efforts
of city authorities to dose gay bathhouses in response to AIDS provoked
debates and divided gay communities in New York City, San Francisco,
and other cities nationwide.
In New York the regulation of sexual activity in commercial sex
establishments has been based on the definition of "high risk sexual
activity" in the New York State Sanitary Code. The definition was first
introduced into the Sanitary Code in 1985 as an emergency measure in
response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The regulation is a public health
measure, and presumably its scope is to cover practices that present a
likelihood of transmission of HIV. However, this regulation of sexuality
is based as much on concepts of morality as on a public health need.
Epidemiological studies of HIV transmission among gay and bisexual
men plainly establish unprotected receptive anal intercourse as the
primary means of infection among men who have sex with men.
295
Though anal sex and fellatio with condoms are not tneans of tratismis-
sion and though studies also show that fellatio, even without a condom,
does not pose a high risk of transmission, the New York State Health
Code bans both protected and unprotected anal intercourse and fellatio
in commercial establishments. Clearly, the blanket restriction of these
activities shows that this is more a reaaion to heteronormative anxieties
rather than a legitimate measure to protea public health. That unpro-
tected penile-vaginal intercourse was not originally included in the
regulation but was only added later to create the illusion of hetero-homo
evenhandedness reveals the code's strong basis in conservative politics.
The regulation of sexuality is evident in the paper trail left by the
City's etiforcement of the code. What follows is a selection of excerpts
from Department of Health documents, each followed by a brief
commentary. (Typographical and grammatical inconsistencies follow
the original text.)
OVERRIDING THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY

Do<um«nt #1: Latter from the City of Now York Low Dopartmont
to tho Appallato Diviiion of tho Now York Supromo Court, July 18, 1986
Re: The City of New York, et, ano. v.

The New York St. Mark's Baths, et aL, etc.
Argued April 17, 1986 (Calendar No. 1645-6)
Honorable Sirs:
We write in response to the letter dated July 2, 1986 by Gary Mailman,
counsel for the appellant New St. Marks Baths, which makes certain
arguments concerning the recent decision of the United States Supreme
Court in Bowers v. Hardwick, 54 USLW 4919, and on some other matters.
We also briefly mention in this letter a subsequent Supreme Court decision,
decided July 7,1986, Arcara v. Cloud Books, 54 USLW 5O6O, which reversed
a New York State Court of Appeals decision relied on by appellants in their
briefs. This letter is submitted on behalf of both the City respondents, whom
we represent, and the State respondents, who have reviewed and subscribe
to this letter While not necessary to a decision of this case, it is clear that
those two very recent Supreme Court decisions serve to rebut further
appellants' arguments.
Marc E. Eloviti and PJ. Edwardi 297
The Mayor, the Corporation Counsel and the State Attorney-General

have all publicly expressed their disappointment at the Supreme Court's
decision in Bowers because we believe that the federal constitutional
privacy protection should apply to private, consensual sexual activities by
adults that go on in one's bedroom. The Supreme Court has, however, ruled
otherwise. While, as we demonstrated in our briefs, these privacy notions
did not even before Bowers apply to the regulation of activities in a public
commercial facility such as the New St. Marks bathouse, it is evident that
appellants' prior arguments to the contrary are further undermined by
Bowers.
As we have stated, respondents were not entitled to prevail on this

appeal even prior to these two very recent rulings of the United States
Supreme Court. As-set forth in detail in our briefs, Peo. v. Onfore [People
V. Onofore] did not support appellants' contention that a right to privacy
overrides a health regulation concerning life threatening conduct occurring
in a public, commercial setting. In addition, the record below demonstrated
that nothing short of closure would have effectively halted the dangerous
conduct occurring at the New St. Marks Baths.
Bowers V. Hardwick and Arcara v. Cloud Books establish beyond question
that the appropriate staiidard for appraising the regulation at issue is
whether there is a rational basis for that enactment. As amply demonstrated
in our briefs, a rational basis exists for a public health regulation if it is not
arbitrary or capricious; and in making such a determination the courts do
not substitute their judgment for that of qualified physicians. As set forth
in detail in our briefs the record establishes that considerable medical
evidence supports this life protective regulation, and that it was properly
applied to the subject premises.
Respectfully,
[Signed, "Doron Gopstein"]
DORON GOPSTEIN
First Assistant Corporation Counsel
Attorney for Plaintiffs-Respondents
the City of New York and the
New York City Health Department
298 POLICING PU8LIC SEX
Comment
In 1986, the New York City Department of Health closed the St. Marks
Baths for the purported purpose of stopping the spread of HIV. Despite
claims by the owners and patrons that closing the Baths violated the
patrons' constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of association and
that the Baths provided an important opportunity to educate gay men
about HIV prevention, a trial judge upheld the City's actions. While the
case was on appeal to the Appellate Division, the United States Supreme
Court issued its notorious Bowers v. Hardwick decision, ruling that laws
criminalizing gay sex do not violate the constitutional right to privacy.
In response to this decision, the City's attorneys wrote to the Appellate
Division, noting that both city and state officials had "publicly ex-
pressed their disappointment" with the Bowers decision. Ironically, the
City later relied on this same decision as legal justification for closing
the St. Marks Baths.
Since Bowers means that the federal constitutional right .to privacy
does not prevent states from prohibiting gay sex in the privacy of one's
home, the City argued that it can certainly be prohibited in public
places. But even if the .Sou'ers decision means that the government is
permitted to outlaw gay sex, it certainly does not mean that it is required
to do so. Moreover, while the City relied on'the distinction between
public and private rights to differentiate itself from the Bowers court, it
failed to explain how the core privacy principle of personal, bodily
autonomy at issue in Bowers is transformed as a person moves from a
private space to a public one. This omission is especially troubling from
a constitutional perspective when the public space is an enclosed area
that presents no threat of harm to those who do not choose to enter.
In addition to its destructively narrow interpretation of the right to
privacy, the City entirely ignored relevant constitutional considerations
not addressed by Bowers. For example, closure of the St. Marks Baths
impinged on the patrons' freedom of association. This was a compelling
claim in light of the St. Marks' role as a place where gay men not only
escaped from prejudice to find camaraderie and develop a cultural and
political identity, but also took part in programs such as voter registra-
tion and safer sex education.
Marc E. Eloviti and P.J. Edwards 299
PROHIBITING SEX IN PUBLIC

Document #2: Stale Sanitary Cede Section 24-2
SUBPART 24-2
PROHIBITED FACILITIES
(Statutory authority: Public Health Law, § 225[4], [5][a])
Sec, Sec,
24-2,1 Definition 24-2,3 Closure
24-2,2 Prohibited facilities
Historical Note
Subpart (§§ 24-2,1-24-2,3) filed Oct, 25, 1985 as emeigency meas-
ure; made permanent by order filed Dec, 23, 1985 efi", Dec, 23, 1985,
Section 24-2.1 Definition. Establishment shall mean any place in
which entry, membership, goods or services are purchased.
Historical Note
Sec, filed: Oct, 25, 1985 as emergency measure; Dec, 23, 1985;
amds, filed: Jan, 25, 1994 as emergency, measure; April 19, 1994 as
emergency measure; June l6, 1994 eff, July 6, 1994,
24-2.2 Prohibited facilities. No establishment shall make facilities
available for the purpose of sexual activities where anal intercourse, vaginal
intercourse or fellatio take place. Such facilities shall constitute a threat to
the public health.
Historical Note
amds, filed: Jan, 25, 1994 as emergency measure; April 19, 1994 as
24-2.3 Closure. In addition to any other power they may have under
any applicable law, ordinance or regulations, the State Health Commis-
sioner, local health officers and local boards of health may close any such
facilities or establishments as constituting a public nuisance.
Historical Note
amds, filed: Jan 25, 1994 as emergency measure; April 19, 1994 as
Comment
New York State Sanitary Code Subpart 24-2, titled "Prohibited Facilities,"
provides the legal basis for the City's (allegedly) health-related closures
of commercial sex spaces. By stipulating that facilities where anal or
vaginal intercourse or fellatio take place "shall constitute a threat to the
public health," the code creates a public health threat while at the same
time providing a justification, albeit a circular one, for closing such
facilities (i.e., they are a public health threat and they should be closed
because they are a public health threat). This executive determination
will be afforded deference by courts reviewing the constitutionality of
its application, though there must be some factual support underlying
it. To date, no court has critically examined the factual foundation of
this Sanitary Code section, despite its inherent inconsistencies with the
current state of knowledge of HIV transmission (i.e., the failure to
distinguish between sex with and without a condom and the inclusion
of fellatio despite its comparatively low-risk nature).'
SELF-MONITORING AND LEGAL LIABILITY

Document #3: Utter Irom New Yerk City Department el Health Divitien
ef Disease Intervention te tlie New Yerk Cealition fer Healthy Sex,
December 5, 1994
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE NEW YORK COALITION FOR HEALTHY SEX:

I regret that a previous engagement makes it impossible for me to be with
you this evening. You may be sure that I iook forward to the opportunity
to meet with you in the future and to respond to any questions that you
might have concerning enforcement of the New York State Sanitary Code
by this Department.
Although you are probably familiar with the law relating to high risk sexual
activity on club premises, please allow me to restate it briefly. Section 24-2
of the Sanitary Code forbids any anal, oral or vaginal sex, with or without
the use of condoms, on such premises. The Department of Health strongly
recommends that club owners and operators adopt certain measures to
eliminate high risk sex from club premises and to educate club patrons
about the dangers of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in general.
Among these measures are; (1) making frequent sex announcements, (2)
distributing condoms and safe sex literature, (3) posting signs that warn
against unsafe sex, and (4) employing monitors.
Marc E. Elovitz and PJ. Edwards 301
It is most important, however, that you understand that adoption of these or

other appropriate measures does not exempt clubs from their liability under
the law. As long as proscribed sexual activity occurs on a club's premises, it is
in violation of the law. Violations are punishable by fine or closure, or both.
Sincerely,
[Signed, "Richard Otto"!
Richard Otto
Comment
In this letter, the New York City Department of Health tells cotntnercial
sex-space owners what steps they can take to avoid closure. The
government is constitutionally required to explore such "less restrictive
alternatives" prior to acting in some way—such as closing a theater—
that would violate protected rights. Here, the key alternative to closure
is to promote safer sex. This is in direct conflict with the dictates of the
Sanitary Code, which ignores condom usage and groups lower-risk
fellatio with higher-risk unprotected anal and vaginal sex. The DOH
letter acknowledges and highlights this conflict by pointing out that
even if the owners take steps to promote safer sex, they still risk being
shut down if the Sanitary Code is violated (e.g., if patrons have oral or
anal sex, even while using condoms).
LICKING OF THE SCROTUM

Document #4: New York City Department of ileaitii Memorandum,
May 20, 1994
RE: Definition of Sexual Activity Under Section 24-2 of the New York
State Sanitary Code
At the meeting of the New York Coalition for Healthy Sex held on May
3, 1994, several questions were asked of the Department of Health
regarding the types of sexual activities within establishments which are
prohibited under section 24-2 of the New York State Sanitary Code ("Code").
Specifically, the Department was asked whether penetration with a sexual
toy covered by a condom, fisting, and/or licking of the scrotum are
prohibited by the Code.
Section 24.2.2 of the Code states that, "No establishment shall make
facilities available for the purpose of sexual activities where anal inter-
course, vaginal intercourse or fellatio take place. Such facilities shall
constitute a threat to the public health."

After consulting with the City's Law Department, we have concluded
that neither the use of a sexual toy covered by a condom nor fisting
constitute prohibited sexual activities under the Code. The same applies to
licking of the scrotum. As to the latter, however, we are concerned that
licking of the scrotum may quickly lead to fellatio, which is, of course,
prohibited by the Code. Since it may be difficult for establishments to
monitor patrons closely enough to prevent the licking of the scrotum from
leading to fellatio, it is advised that establishments do not permit their
patrons to engage in licking of scrotums.
Comment
The DOH consulted with city attorneys as to whether the Sanitary Code
provision about "anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse or fellatio" covers
"penetration with a sexual toy covered by a condom, fisting and licking
of the scrotum." While the attorneys concluded that these practices were
not covered, they advised the owners not to permit scrotum licking
because it "may quickly lead to fellatio" and is hard to monitor. By this
regulatory sleight-of-hand, the City maneuvered to extend the reach of
the New York State Sanitary Code in order to stop gay men from
engaging in behavior entirely free of HIV transmission risk, further
demonstrating anti-homosex as the real basis for this "public health
measure."
PROHIBITING EXPOSED GENITALIA

Decument #5: Stipulation of the Parties in the Earle Theater Case,
April 17, 1995
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

COUNTY OF QUEENS
X
THE CITY OF NEW YORK and THE NEW YORK
CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,
Plaintiffs,
-against-
[U.Z.]; ROR AMUSEMENT CORP. d/b/a
THE EARLE THEATER; [and others], ORDER
Defendants. Index No. 2825/95
X (Golar, J.)
Marc E. Eloviti and PJ. Edwards 303
WHEREAS on Febmary 8, 1995, plaintiffs CITY OF NEW YORK and

THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH (hereinafter the "plain-
tiffs") commenced an action against the defendants ROR AMUSEMENT
CORP, d/b/a THE EARLE THEATER (hereinafter "Earle") and,,, other named
and unnamed defendants,,, to abate a public nuisance occurring at the
subject premises, and to obtain civil penalties, damages and costs;
WHEREAS, on February 8, 1995, Justice Simeon Golar granted a
temporary restraining order enjoining the defendants from permitting
prohibited sexual activity to take place at the subject premises and directing
that the subject premises be closed;
Upon review of the papers submitted by the parties;

IT IS HEREBY stipulated and agreed by the parties that, during the
pendency of this action, the subject premises be reopened temporarily
subject to the following terms and conditions:
1, Defendants and each of them, their agents, employees and all persons
or entities acting individually or in concert with them are restrained and
enjoined from conducting, maintaining or permitting sexual activity pro-
hibited by 10 NYCRR Subject 24-2, or any other activity prohibited by the
Nuisance Abatement Law, New York City Administrative Code §§7-701 et
seq,, at the subject premises,
Phvsical Plant
2, Defendants,,, will repair the partition between the stalls in the men's
bathroom,
3, Defendants,,, will remove the black brick wall at the back of the
seating area,
I,,,,]
AIDS Education
6, All owners, staff, operators, monitors and other employees of the

defendants,,, shall attend a training session organized by plaintiffs. The
training session will include the following topics: transmission and preven-
tion of sexually transmitted disease (STD), including HIV/AIDS; relevant
regulatory requirements of the New York State Sanitary Code and the New
York City Health Code; terms and conditions of this Order; intervention
skills for monitoring sexual activity and preventing high risk sexual activity;
community resources for STD/HIV risk-reduction education, counselling,
testing, referral, partner notification and treatment,,,,
7, Defendant,, ,shall make available in the lobby educational literature
on how to prevent the transmission of HIV, and shall distribute the literature
and shall offer condoms free of charge to all patrdns as they leave the
subject premises. The literature shall be selected from a list supplied by the
plaintiffs,
8, Defendant,, ,shall make available a table in the lobby for use by DOH
or its designated agent to disseminate educational materials and provide
information,
9, Defendants,, ,shall show Public Service Announcements (PSAs) at
the subjea premises, which highlight safer sex practices (such as how to
use a condom appropriately and the types of activity which present a high
risk of transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)), on
all movie, television and video screens available to patrons anywhere in
the subject premises for no less than three minutes every 57 minutes. The
PSAs must be approved by plaintiffs prior to reopening.
Monitoring and Operation
10, Monitoring and Operation bv Defendants,,,
a. Defendant,, ,shall employ uniformed guards, who have had no prior
association with the theater. They will have responsibility for monitoring
all areas of the subject premises which are open to the public to ensure
that patrons are not engaging in high risk sexual activity or any other activity
prohibited by law. The subject premises may not be open for business at
any time unless at least two guards, whose sole responsibility it is to monitor
the conduct ofthe patrons, are available. One guard will monitor the viewing
area and the second guard will monitor the bathroom and lounge,,,,
e. Any owner, operator, manager, guard, or other employee of the

defendants,,, who observes patrons engaging iri prohibited sexual activity,
or conduct which may reasonably lead to such prohibited activity (such as,
for example, exposed genitalia), shall tell the patrons to leave the premises
immediately,
i9. Unless otherwise agreed to by the parties, upon review by the Court
of itemization submitted by plaintiffs, the defendants shall reimburse plaintiffs'
reasonable costs of inspections or other monitoring of defendants' compliance
with this Order,
Dated: New York, New York
April 17, 1995
SO ORDERED:
[Signed, "Simeon Goiar"]
J,S,C,
[Signed by Counsel]
Marc E. Elovitz and P.J. Edwards 305
Comment
By this court-approved agreement the City agreed to allow the Earle
Theater to reopen if certain rules were followed. By requiring the
theater to take steps towards reducing HIV transmission, the City was
complying with the constitutional requirement that it explore less
restrictive alternatives to closure; but again, the inherent cotiflict
between the Sanitary Code and safer sex undermined HIV prevention.
In addition, the agreement again extended the reach of the Sanitary
Code far beyond anything related to HIV transmission by prohibiting
"exposed genitalia" or other "conduct which may reasonably lead
to... prohibited sexual activity."
"LIFE AND DEATH ARE AT ISSUE HERE"

Document #6: Decision of tiie Court in tiie Hew David Case, Aprii 17, 1995
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK MF

COUNTY OF NEW YORK : IAS PART 48
X
CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Plaintiffs,
-against-
[R.D....]
d/b/a NEW DAVID CINEMA [and others]. Index No. 401926/95
Defendants.
X
MARYLIN G. DIAMOND, J.:
The City of New York ("City") and the New York City Department
of Health move for a preliminary injunction and continuation of the
temporary closing order granted by this court on March 28, 1995, for the
premises known as the New David Cinema.... Plaintiffs seek this relief
based upon the observations by two Department of Health inspectors of
numerous acts of high risk sexual activity, as defined by the New York
State Sanitary Code, 10 NYCCR 24-2, during twenty-two visits to the
Cinema over a two month period.
This action is brought as part of the City's continuing effort to control

the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus ("HIV"), which has
been identified as the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
("AIDS"), According to Dr, Margaret A, Hamburg, M,D,, the Commis-

sioner of the Department of Health, over 74,000 cases of AIDS have
been reported in New York City since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS
epidemic. Over 50,000 adults are known to have died of the disease,
AIDS is the leading cause of death among adults aged 23-44 in New
York City, There are now approximately 1,000 new cases of AIDS
reported in New York City every month. There is currently no curative
treatment for AIDS or HIV infection.
The New York State Public Health Council ("the Council") has
determined that two of the major risk behaviors associated with the
transmission of HFV are anal intercourse and fellatio. The Council also
has determined that establishments that make facilities available for the
purpose of engaging in such activities contribute to the spread of HIV,
The State Sanitary Code therefore declares that facilities in which such
activities take place "shall constitute a threat to the public health" and
are prohibited, and may be closed by local health officers as constituting
a "public nuisance," 10 NYCRR 24-2
[,,,,]
FACTS
[,,,,]
In support of this proceeding, plaintiffs have submitted affidavits by
t^vo inspectors of the New York City Department of Health, The inspec-
tors' affidavits document that high risk sexual activity occurs at the
Cinema on a regular and frequent basis. In visits between March 7, 1995
and March 20, 1995, these inspectors observed at least 45 incidents of
high risk sexual activity engaged in by patrons of the Cinema, These
inspections followed letters of warning from the Department of Health
dated August 10, 1993 and Febmary 10, 1995,
[,,,,]
APPUCABLE LAW
[,,,,]
The question remains whether, between the warnings of the Health
Department and a preliminary injunction closing the Cinema, there lies a
course of action that would abate the nuisance without closing the
Cinema, This court finds as a matter of fact that there is not. No principal
of the Cinema offered a sworn affidavit or appeared at trial to testify
with respect to any proposal to eliminate the offending activity while
remaining open. Instead, defendants offered the testimony of three
employee-monitors denying the existence of offending activity, which this
Court finds not credible. Defendants' counsel states in his memorandum:
Marc E. Elevitz and PJ. Edwards 307
"[D]efendants are prepared to comply with a full-time uniformed secu-

rity officer and a full-time on-site manager and the sign." However, the
Cinema has already tried monitors, signs and pamphlets, and these
efforts have not prevented the prohibited activity. Given the Cinema's
past inability to monitor itself, even after being on notice that it was
being watched, any scheme that would rely upon the Cinema to police
itself ultimately requires the constant presence of City inspectors to
ensure that the Cinema does not abdicate its responsibility as it has in
the past. This is not a viable alternative. The only truly effective way to
abate the nuisance at the Cinema is to close it.
Moreover, unlike Arcara, the closing of the Cinema is motivated by the
AIDS crisis, an epidemic of staggering proportions with no cure in sight.
Unlike Arcara, life and death are at issue here. To require the police to
arrest patrons of the Cinema under little-used criminal statutes would
embrace form over substance. To first require injunctive relief in the
face of the proven futility of any less intaisive solution would ignore the
immediacy of the plague in our midst.
Settle order on notice.

Dated: April 17, 1995
[Signed, "Marylin G. Diamond"]
HON. MARYLIN G. DIAMOND, J.S.C.
Comment
The trial court in the New David case justified closure of the theater by
basing its arguments largely on the severity and urgency of the AIDS
crisis. But it is a core constitutional principle that government action is
not judged solely on the basis of the seriousness or magnitude of the
problem addressed; rather, the critical questions are the effect of
government action on individual liberties and the closeness of the fit
between the problem and the state's solution. Here, the Court justified
the closure by a slew of statistics and solemn descriptions of "an
epidemic of staggering proportions with no cure in sight," as well as
the admonition that "life and death are at issue here." But none of this
addresses the scientific inaccuracy of the Sanitary Code and the
question of whether or not closing this theater will help or harm HIV
prevention efforts.
FEUATIO IN THE GAY THEATER

Document #7: New York City Depgrtmenf of Health Inspection Report
for the Hollywood Twin Theoter, May 3, 1995
NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

INSPECTION REPORT
Report of A Facility Inspected For Prohibited Sexual Activity Under Subpart
24-2.2 Of The New York State Sanitary Code:
1. Name of Facility: Hollywood
2. Address of Facility: Broadway & 47th St, Manhattan
5. Date of Inspection: 5-3-95

6. Time Inspection Commenced: 7 PM
7. Time Inspection Completed: 9 PM
8. Was this inspection announced? Yes ( ) No (X)
9: How many incidents of prohibited sexual activity were observed? 2
How many persons were observed participating in these incidents? 4
How many incidents of fellatio occurred? 2
How many participants? 4_
How many incidents of anal intercourse? Q_
How many participants?.
How rnany incidents of vaginal sex ? Q_
How many participants? Q
10. Approximately how many patrons were in the facility during your
inspection? 40
A. Facility's Education Efforts
14. Were there public service announcements warning against

prohibited sexual activities on the premises? Yes ( ) No (X)
E. Prohibited Sexual Activities:

28. Under what circumstances did the prohibited sexual activity that you
observed take place? For each activity that you mentioned in item
number 9, state in which part of the facility the act occurred, and
provide specific information concerning the appearance and physical
characteristics of the patron who performed it, such as their manner
of dress, height, weight, race and apparent age. State whether a
condom was used or not used, if it was possible to observe this.
State the distance in feet between you and each act of prohibited
Marc E. Elovitx and PJ, Edwards 309
sex that you mention. Describe the lighting conditions under which
each act occurred. Use additional sheets if necessary,
1, Fellatio in the "gay theatre," A white male mid 6O's, gray hair,
glasses, in a blue raincoat was having fellatio performed by
another white male, also in his 6O's with grey hair and wearing
glasses, and a blue blazer. No condom was used, I was sitting
behind these men some 10 ft, away,
2, Fellatio in the "gay theatre," A black male, mid-30's, wearing a
leather jacket with glasses was performing fellatio on a white
male, mid-30s, bald, wearing white tank-top t-shirt and jeans. No
condom was used, I saw this a a while standing in the aisle, I was
about 15 ft, away.
Expenses
Admission Fee: $6,00
Other (Please itemize) $[,,,,]
Total: $6,00
[Signed by inspector]
Date and Time Signed: 5-3-95 10 PM
Comment
The DOH sends public health workers into sex spaces to look for
violations of the Sanitary Code, The reports of the inspectors then serve
as the factual suppon for the closure. The inspection form asks for
special detail about the physical space, the participants, and the lighting
conditions in order to bolster the credibility of the inspectors. This
report documents that on May 3, 1995, from seven to nine p,m,, the
inspector observed only two sex acts (fellatio in both cases), even
though there were approximately 40 people in the theater. This number
is exceptionally low, especially in light of the fact that the infractions
consisted of acts of fellatio, which has a low risk for HIV transmission.
Nonetheless, this report was used as evidence to close the theater.
UNDER SURVEILLANCE
Document #8: New York City Department of Heaitii Affidavit
in tiie Hoiiywood Twin Case, August 9, 1995
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OE NEW YORK

COUNTY OF NEW YORK
X
THE CITY OF NEW YORK and THE NEW
YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,
Plaintiffs,
-against- AFFIDAVIT
HOLLYWOOD TWIN THEATER CORP., et al.
Defendants.
[Department Inspector T.K.], being duly sworn, deposes and says,

1. I am a senior public health advisor in the AIDS Surveillance Unit of
the New York City Department of Health ("DOH" ). I have been a public
health advisor at DOH since 1989.
2. Pursuant to an investigation regarding high risk sexual activity, I
conducted visits with other DOH employees to the Hollywood Twin
Theater in Manhattan. I observed high risk sexual activities at the premises
on May 3, May 13, May 18, May 21, May 24, May 27, May 29, June 10, and
August 5, 1995.
3. The Hollywood Twins is located at the corner of Eighth Avenue and
47th Street in Manhattan. The entrance is on Eighth Avenue. There is a glass
booth, in which the cashier sits and collects an entrance fee from each
patron who, after paying, passes through a turnstile into the lobby of the
theater. The lobby is approximately 5' by 6' and it is lit by a fiuorescent
light. In the lobby is a vending machine with snack foods. Posted on the
wall is a sign which directs the patrons not to use drugs, or engage in
prostitution or solicitation. To the right of the lobby are stairs which lead
down to a very small area off of which is the men's room. It contains two
toilet stalls, three urinals and a sink.
4. Just off the lobby are side-by-side theaters, each with separate
entrances. In "Cine 1", heterosexual pornographic films are shown; in "Cine
2", male homosexual pornographic films are shown. Each theater has two
banks of seats, with a single aisle down the middle. Light in each theater
comes from wall lighting, from center aisle lighting, and from the screen.
The theaters are well lighted.
Marc E. Elovitx and PJ. Edwards 311
5, The people who occasionally monitor the theaters spend much of

their time hanging around the lobby talking to the cashier. These "monitors"
are occasionally uniformed. They carry flashlights which they occasionally
shine on patrons who are engaged in sexual activities,
6, On May 3, 1995,1 was at the Hollywood Twin from 7:00-9:00 p,m.
During that time there were approximately 40 patrons in the theater. In
Cine 2,1 observed two incidents of fellatio. The first involved a white male
in his mid-60's, with gray hair and glasses, wearing a blue raincoat, who
was receiving fellatio from a white male in his 6O's with gray hair, glasses,
and wearing a blue blazer. No condom was used,
7, I also observed, in the same Cine, a black man in his 3O's, wearing
glasses and a leather jacket, perform fellatio on a bald white male who was
wearing a white tank-top shirt and jeans. No condom was used,
8,1 returned to the Hollywood Twins on May 13 from 4:00 to 6:00 p,m.
During that time, I observed one act of fellatio involving two white men.
The one who performed the fellatio had light brown hair, was in his 3O's,
and wore a red tee-shirt and jeans. His partner was in his mid-20's, with
brown hair, a denim jacket and white pants. No condom was used,
9, On May 18, 1995, I was at the Hollywood Twins from 5:15 to 7:15
p,m. There were approximately 45 patrons in the theater. In One 1, I saw
an Asian man in his mid-20's, approximately 5'6", wearing a white and
green shirt and jeans, perform fellatio on a 6'0" white male, in his late 5O's,
with gray hair, wearing a dark blazer and khaki pants. No condom was used,
10,1 was at the Hollywood Twins again on May 21, 1995 and observed
one act of fellatio between a white man in his mid-30's, with a mustache,
and heavy-set 60 year old white man with gray hair. No condom was used,
11, On May 24, 1995,1 was at the Hollywood Twins from 9:00 to 11:00
p,m,, along with 25 other patrons. During that time I observed one act of
fellatio involving a white man in his 3O's and an Asian man in his mid-40's.
No condom was used,
12, On May 27, 1995 I observed one act of fellatio between two men
at the Hollywood Twins,
13, On June 10, 1995,1 was at the Hollywood Twins from 1:00 to 3:00
p,m, 35-40 patrons were in attendance. In Cine 1, I saw an Asian man in
his mid-30's, wearing a white tee-shirt and dark pants, perform fellatio on
a white man in his mid-20's wearing a blue baseball cap, a tee-shirt, and
jeans. No condom was used,
14, On August 5, 1995, I reuirned to the Hollywood Twins from 3:00
to 5:00, There were 65 or 70 people in the theater, I witnessed one act of
fellatio in Cine 2, A slender Asian man, in his mid-30's, dressed in a red tee
shirt and dark shorts, about 5'8", was fellating a short white male in his
4O's, wearing a white polo shirt and jeans.
15. All of my observations were made under lighting conditions which
were adequate to see the acts performed.
16. All of the above descriptions of weight, height and age are
approximations to the best of my ability.
[Signed by inspector
and notary public]
Comment
This affidavit is derived from the earlier inspection report for factual
support in the court closure action. Despite the high degree of detail
in describing the physical layout of the theater (e.g.,"the lobby is 5' by
6'"), there is no indication of the distances from which the inspector
observed the two acts of fellatio. This is significant because the
inspection report on which this affidavit is based did include these
distances. According to the report, the inspector observed the acts of fellatio
from 10 and 15 feet away in the theater, which was dark enough for a film
to be shown, yet supposedly light enough to determine whether condoms
were being used. Such discrepancies, as well as the rather generic
descriptions, throw doubt on the credibility of these reports.
WHY PATRONS ATTEND THE THEATER

Document #9: Affirmation of New York City Department of Heaitli
Acting Commissioner Benjamin Mojica in the Hoiiywood Twin Case,
August 8, 1995
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

COUNTY OF NEW YORK
X
CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, AFFIRMATION
Plaintiffs,
-against-
777-779 EIGHTH AVENUE CORP. d/b/a
HOLLYWOOD TWINS, [and others].
Defendants.
X
Man E. Elovitx and P.J. Edwards 313
BENJAMIN A. MOJICA, M.D., M.P.H., a physician authorized by law to

practice medicine in the State of New York, affirms the following under
penalties of perjury, pursuant to CPLR 2106;
1.1 am an Acting Commissioner of the New York City Department of
Health ("DOH"), one of the plaintiffs herein. This affirmation is submit-
ted in support of plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and for a
temporary closing and restraining order against the premises known as
the Hollywood Twin Theater where high risk sexual activities have been
repeatedly observed by inspeaors from DOH. The facts herein are
based on DOH records and my personal knowledge.
2. This action is being brought as part of the City's continuing effort to
control the spread of human immunodeficiency virus ("HIV") which has
been identified as the cause of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome). Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, over 74,000
cases have been reported in New York City. Over 50,000 adults, or 67%,
are known to have died of the disease. AIDS is the leading cause of
death among adults aged 25 to 44 in New York City. There are now
approximately 1000 new cases of AIDS reported in New York City every
month. There is currently no curative treatment for AIDS or HIV infection.
3^The New York State Public Health Council has determined that three
of the major risk behaviors associated with the transmission of the virus
are anal intercourse, fellatio and vaginal intercourse. The Council also
has determined that various establishments which make facilities avail-
able for the purpose of engaging in such acts contribute to the
propagation and spread of HIV. The State Sanitary Code therefore
declares that facilities in which such activities take place "shall constitute
a threat to the public health" and are prohibited, and may be closed by
local health officers as constituting a "public nuisance." 10 NYCRR 24-2
4. The City has inspected and will continue to inspect establishments
where high risk sexual activity is or may be occurring. These inspections
are directed at activities which constitute a public health nuisance and
danger. Following investigations by City employees, the City has
obtained court orders closing eleven other facilities, including seven
theaters, where high risk sexual activities have been observed.
5. The annexed affidavits of two inspectors establish that exactly the
type of sexual activities which have been prohibited in commercial
establishments by the State due to the high risk of transmitting the AIDS
vims were observed at least 85 times within the past four months at the
Hollywood Twin Theater. The behaviors observed also constitute high
risk activities for the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (or
"STDs"), such as syphilis and gonorrhea.

6. The DOH has attempted to eliminate the high risk sexual activity
at the Hollywood Twin Theater in a less restrictive way by informing the
theater of the existence of the dangerous conditions, asking for the man-
agement's voluntary compliance with State and City law, and advising
that closure might be necessary if the management failed to improve
those conditions.
7. The DOH has inspected the Hollywood Twin on a periodic basis.
During visits in March and April, inspectors observed several acts of fellatio.
8. Therefore, by letter dated April 13, 1995,1 wrote to the theater
explaining that DOH inspectors had observed instances of high risk
sexual activity at the Hollywood Twin Theater, and insisting that the
management take immediate action to solve the problem, or be subject
to closure. My letter stated:
New York City inspectors have repeatedly observed prohibited
sex acts are occurring in the Hollywood Twin Theater during
recent inspections.
Section 24-2 of the New York State Sanitary Code states
as follows:
No establishment shall make facilities available for
the purpose of sexual activities where anal intercourse,
vaginal intercourse or fellatio take place. Such facilities shall
constitute a threat to public health.
Closure. In addition to any other power they may have under
any applicable law, ordinance or regulations, the State
Health Commissioner, local health officers and local board of
health may close such facilities or establishments as constituting
a public nuisance.
« * •
You are hereby notified that this Department has reason to
believe that your establishment has facilitated legally
prohibited sexual activities on your premises. Specfically,
acts of fellatio have been observed in various parts of
your establishment. You are further notified that inspections
of your facility are being conducted on a continuing basis.
Nothing short of immediate cessation of the prohibited
sexual activities in your theater is acceptable. Unless you
eliminate such activities at once, we will seek a court order
closing your premises.
Man E. Eloviti and P.J. Edwards 315
[....I
9. The Department did not receive a response to the letter. In 35 visits
to the Hollywood Twin Theater between April 13 and August 5, 1995
inspectors observed at least 85 incidents of prohibited sexual activity
engaged in by the patrons of the Hollywood Twin.
10. Given the degree of high risk sexual activity regularly observed
at the Hollywood Twin Theater, the management's failure to monitor
effectively not only encourages the activity to continue, but draws peo-
ple to the theater for the precise purpose of engaging in this activity. It
appears that patrons are paying an admission fee to enter the theater so
that they may engage in public, largely anonymous, high risk sexual
activity, not to watch movies. Defendants are operating a facility the
effect of which is to spread disease.
13. In sum, the City is seeking to close down this establishment

because of the serious health risks it presents, as defined by State law,
and because it is clear that less restrictive measures have not succeeded
in eliminating the high risk sexual activities in the theater.
14. In seeking this relief, the City is taking a prudent and necessary
measure to protect public health. It is important that, in addition to
necessary health education, appropriate enforcement measures be taken
to address the AIDS crisis in New York City and limit the ongoing trans-
mission of this deadly virus.
15. In light of the severity of the AIDS epidemic, the operation of a
premises such as the Hollywood Twin Theater warrants not only the
issuance of a closing order but the imposition of severe penalties so that
these defendants and others similarly situated will be deterred from
facilitating a public health nuisance in their establishments.
WHEREFORE, it is respectfully requested that the Court grant plaintiffs'
request for a temporary closing order, a temporary restraining order,
preliminary injunctive relief and such other relief as the Court may deem
just and proper.
Dated: New York, New York
August 8, 1995
[Signed, "Benjamin Mojica"]
BENJAMIN A. MOJICA
Comment
The Acting Commissioner testified that "[i]t appears that patrons are
paying an admission fee to enter the theater so that they may engage
in public, largely anonymous, high risk sexual activity, not to watch
movies," That the sex is "largely anonymous" is an entirely irrelevant
and inflammatory aside. That the patrons don't come to watch movies
is speculative and debatable; it is not unlikely that patrons enjoy
watching erotic films before, during, after, or instead of having sex.
Indeed, because so few sex acts were observed (85 acts between April
and August, which comes out to less than two acts of fellatio a day), it
seems highly probable that there was a lot of movie-watching going
on. The intent of this piece of testimony appears to be to suggest that
there is no free speech issue raised by closing the theater because the
films are beside the point.
In this expert affidavit, the Acting Health Commissioner testified that
the AIDS epidemic is very serious, that under the Sanitary Code, anal
and vaginal sex and fellatio are "high risk," and that closure of the theater
is sought to control the spread of HFV, Tlie Acting Commissioner ignored
the fact that only oral sex was observed at the theater, and that oral sex
is a comparatively low risk. Instead, he relied on "the severity of the
AIDS epidemic" and the need "to protect public health" as a justification
for closing the theater, without presenting any evidence of how stopping
men from having oral sex witli each other is an effective way to prevent
HIV transmission and thus a plausible means of protecting public health,
NOTES
I. See Dave Nimmons and Ilan Meyer, "Oral Sex & HIV Risk Among Gay Men,"
Research Summary (New York: Gay Men's Health Crisis, 1996) for an annotated
list of studies on the relative risk of HIV transmission via oral sex. The summary
concludes, "the body of literature is clear: oral sex offers a possible, but very
low, risk of HIV infection. Unprotected oral sex is classifiable as safer sex or as
safe compared to safest" (5),
PART IV:
QUEER POIITICS
While every piece in this collection

has deep implications for the future of queer politics, the four essays
in this section explicitly address issues around conservatism and
utopianism in the second decade of the AIDS crisis. At a time when
there is no unified gay rights movement, the very meaning of the term
"queer politics" is contingent upon who uses it, and to what end. It is
increasingly unclear whether Queer Nation's in-your-face brand of
identity politics is useful to a radical queer project, especially when the
legacy of Queer Nation is evident in reactions against public sex.
Splintering on the left bears evidence of widespread disorganization,
with every indication of further fragmentation. Mounting conservatism
in the broader scope of United States politics will continue to influence
the forms of safer sex education that are available to us, and in this
conservative climate, mainstream politics will affect access to public sex
and other alternative forms of sexual expression. Therefore, we have
chosen pieces that express Utopian longing and reflective mourning for
the culture of public sex, as well as scathing critiques of New Right and
Queer Nationalist attacks upon it.
Amber HoUibaugh's essay, "Seducing Women into a 'Lifestyle of
Vaginal Fisting,'" explores the entry of lesbian sexual practices into
right-wing discourse. Prior to the publication of a pamphlet produced
under HoUibaugh's direction by the Lesbian AIDS Project of Gay Men's
Health Crisis (GMHC), lesbian sex had been spared conservative
critiques of safer sex information, reflecting the scarcity of repre-
sentations of lesbian sexuality in mainstream discourses in general,
Hollibaugh addresses the bitter irony that lesbianism should only
319
become visible to the right through its abhorrence and distortion of the
practices that she outlined in this safer sex manual.
Wayne Hoffman's personal account of coming out into the AIDS crisis
and the devolution of the thriving public sex culture of the 1970s speaks
to the importance of sexual fantasy in queer worldmaking. In "Skipping
the Life Fantastic," Hoffman argues that without the tools for imagining
a sexual culture unaffected by AIDS, young gay men are hindered by
the memory of something they never had. This is poignantly symbolized
by the notion of "sexual devolution," The fruits of the sexual revolution
are denied gay Generation Xers not only by the AIDS crisis, but also by
opponents of public sexual culture, Hoffman urges for the preservation
and proliferation of public sex venues as critical sites for utopia-building,
and as spaces where radical queer politics can be realized,
Jose Esteban Muiioz echoes these Utopian sentiments in "Ghosts of
Public Sex," Addressing a marked disrespect for Utopian leanings in
some quarters of queer theory, Muiioz argues that queer politics needs
utopianism in order to be able to envision a space outside of hetero-
normativity, as well as to launch a critique of the present. Through a
textual analysis of several cultural works that contain what he calls
"queer Utopian memory," Mufioz emphasizes the importance of queer
memory for sexual citizenship. Examining first the work of writer and
performer John Giomo, and then of photographer Tony Just, Munoz
mobilizes the methodology of German theorists Ernest Bloch and
Theodore Adorno to consider the political uses of Utopian worldmaking.
Finally, Eva Pendleton critiques the activists who are masquerading
as radical queers in her essay, "Domesticating Partnerships," Coining
the term "reactivism" to describe the reactionary politics at the heart of
efforts to regulate public sex, Pendleton draWs critical connections
between gay conservatism and the sexual normativity implicit in the
writings of journalists Michelangelo Signorile and Gabriel Rotello,
Pendleton also returns to the 1980s to consider the sexually conservative
influence of writers Larry Kramer and Randy Shilts upon the contem-
porary opposition to public sex, and makes crucial links to the feminist
porn wars. The sensationalistic accounts that link public sex to spread
of HIV mask an underlying conservatism that threatens the future of
queer politics. As the essays in this section demonstrate, preserving
public sex must be recognized for practical and Utopian purposes alike.
Amber Hollibaugh
SEDUCING WOMEN
INTO ''A LIFESTYLE
OF VAGINAL FISTING''
Lesbian Sex Gets
Vitrfually dangerous
REVEREND LOUIS SHELDON, Direaor,

Family Values Coalition, on March 28th, 1994, discussing the Safer Sex
Handbook for Lesbians, produced by the Lesbian AIDS Project of Gay
Men's Health Crisis and available at a youth peer educators' conference
held in New York City:
This is it. I'm sorry, I thought you'd seen it. Is this your first time for—it's
wiid. I mean it's absolutely, it's so grotesque, if's so vulgai-, it is so
obscene that when I first saw it, I had to put it down. I couidn't iook
at it because it's pornography.
DUFFY (radio show host of "Live in L.A."): This is, this is filth.
SHELDON: This is filth, this is pornography.
DUFFY: Hold on Lou, for just a second. I want to teii you what Lou has
just handed me. This is a book that's about three inches by five inches,
just about the size of one of those piiotographs you would get when
you send in your film. What you can see is a nude women. I'm assuming
this is a woman-^
SHELDON: Yes, it is.
DUFFY: Yes, 'cause it's a safe sex handbook for lesbians. This person
has gloves on—
SHELDON: Latex gloves.
321
DUFFY: Latex gloves. There's no polite way to say this, friends, on her
left breast there is a ring that has been pierced through the nipple.
There is in her belly button a pierced ring that goes through her belly
button. She's holding her right breast with a gloved hand and you can
see all this and, I hate to say this, Lou, but her center finger which is
down covering most of her pubic hairs, has disappeared.
SHELDON: That is correct.
DUFFY: To see that this is being passed out and then you open it up, I
mean, it is inside. Here's—as you open it up, kissing, here's two women
kissing and I mean, it just goes on and on. They're distributing this and
here—it's awful.
SHELDON: See, the bottom line to this, uh, Duffy, is that they're telling
these young children how they can counsel lesbians not to get the HIV
virus infection. And what they're saying is because lesbians, this
particular brochure produced by the homosexual community, remem-
ber that it is not us who is saying this about them, they say this about
themselves: that lesbians are now into vaginal fisting. I've heard of
homosexuals, gays, into rectal fisting, but this is vaginal fisting. And I
want to tell you that a woman can die—the vaginal, the vagina is not
made to have a fist placed in it for such purposes as this booklet is
trying to say. And what their purpose in this booklet is to say to young
children, you must wear a latex glove. As you do vaginal fisting, wear
a latex glove. Then it goes on to tell you what to put on the latex glove,
then it goes on to tell you all these other things.
And as we showêd this on the floor of the Congress, as men were
com—as men and women were coming into the floor of the Congress,
we went there with fear and timidity and I tell you we prayed before
we went, 'cause I've never given out pornography. I don't participate
in any kind of pornography. But when these were sent to me by dear
Mary Cummings, a 74-year-old grandmother, president of School
District 24 in Queens, New York, she said, "Lou, you've got to tell the
Congressman," I gave it to Congressman Mel Hancock; Mel Hancock
said, "I will instruct the sergeant-at-arms not to touch you. You may
give this out on the street, at the foot of the steps of the House side of
the U.S. Capitol as they come in to vote." And we did that. And I want
to tell you all you-know-what broke loose. I mean, I'm actually giving
this out...
DUFFY: Friends, I can't tell you where this has hit me. To think that the
Bible is excluded from our curriculum and this kind offilthis included.
I mean, doesn't that strike you the same way it strikes me? Doesn't that
Amber Hollibaugh 323
just make you ill? Doesn't it just make your tastebuds reverberate with
bad taste? We've got to do something, Lou, What can we do? The
brochure?,,,
SHELDON: You know, it's produced in New York City, If anyone wants
a copy of this, we'll send it to them, to show them what New York City
tax dollars are going for. But what we need to do is to just impact upon
our Senators and say to them, "Look, we're not homophobic. We have
compassion. We're concerned about those that have gender identity
conflict, but we don't want to affirm a lifestyle of vaginalfisting,"And
this is exactly the simple and short of it,
DUFFY: Well, folks, there it is. There's the problem that confronts us,,,
The Lesbian Problem Tbat Cenfrents Us

RADICAL GAYS USE THE PUBUC SCHOOLS TO RECRUIT OUR KIDS
—Ray Kerrison, New York Post, February 16, 1994
DISGUSTING WAY GAYS BRAINWASH OUR SCHOOLKIDS; Mixing

Porn With Suicidal Sex Advice
—Ray Kerrison, New York Post, March 9, 1994
12 YEAR OLDS ARE TAUGHT THE RAWEST GAY SEX TECHNIQUES—

With the Board of Education's Blessing
—Mona Charen, New York Post, March 14, 1994
Lesbian sex, queer girls with disappearing fingers, lesbians with fists
up each other's vaginas, sucking and fucking, vulgar women-to-women
porn, dyke HIV, public debates on lesbians' right to unrestricted erotic
terrain? Lezzies? He/Shes? Girl-to-girl HIV sexual transmission? How in
the hell did lesbians get in this picture?
In late 1994, in the above radio talk show exchange, in these
newspaper headlines, and on CNN, the first barrage of attacks against
the Lesbian AIDS Project's Safer Sex Handbook for Lesbians appeared
in an unprecedented debate. Discussions suddenly emerged about
lesbian sexuality, HIV education, public morality, and lesbian sexual
safety. This cause celebre was kicked off when a youth peer-educators'
conference was held in New York City to update young HIV counselors
with the most recent information they might need to teach other young
people about AIDS—^what it is, how the virus is transmitted, and how
to protect themselves against it. Some local new right organizations
heard about the conference and sent their own kids in as spies, asking
them to collect all the literature they could find and to attend the
workshops being offered.
In the hallways, a multitude of AIDS organizations who were asked
to attend displayed their own literature. The Safer Sex Handbook for
Lesbians •was on GMHC's literature table along with 15 or 20 of its other
brochures, covering all aspects of HIV/AIDS, Many organizations had
set up tables, but for the new right, only two brochures seemed to
fascinate them: the Safer Sex Handbookfor Lesbians and another GMHC
brochure called Listen Up, targeting young gay men of color.
This completely new atta^ck against lesbian sexuality by the new
right caught everyone off guard, including AIDS organizations, femi-
nists, lesbian/gay/bi/trans rights groups, and civil rights groups like
People for the American Way, Because lesbian sexuality had never been
the focus of the new right (in fact we are hardly evident as independent
agerits in most of its literature and public speaking), most of us were
unprepared for this ferocious onslaught. In doing AIDS work, many of
us had come to expect the roUtinely manufactured sexual outrage the
new right fashions wheriever it needs a convenient crisis or a reason to
cut the budget, but their fabricated fuiy had never before beeri generated
by images of lesbian sexuality and safer sex information,
Lesbians have hever been part of the debates that have continuously
swirled and receded around HIV and safer sex information these last
15 years ofthe epidemic. Homosexuals, gays, ahd gayriess were male,
and gay was guy. In fact, within and outside the gay community, we
have been the great "disappeared" when issues of sexuality or HIV are
defined. Even within the little-considered woHd of woinen's sexuality,
risk, and HIV, for lesbians, our sexuality and HIV sexual danger have
been almost totally absent from the public debates that have been such
cultural markers throughout the life of the pandemic. Only in the
feminist porn wars of the 1980s was lesbian sexuality central, visible,
and pivotal in characterizing the issues at stake in the larger political
debates of that struggle and that movement.
This sudden recognition of lesbian sexuality by the new right marks
our entry into a new era. It is not merely a superficial trend like the
straight media talking about lesbian chic; it is a time when our sexuality,
in all its extraordinary variation, is finally being revealed, even to us. We
Amber Holllbaugh 325
are debating it, writing about it, disagreeing about it, teaching each
other about new sexual options. All of this is exploding inside our
communities at the same time as we have become more visible. We
have only just begun the job of opening the windows around our own
sexualities.
Women, though, have been attacked and sexually caricatured
throughout the epidemic. When those attacks have occurred against
women who are HIV+ or suspected of "carrying AIDS," these women
have generally been represented as a problem stemming from our lack
of sexual morals. This is also underscored by the inherent racism of the
new right against women of color, its assumptions about "promiscuous"
sexual partnering, and its suggestion that we are a sexual threat because
our bodies are vectors of infection for "innocent" men or children.
Women who have AIDS (or are at risk for HIV) are always represented
as whores, users, or unknowing victims: the three bitter female catego-
ries of blame used to explain women's internal liability and fault in the
epidemic. In all the new right's different constructions of moral
accountability, HIV was either queer and male or straight and female.
Straight men were represented as victims of female immorality or
dangerous faggots, but never as the transmitters of HIV. And lesbians?
We didn't even exist—^that is, not until the Safer Sex Handbook for
Lesbians entered the picture.
Control of Whose Bodies?

The State, Leshian History, and Gay Male Sexual Desires
The current battle over the Safer Sex Handbookfor Lesbians, as well as
the issues raised around the current public sex debates, were preceded
by the feminist porn wars of the early '80s, often called the "sex wars."
The vicious battles of the sex wars have left fields still strewn with
corpses, and they continue to haunt us in current AIDS clashes, especially
as the new right has grown in strength. Tlie struggle around public sex
has forced us to discover once again that our movements—^Women's
Liberation, Lesbian-Feminist Liberation, or Gay Liberation—do not
guarantee agreement on issues as volatile as desire, sexual practices,
and control of our own bodies. As we saw in the 1980s porn wars
among feminists, and in the early fights among gay men about what
exactly constituted safe sex in the late '70s, and now in the public sex
debates currently raging, we are faced again with the painful lessons
that our communities are perfectly capable of betraying each other's
erotic desires to the State in the name of "safety," or to shore up a
questionable victim defense to create a hierarchy of risk and innocence.
As a group, we are more than capable of blaming each other for the
literal genocide caused by the State's inaction and its criminal unwill-
ingness to protect our lives in the face of this epidemic. Somehow, it
is easier to blame each other for society's sexual hatred of lesbians and
gay men, which sustains these policies against us, as well as against
women and people of color, rather than name the real problems we
confront in the fight for sexual and social freedom and justice.
For lesbians, we were made more vulnerable as a legacy of that
earlier feminist battle over sexuality and because we have few places
in which learn about our own desires and no safe places in which to
gain sexuai self-knowledge. Straight white men don't lose their "repu-
tations" or their lives for being sexual (although they can for being
faggots), and no men end up pregnant or on an abortionist's table as
the end play of sexual experimentation.
One of the things I most envied and admired about gay men after
Stonewall was that they could go to clubs and baths and parks and
parties, watching, exploring, and learning the range of what was
sexually possible for men to do with each other. Regardless of their
individual decisions about monogamy, friendship, and desire, they had
avenues to sexual exploration and sexual knowledge that were closed
to me as a lesbian.
The history of lesbian struggles has not been the same as that of
gay men, often leaving gay men with a sense that the issues debated
by lesbians have no meaning for or impact on their own political issues.
While the feminist "sex wars" are the vital link and the political
precursor to this current division about public sexuality, most gay men
don't know much about them, and usually have not been able to make
the connections between the pornography battles that occurred among
feminists and the public sex debates that have been so caicial to gay
men in the '80s and now again in the '90s. Once boiled down, the
parallels are strikingly similar in all these arguments, and expose how
they rest on many of the same fundamental questions: the role of the
State in regulating sexual behavior, the meaning of desire, and the need
for danger in our erotic lives. Perhaps the most important parallel
involves the demand to control our own bodies, a fundamental
feminist tenet that usually erupts around abortion struggles, but which
is also the basis for how each of us frames responsibility and safety
when discussing safer sex, partnering, control, desire, and personal
responsibility.
Queer Girls in Danger

The fight to limit sexual awareness and HIV information for marginal
communities has had tragic results, many of which we are now seeing
first hand. The number of young gay men who are now not practicing
safer sex, and not even thinking it is relevant to them, as well as the
exploding HIV infection rates for gay men of color, are cataclysmic
examples of homophobia, sexual silence, racism, and a too-perfect
example of how all of these issues often combine toward one devas-
tating end. This is true for various lesbian communities too, where the
legacies of earlier feminist struggles about sexuality (together with many
other factors) generated the current and tragic lack of HIV awareness
in most lesbian communities and the communities where lesbians build
their lives. By shutting down discussion within lesbian communities
about desire, sexual activities, class and race experiences, and our many
erotic differences, we have remained outside the vital exploration about
AIDS and our own risks within our communities for too long, sending
to the hinterlands of shamed hetero- or bisexuality any woman who
has ever fucked a man, as well as any women who ever used drugs.
Yet lesbian communities are as diverse in our sexual practices as
we are in our class, color, sexual histories, or drug use. Popular
renditions of lesbianism rarely capture the experience of the majority
of women who love or have sex with other women. The bulk of women
who love other women are not involved in the political or cultural
movements of the Lesbian Nation. They remain working-class and poor
women, women of color and white women, who do not fit easily into
the new "lesbian chic" or the political lesbian culture of the '90s any
better then many of us fit into the lesbian-feminism of the '80s for the
same reasons—wrong color, wrong class, wrong background, wrong
desires, wrong sexual histories.
The majority of lesbians live in a world altered by the gay liberation
movement and the feminist, civil rights, and AIDS movements, but they
are not a central component of it. Yet these debates about our sexuality
and public morality deeply affect the day-to-day desires of vast numbers
of lesbians and gay men. They also impact upon the ability to fight for
our own erotic rights within the various communities of birth or
language we call our homes, or to know what is important to
understand about sexual dangers so that we can protect each others'
erotic lives.
Few lesbians openly discuss their sexual habits with anyone but
their lovers, and often not even with them. We have inherited the
dreadful legacy of social constraints on women which require sexual
modesty and erotic ignorance. No one gets good information in this
culture, but men are at least expected to be sexual and are therefore
assumed to have the right to be interested in and to act upon their own
desires and pleasures. Boys are not punished for showing sexual
curiosity or, since they're supposed to run the fuck, for learning how
to "do it." For women, the field is rigidly limited—and for lesbians, the
field seems empty. The price for showing sexual interest in another
woman is almost too high.
When HIV hit, it made us sitting ducks for misinformation about
different sexual and social practices and the particular dangers that
could put a lesbian at risk. We did not want to recognize or discuss our
underground sex with men, and we didn't want to see the drug use
which tears our communities apart. Instead, the only topic we would
discuss was sexual transmission between women partners. We refused
to ask the central question—how do lesbians get AIDS? Since there was
no good data out there about women's sexual risks except through
unprotected sex with a man, and since lesbian sexuality is always
collapsed into oral sex, we rationalized, "it isn't our issue." As a result,
lesbians continued to get infected in the ways that all women are
vulnerable, especially through drug use and unprotected sex with men.
Additionally, we continued to put each other at risk sexually because
we refused to recognize our culpability vis-a-vis any sexually transmitted
disease between female partners, including HIV. It's as though we
couldn't even think about it, couldn't bear to imagine ourselves any
deeper inside this epidemic than we already were as lesbians in a
devastated gay community. It was already too much, too painful, too
terrifying.
Ambor Hollibaugh 329
All communities are in denial about HIV, including parts of the gay
male community. There, HIV is about "older" men or promiscuous
men or unsafe men, any kind of man that isn't like the one in the
mirror. For lesbians too, the distancing continues, but for us the
excuses are really about color and class and sexual desires we refuse
to acknowledge that we have. "Oh, I'm not like her, I'm not poor—or
Black—or Latinaôr a junkie—or a bar dyke—or sleeping with
men—or having 'rough' sex—I'm a real lesbian." Realness. But there
are some other reasons we couldn't see what was happening within
our communities. We didn't know how to acknowledge women unlike
ourselves or from communities, sexualities, or cultures we had no
built-in connection to. And since we rarely discuss our sexual activities
(except as an accusation of failure during a breakup), we also couldn't
recognize the myriad activities and circumstances which could put us
at risk sexually. Dildos, multiple and unprotected sexual partners, sex
toys, sex during menstruation, female ejaculation, STDs as a co-factor
if one partner is infected—none of these things were acknowledged
and discussed as risks, leaving HIV+ lesbians isolated from both
information and community, and leaving everyone else saying lesbians
needn't worry.
The irony in the current eruption over the Safer Sex Handbook for
Lesbians is that, until now, lesbian sexuality has never had the public
space or enough political power to engender any debate at all. Few
people aside from lesbians ourselves have any idea about (or interest
in) the variety of desires, identities, and sexual practices possible
between women. Gay male sexuality has been discussed, first because
of its publicly explicit sexual liberation ideology and practices in the
'60s and '70s, and later, tragically, because of the onset of the AIDS
epidemic. But for lesbians, this attack by the new right against the Safer
Sex Handbook for Lesbians is the first to publicly engage with our
desires within the debate about the public and common sexual
landscape of the U.S. and the lesbian erotic. It brings us full circle to
those earlier feminist battles about desire and danger. Tlien, as now,
the underlying question remained—whose sexuality would be the axis
at our communities' erotic center?
Sex Wars, Reund 2:

We Beceme "Tiie Prebiem itseiff"
It was in those earlier skirmishes that some of us who are now AIDS
activists first fought over issues of sexuality and state power, over who
was a "victim" and who a perpetrator, over definitions of sexual
responsibility and community values, over our right to explicit public
expressions of sexuality. Some of us were deemed too deviant, too
sexually ruined, for the feminist movement—^finally, much too queer,
too butch or femme or S/M, too into the union of power and sexual
desire, too untrustworthy in our hungers. It was after that set of battles
that some of us limped away from the feminist and lesbian-feminist
movements. It was precisely over these issues (and all that they
disclosed about the emerging divisions between women who had once
thought of each other as "sisters") and our common fight that some of
us began to see how tliese differences of experience for women of
different classes, colors, sexual histories, and erotic needs could not be
subsumed inside "the sisterhood," It was there that many of us leamed
again about the abstract-sounding issues of experience, background,
class, and race as we saw ourselves become expendable, or worse,
were told that if we didn't shut up or change our radical sex politic, we
would be defined as the problem itself.
That earlier battleground was the foundation for the current battles
and the emerging shock waves appearing on the geography of gay
male sexuality. Again, like a crazy song that repeats itself, we have
come down to whose sexualities, whose desires, whose bodies wiW be at
the center of the current AIDS movement, and whose will be left
outside; whose erotic lives will be made to appear perilous, dangerous,
abnormal, genocidal, or invisible. It is not an accident that this is
happening at the same time as the growing "homosexual" equal rights
movement is attempting to move us from the cultural margins of our
supposed sexual "deviance" into the social and economic mainstream,
as books like Bruce Bawer's A Place at the Table make evident, HIV
and the debates it engenders create a tempting, vulnerable, and logical
place to fight out these political differences—over whose movement
this is, where it's going, and who exactly is driving the car—these are
the crucial issues when we're talking about radical change or "gay"
assimilation. Because the safer sex debate immediately generates so
much passion, it is easy to shut down dialogue and difference with a

mere suggestion that any oppositional position on public sex or
multiple partnering, anonymous fucking, girls (or guys) with dangerous
cocks, or our explicit queer desires will result in our HIV infection, our
self-generated murder, or at least that we will profoundly contribute to
our communities' sexual genocide.
The new right has proved itself a master at manipulating our
society's cultural fears about sexuality and homosexuality. Like its
ideology of racism, which created "the welfare cheat," or its myth of
the unmarried women eating bonbons while having kids by the
pound—a problem blamed on women's liberation or on the black
community and lesbian women for undoing the family—its propaganda
about the dangers of allowing the creation of gay family, and its
ideologies of bootstrap, survival-of-the-fittest economics mask class
structures and class issues in this country, while targeting those too
vulnerable or powerless to resist. And at least parts of our communities
are falling for it.
The tragedy of this fight among us over sexual desire and HIV is that
it helps mask the larger enemy around us, one who would like to see
us disappear altogether, even if it literally means letting us die. It also
helps cloak the spinelessness of many liberals in this culture who refuse
to stand up and fight for lesbian and gay rights. They are too frightened
to lift their heads above their own heterosexually protected sheets and
engage in the real contest to help create a general climate of explicit,
sex-positive education and a movement for sexual power which can
fully incorporate lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people.
In this larger fight, we all need to rethink many issues, not just
lesbian or gay civil and sexual rights. The deeper agenda of confronting
sexual shame and ignorance, sexual oppressions, and power imbal-
ances of all kinds rests upon and is linked to the larger social issue of
how to build a democratic and compassionate society as opposed to
what we have right now: a culture that is daily growing more terrified
of its own citizens and all their passions. It would mean addressing the
underlying issues of who has and who has not, and it would mean, for
those of us fighting for genuine sexual empowerment, that our struggle
must by necessity be linked and integrated with issues of gender, class,
and race differences. Gay and lesbian liberation is not an isolationist
issue; it comes from somewhere and rests on many compounded things.

If gender differences support the structures of social oppression for
women, if race and class make some members of the queer community
less valuable than others in this country, these issues must be recog-
nized for their concrete interdependence. Fighting to eradicate racism
is as much our fight as the fight for sexual liberation. We can't afford
to forget the connections between race, class, and gender when we are
building and defending a movement for sexual freedom. Whose desires,
whose imaginations, whose behaviors will each of us be ready to
defend, and whom will we each be willing to leave behind?
The New Right and Us:

The Danger and the Challenge
Part of what makes this firestorm about lesbian sexuality so interesting
is what it reveals about the unstated assumptions of the new right about
lesbian sexuality, what they had thought constitutes queer girl sexual
desires and practices, or more to the point, what it couldn't possibly
incorporate—namely, penetration. In reading right-wing documents, it
quickly becomes obvious that the social meanings constructed for our
deviance had to do with a kind of blind heterosexism—an inability to
imagine "what we really do in bed." Their ideas were never based on
the possibility of genuine sexual attraction to another woman, but
instead upon the assumption of a defect within lesbians which made
it impossible for us to attract or hold a man—that we are too ugly to
get a "real" man, or that we have been raped or somehow deeply
betrayed by men and therefore seek a sort of pathetic refuge with other
women, that we are spinsters—never desired by a man, etc. Lesbianism
is always assembled in their arguments as a vacancy at the center, a
sad, unfulfiUing, and counterfeit erotic system that cannot stand on its own.
Yet, as the Safer Sex Handbook for Lesbians makes clear, we aren't
actually lacking in any sexual pleasures; the range of our sexual practices
shows that everything is possible and easily taught, built, or bought
outside the current boundaries of our existing sexual/gender system.
This is occurring at the same time that new right media figures are
attacking us for those very desires, while they pore over our newly
created and explicit sexual information about lesbian erotic practice.
And fascinated with lesbianism they are! Over and over, they can't resist
Amb*r Hollibaugh 333
quoting long and detailed paragraphs from the Safer Sex Handbook for
Lesbians, while offering shocked disclaimers to their listeners and
readers as they continue to scan the page. Like peep-show voyeurs,
they want to read erotic materials and repudiate any interest in them
at the same tirhe. These are people who have always wanted to know
about sex but were terrified to ask, especially, as straight men, about
lesbian sex. This becomes particularly clear when, in article after article,
they repeatedly return to the issue of lesbian vaginal fisting, one of the
activities discussed in the safer sex brochure. They're mesmerized by
it, can't stop talking about it, keep habitually returning to it. Their
fascination is a dead give-away. After all, the idea that they can be
replaced sexually, that their cocks aren't the only way to give pleasure
and penetration to a woman, must be shocking to them, a continuation
of the fear and titillation that lesbianism has always contained for
heterosexual men.
They do something else. They pretend that the brochure is advo-
cating fisting for 12-year-old girls, and then go on to claim that "fisting
often leads to death," especially in the pages of the new right monthly.
We Lambda Report, a journal whose only purpose is to "monitor the
homosexual agenda in American culture and politics," The claim that
"fisting often leads to death" is drawn from an article in a respected
professional forensic journal that details the death of a woman from
internal vaginal and rectal injuries due to' penetration. When I looked
up the article, what I found shocked me. This was not the story of a
woman injured while making love with her female partner; it was the
documented case of a woman who was sexually attacked, assaulted by
a male perpetrator who had rammed his fist and arm up her vagina
and rectum until she died. This is what they quoted to prove that lesbian
sex is dangerous. This is how far they are willing take their vicious
misrepresentations of our sexuality. This also may be what they need
to believe when faced with a group of women for whom they are
sexually unnecessary.
Fisting is a pleasure that is not defined by gender. It is often
recommended to women and their partners in preparation for child-
birth, but is demonized after the child is born. But all these arguments
are made by men who have historically refused to care about the lives
of the women who were giving birth and often dying in the process—
men who have left in droves when the kids were more than they
anticipated. The list of deadbeat dads could paper the world. Women's
lives, both reproductive and sexual, have never been much more than
the canvas^for the male brush—our deaths, like our pleasures, have
mattered just as little.
When Ifirstsaw the new right's claims about fisting, I thought they
were merely ludicrous and foolish, but as I saw this assertion reappear
incessantly, I realized its reason and its danger, Lesbians have few
resources for decent, non-judgmental sexual information. We are
bombarded with messages not to come out and are discouraged from
experimenting sexually once we have come out, through distorted
representations of our erotic female-to-female desires as dangerous,
sick, or injurious. Powerful safer sex information for lesbians, like the
material in the handbook, is also dynamic, sexually positive sex
information, period, and we are starved for it. It counteracts the
messages that surround women suggesting that lesbianism and lesbian
sexual desires are ridiculous, unhealthy, and without erotic heat. What
is it again that we do in bed?
Tiie Questien that Remains fer Aii ef Us: in An Epidemic,

Wiii We Abanden Eacii Otiiers' Dangereus Desires?
When the new right mounted its attack against the Safer Sex Handbook
for Lesbians, our own lesbian communities were still torn apart by
debates about lesbians and HIV risk. The only other place we could
have looked for help was from gay men. But most gay men, regardless
of how committed they are to lesbian and bisexual women's rights,
have never before had to defend lesbian sexuality or women's bodies,
and were totally confused about how to handle this new onslaught.
This left the Lesbian AIDS Project's handbook defenseless. We watched
as a conservative justification was marshaled, while gay, AIDS, and civil
rights organizations rushed in to say that the materials were never meant
for minors—^without defending their content—trying to create some
safety for AIDS organizations which were already fiercely under attack
from the likes of Jesse Helms,
The problem, of course, with a conservative defense is that you
can't argue for the beauty or power or right of your own or others'
sexuality when you are also arguing for sexual privacy—the don't-ask-
Ambor Holiibaugh 335
don't-tell argument. When we say that children or youth are inappro-

priate members of our communities as targets of sexual education, we
desert them to the same forces that shaped and mis-shaped us. And we
leave ourselves vulnerable to the next attack because of a defense that
we ourselves have made unspeakable.
For lesbians, what the lack of a sexual defense meant was that
lesbian desire and our right to know about our sexuality, both for our
protection against HIV and for our need for erotic knowledge, got
abandoned. And men who were potential allies, including gay men,
showed a deep discomfort with talking about women's bodies, lesbian
desires, and sexual practices, with saying "vagina" or "clitoris," and with
knowing enough about our erotic lives to marshal an argument which
was intelligently informed about lesbian sexuality and practices. They
were up against the wall this time; in the midst of a battle about female
desires and lesbian lusts, they would have had to defend the right for
lesbians to control our own bodies and the terms of our own sexual
debates and cravings. That is what it would have taken to actually
defend the handbook. It is also what it will take to defend gay men's
right to public sex, a sexual practice which is risky, difficult, and even
potentially life threatening. Who, then, will have the power to decide?
This question has also been at the core of all the battles surrounding
HIV since the beginning of the epidemic. It is the issue that frames the
question of testing (mandatory or voluntary), and that stands right at
the edge of the table when we're talking about safer sex. Will we allow
sexuality, for the greater good (for the State or humanity, for procreation
or God), to be regulated if our survival or death are at issue? Will an
individual be allowed to take life-threatening chances with his or her
own life, or another's life, for desire? Is any sexuality, any form of desire,
worth that much?
I think that we, more than most people, know the answer to that
question, because it is a question that each of us has faced before, with
similar terror of the answer. We have all had to come out. In a culture
where heterosexuality is the only justified system and homosexuality
is presented as the death of all hope or future, when queerness itself
seems to represent extinction, each of us has dared to step over that
line to find our own answers. I do not think HIV, or our deepest erotic
desires, are somehow different from the experience of coming out.
336 POUCING I»UBUC SEX
'What is worth living to experience is worth risking everything for. It is

also worth fighting within our communities fcir safety and the courage
to love and protect each other. But the ability to make a choice is
everything in the doing of it. The State could not finally make me
straight, nor can it detide that my loving of women must be regulated
by its morality, even if it argues that regulation is necessary to save my
life. In this culture at least, only we have loved each other enough to
try and keep each other alive. It has been gay people who have taken
dn the battle to educate, inform, care for, and bury our own, not the
State, And it is also the gay community, at its best, that has fought for
the value and honoring of other lives and communities also radically
affected by this pahdemic. It is our own particular terrible legacy, and
a tribute to ourselves and our furious refusal to give up on our own
lives or any other community's survival.
Wayne Hoffman
SKIPPING THE
LIFE FANTASTIC
Coming of Age
in tiie Sexual Devolution
There are two levels where we can

lead our lives. The real and the fantastic. We have to disco and drug
and fuck if we want to live fantastic!
—^The Divine Bella,
in Larry Kramer's Faggots, 1978*
By the time I came out in the mid-1980s, less than a decade after
Faggots, the world of faggotry wasri't such a fantastic place anymore.
It was all too real. Not only had the publicly circulating connotations
of disco, drugs, ahd fucking changed (Disco Sucks, Say No to Drugs,
On Me Not In Me), but barriers were placed in the way of young people
who rtiight have wanted to sample the formerly fantastic life despite
the warnings.
Thanks to a new federally mandated drinking age of 21 and adamant
enforcement of this rule by gay bars terrified of attracting police
attention, teenagers coming out in the 1980s couldn't legally enter a
gay disco. An entire world of socializing, networking, and community-
building was thus roped off.^ By the time I first entered a disco on an
age-unresti-icted night, without fear of discovery or ejection, I had been
out for six years, published a dozen articles in gay newspapers, led
over 50 lectures and workshops on homophobia, and broken up with
my first lover. But the powers that be wouldn't let me dance.
Crusades by Nancy Reagan and her Just-Say-No friends were
transforming illicit drugs from a teenage rite of passage into a rabidly
policed and overprosecuted symbol of criminality in the 1980s. The
337
338 POliCiNG PUBUC SEX
Partnership for a Drug-Free America unleashed an advertising blitz that

succeeded to some extent in scaring "nice kids" away from drugs
through misinformation and fear-mongering. The federal government's
hyper-vigilant war on drugs eventually sent one of my closest friends
to Leavenworth and removed any escapist fantasy that drugs might have
represented to me, replacing it with a harsh reality check.
And thanks to AIDS, fucking was no longer the key to a fantastic
life in the 1980s, but the key to a horrific death. My first fuck—at age
16 in 1987—was followed within 24 hours by my first full-fledged HIV
anxiety attack, and within a week by my first trip to an HIV testing
clinic—one moment of "fantastic" followed by months of panicked
"real." I would wait two more years for the next fuck. Venues where I
could have fucked despite the anxiety, in the meantime, were closing
left and right. When I came out in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s,
every backroom and nearly every dirty bookstore had been closed until
the only sex venues left for gay men were crowded near the Navy Yard,
in a neighborhood renowned for its astronomical crime rate. Shortly
after I moved to Boston in 1987, that city's only remaining bathhouse
burned down, and within a year, the red-light district known as the
Combat Zone had been "cleaned up" through new zoning laws.
The sexual revolution was over. Visions of sexual freedom had built
the 1970s world of Faggots; AIDS paranoia, censorship, and Reagan-era
family values quickly destroyed it. The mid-1980s sexual milieu for gay
men was mired in physical violence, political vitriol, and bodily decay.
Utopian notions of gay liberation had faded into defensive strategies
for survival by the time I came out. Welcome to the real world.
The Fantastic
The fantastic—the vision of how things could be, not just how they
were—had fueled gay liberation and the sexual revolution gay men
enjoyed in the 1970s, just as the fantastic had served as a driving force
behind other individual and communal political movements for decades.
Idealism and utopianism were essential to early gay liberation thinking,
and the hopes and dreams inspired by the articulation of a new sexual
order helped a generation of gay men strive to change their sexual
worlds, to improve their sexual lives, to move beyond the heterosexist
restrictions American society placed on gay sexuality. The ability to
Wayne Hoffman 339
create new queer lifeworlds hinged on this ability to see beyond reality
into the world of the fantastic,
A key element of this fantastic vision was the explosion of a public
sexual culture for gay men. Gay pornography made fantastic repre-
sentations of homosexual behavior visible and public, fed men's desires
and imaginations, expanded men's sexual repertoires, and presented
images of men unashamed of their sexual practices. Commercial sex
establishments provided safe spaces for men to explore their sexual
fantasies in public, and helped men envision a sexual world where
homosexuality was not demonized but celebrated. This culture of
public sexuality was one of the primary sites of communal queer
worldmaking, where men could learn from and support other men,
exchange ideas, build community structures, and raise a political
ruckus. It was not a flawless paradise; it favored men with cash to spend
and access to gay urban centers, and it failed to represent a broad range
of men's diverse ideas of what a fantastic world might look like. Still,
opening up sexual culture on such a public level allowed freer
exploration of fantasy than had existed before the sexual revolution
and gay liberation.
But for the last decade, the public world of queer sexuality—^the
site of fantastic worldmaking—has been shrinking. How could young
men growing up in the age of AIDS envision what a Utopian queer
world might look like when our fantasies, our escapes from the
pressures and tragedies of reality, were denied us?
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, public sex venues have
been forced to close, and pornography has been increasingly cerisored.
Real estate zoning interests have supported anti-sex health regulations
to eliminate commercial sex spaces, while state censorship of obscenity
has worked with industry censorship of unsafe sexual representations,
thus caishing the pornographic fantastic in a double-bind, Tlie anti-sex
forces allied against queer sexual expression have squealed with glee
as they deny young men the sexual culture we seek. More surprisingly,
many older gay men have vocally supported these anti-sex moves, often
in the name of protecting the young from the dangers of public
sexuality. Too few gay men of any age have raised their voices in
defense of preserving a public sexual culture in the age of AIDS and
3 4 0 POLiCiNG PUBLIC SEX
supporting gay youth. Theorist Simon Wathey was one of the earliest
to exhort gay men;
We must riot collude with the anti-sex lobby all around us, for it is
precisely their equation of sex with AIDS which stands to construct a
new contagion theory of horhosexuality which is every bit as tenacious
as that which has taken us the better part of a century to successfully
dismantle. Hence the inapproptiateness of a recent article aimed at
young gays which ended with a pious wish that hopefully our
imaginary gay teenager will never rriiss what He's never had, and a new
generation of gay meh will learn to live without fucking.'
Many young gay men who have come of age during the epidemic
do miss what we've never had. The diminution of a gay culture of
public sex is not merely perceived as an unnoticed absence among
young gay men, but rather as a tangible sexual devolution: a narrowing
of sexual freedoms, a clamping down on sexual expression, a withering
of sexual worlds. Despite efforts by zoning boards, AIDS educatbrs,
homophobic elected officials, and overzealous gay assimilationists to
erase pre-AIDS gay sexual culture, we young gay men do know what
we're missing as the sexual devolution envelops us.
Gay Public Culture in the Sexual Develutien

At first glance, it might seem that young men coming of age today
enjoy a far greater public gay culture than did the previous geheration.
Since the 1970s, gay men have become increasingly visible in main-
stream popular culture. Ironically, however, as gayness becomes more
visible as a lifestyle or identity in popular culture, publicly visible
homosexuality—^that is, sexual behavior—seems to shrink in stature.
The abundance of asexual, gay-identified characters circulating in
public discourse does nothing to counteract the devolution of public
sexual culture for gay men.
The TV show Melrose Place can weave a gay man into its regular
cast of characters without much ado in the 1990s, but that gay character
can't take his shirt off or kiss his boyfriend for fear of scaring the
program's sponsors. He can talk about his identity and he can even be
overtly political, fighting military exclusion, employer discrimination,
and anti-gay violence; he just can't display his sexuality. Dramatic strides
in media representation in the last two decades have made gayness as
Wayne Heffman 341
a lifestyle and even as a political statement part of the public's lexicon.

But a corresponding increase in representing gay sexual culture as a
public phenomenon has not materialized, and even seems to have
grown in inverse proportion to non-sexual gay representations,**
The 1990s boom in non-sexual gay media representations—a boom
large enough to warrant a September 1995 cover story on the "Gay '90s"
in Entertainment Weekly—should not be confused with a public sexual
culture. Gay representations in the mainstream media have been
stripped of their sexual content and sanitized for mainstream America's
protection,^ Meanwhile, even in most of the gay popular media, from
the Advocate to Out to Genre, editors downplay sex to attract the
mainstream advertisers who fund their glossy covers. While the prolif-
eration of gay "lifestyle" images in public is generally admirable, the
concurrent media blackout of sexual behavior only magnifies the sexual
devolution it pretends to resist. Public gay non-sexual culture seems to
displace completely any public gay sexual culture in the media. And
that's no coincidence: therein lies the message.
As much as 1970 movie The Boys in the Band painted a shrill and
self-loathing picture of gay men in America, sexuality was its theme, as
it provided a character with a crush on a straight-identified closet case,
innuendo galore, and a hustler "given" as a birthday gift. By the 1990s,
Philadelphia painted a more refined, comfortable, and palatable (to
mainstream movie audiences) picture of gay men (mostly white and
middle class, as in Boys in the Band), but the sexual behavior of the
characters was almost completely elided. The only mention of a sexual
past for Tom Hanks's character—a single tryst in a public sex venue
years earlier—was presented not as a boastful anecdote, but as a
defamatory and shameful piece of personal history evoking regret and
unrespectability. The trajectory of Hanks's character's maturation into
a respectable, acceptable gay American during the sexual devolution
required him to move beyond his distasteful public sexual past and
embrace a domesticated, contained, monogamous, middle-class life,*^
The message about public sex for older gay men is: If you've done
it, stop. The message for younger gay men: Learn from your elders'
experience—don't start.
Generation Sex
"We are victims of the sexual revolution," says Luke, the young
renegade at the center of the 1992 faggot-with-a-gun independent film
The Living End. "The generation before us had all the fun, and we get
to pick up the fucking tab."'
In 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?, Neil Howe and Bill Strauss
elaborate the feeling of loss in the face of the sexual devolution
experienced by the twenty-somethings who constitute Generation X.*
Howe and Strauss argue that in the 1970s, Xers were the big losers in
the sexual revolution as children growing up in a world full of divorce,
deadbeat dads, and declining societal attention to children's issues. And
by the time Xers were old enough to enjoy tlje purported fruits of the
sexual revolution, it had already ended:
In retrospect, [Xers] generally regard the era that roughly spanned the
years of their birth as a unique window of carefree euphoria that hurt
them first as kids and betrayed them again as adults Older genera-
tions had fun raising the window and gaping at the ecstasy beyond.
[Xers] not only looked but climbed halfway through the opening—only
to have the window shut on their bodies Here again, the Boomers
got to pursue the rapture, and [Xers] got stuck with the debris.'
For gay male Xers, the change is especially acute. In the 1970s,
entire gay community institutions had been built around sex, but with
the onset of the epidemic these institutions were suddenly boarding up
just as many Xers were coming of age.
Certainly most gay men coming of age 50 years ago also did not
have backrooms in cavernous discotheques, explicit pornography, and
well-publicized bathhouses at their disposal. Because these options had
never been available to them, however, they likely did not view their
sexual milieu as devolutionary. But younger men today came of age at
a time when the 1970s sexual revolution had expanded the menu of
options available, only to find out that the kitchen was no longer
serving. This cognizant denial of a public sexual culture—not merely
the lack or the loss of one—has created a generational rift, particularly
between the Stonewall generation and the AIDS generation.
Historical changes in the gay community as a consequence of the AIDS
epidemic have contributed to a "generation gap" between older and
younger gay men. Every generation feels the need to assert its
Wayne Hoflman 343
independence from previous generations, yet the highly threatening

nature of AIDS may have intensified the younger generation's motiva-
tion to separate themselves from their gay elders,'"
Gilbert Herdt and Andrew Boxer elaborate further on the genera-
tional tensions between gay Boomers and gay Xers, Herdt and Boxer
build on the work of sociologist Glen Elder, who asserts, "Depressions,
wars, and periods of extreme social ferment often produce major
reorientations of society. That the life course of individuals may also
be reshaped by such periods of crisis is apparent from personal
experience and from biographical studies,"" Herdt and Boxer argue
that age is such a powerful indicator of common social awareness that
it can create cohesive demographic groups across lines of geographical
distance, race, class, or outness,'^ In their study of gay youth involved
in Chicago's Horizons program—a network of social service programs
aimed at gay adolescents—Herdt and Boxer delineate gay demographic
cohorts according to the period in which they came of age. The split
of greatest interest here is between Boomers and Xers, between
children of the sexual revolution and of the sexual devolution. While
the former are defined by the authors in terms of sex, the latter are
defined by the specter of disease:
[Boomers are] identified with the radicalism of the late 1960s, which
led to the Stonewall riot and the formation in the early 1970s of gay
and lesbian communities around the country Drinking and sexual
courting became prominent features of gay life in the bars and
bathhouses of the period [Generation X] identifies those who have
come of age since the early 1980s and the onset of AIDS,,,, It may
seem curious to mark a cohort with the awareness of a disease;
however, the life stories of younger men and women reveal that this
epidemic equals the power of World War II and other sweeping
historical events in impressing common experiences on a new genera-
tion. Their coming out and awareness of their same-sex desires are
forever stamped with the sign of AIDS, the fear of sexual risk of HIV,
the programmed campaigns to change sexual behavior, and the politi-
cization of "homosexuality" that has ensued over the past decade,'^
No age group exists in isolation, and particularly in the Horizons
program the interaction between Boomers and Xers is frequent. Groups
of younger men are advised by older men, and often the generational
differences pose difficulties when advisors try to talk across age. In
particular, teaching younger men about safe sex at the same time that
many young men are learning how to be sexual at all can bring
problems of judgmentalism to the surface.
The task of socializing the youth for safe sex creates thorny problems—
a double bind—for the advisors Some advisors do not approve of
casual sex or cruising They have either seen their friends die of AIDS
or have known or read about the cases. They are not always shy about
letting their views be known The attitudes expressed by the Hori-
zons advisors sometimes place the youth in a quandary about the
acceptance of sexual diversity in the group. They have come to
Horizons to escape the homophobic and disapproving attitudes of their
parents, siblings, and neighbors. Thus they do not like the subtle
disapproval of some forms of sexual activity.'"^
Younger men rightly perceive such judgmental attitudes as infan-
tilizing. Yet larger gay community debates around public sex today
confirm that these paternalistic attempts to regulate sexual behavior run
rampant as young men come out into the devolutionary sexual culture
of the AIDS era. Even in discussions within community forums, among
men who themselves participated in the sexual revolution 20 years ago,
the friendly advice offered young men echoes the messages of conser-
vative politicians and pseudo-liberal screenwriters: don't do it."
Den't Even Think Abeut it

As sexual realms of the fantastic have shrunk, there has been a further
devolutionary message for young men: don't even think about it. The
intent of those aligned against the sexual world of the fantastic is not
only to stop young men from doing unsafe things, but to stop us from
even thinking about unsafe things—it is an effort to restrict the real and
the fantastic simultaneously. The sabotage of the building blocks of
queer boy fantasy is evident in the devolution of pornography in the
age of AIDS.
Pornography has long provided a semi-public arena of homosexual
Utopian fantasy, but in the 1980s, even this fantastic world fell victim
to the reality of political conflict. In the late 1980s, unprotected anal
sex (formerly known, without qualification, simply as "fucking") van-
ished from video screens as all major studios began using condoms on
their models."^ Around the same time, written pornography began to
inject notions of safer sex into its scenarios. By the late 1980s, unsafe
Wayne Hoffman 345
sex was the new love that dared not speak its name; it was not to be
discussed, depicted, glorified, or acknowledged in erotica. Pornogra-
phy became an integral tool in regulating men's sexual activity in the
1980s, but as it became a forum for education, it lost much of its status
as purveyor of fantasies.
Colt Studios had been on the vanguard of 1970s gay pornography
studios that shifted gay men's sexual self-images from an earlier, more
straight-oriented, homosex-as-punishment/substitute paradigm into a
masculine, exuberant, brotherly paradigm. By the late 1980s, Colt had
stopped producing any video pornography aside from the Minute Man
series—entirely solo performances—out of health concerns for its
models. No more brawny truckers, hunky cowboys, or horny soldiers
fucking in the fields, just solo masturbation.'^
Due to a variety of censorship laws and the resulting self-censorship.
Drummer, the foremost leather/fetish magazine in the gay male media
for 20 years, found itself unable to print visual images of penetration at
all—^with or without condoms—^by the 1990s. The sexual devolution was
narrowing representations in even the most revolutionary publications.'^
In Public Sex, Pat Califia Writes that pornography is increasingly
limited regarding what it can depict. "Since the law is not clear about
exactly what constitutes obscenity, most porn producers overreact and
delete anything that might be controversial... from their magazines and
videos."" In addition to self-imposed restrictions, pornography like Colt
videos and magazines such as Drummer that travel across state and
international boundaries are faced with dozens of different standards
and must further limit sexual depictions to the lowest common
denominator.
Even certain practices that have remained largely unaltered have
acquired new connotations in the age of AIDS, particularly for younger
men. The external cum shot, or "money shot," is not a post-AIDS
phenomenon in pornography, but its erotic significance has been
increasingly overshadowed by its precautionary necessity, as John
Burger notes in One-Handed Histories: "Once, this shot served purely
as a signifier of male pleasure. In the decade of the epidemic, it also
serves as a signifier of safe sex."^° For young men, whose knowledge
of pre-AIDS pornography may be minimal or non-existent, the safe sex
aspect of the cum shot may completely eclipse any erotic significance
attached to ejaculation, as Cindy Patton notes: "I have found several

younger men whose pom-viewing experience has occurred only in the
context of a world in which safe sex was already thematized and who
believed that the cum shot was in fact a specific technique of safe sex
within the films. Lacking any other explanation for this convention, they
interpreted the cum shot as a form of safe sex representation."^' Once
again, the fantasy of erotic pleasure has been displaced by the reality
of mortal danger—even when this was not the producers' original
intention.
In addition to making pornography more educational, safe sex
activists also worked to make educational materials more porno-
graphic—and thus more erotically appealing—in the late 1980s. As part
of the Safe Company project designed to create safe sex erotica, Patton
acknowledged the difficulties inherent in blending educational and
pornographic materials: "The concern to produce 'responsible' sexual
fantasy material was clear in most gay male video porn by 1989, but
the approaches were contradictory and rested on widely divergent
views of the role of fantasy and mediation in sexuality."^^
While the use of pornography as an educational tool to help spread
safe sex information is laudable from a public health perspective, it can
also remove elements of the fantastic from pornography by explicitly
rooting porn in the reality of the epidemic. Although educational
materials gain style and clout by becoming more erotic, erotic materials
risk losing their appeal by becoming educational on such a didactic
level. What is lost when pornography stops being fantastic?
Michael Warner has argued that male-male pornography, as a public
expression of homosexuality, is particularly essential for young men
coming to terms with their sexuality.^' Through the prism of pornogra-
phy, young gay men can visualize sexual desires concretely, learn
techniques to bring such desires to life, and find spaces (physical,
psychic, or communitarian) to express these desires. As Burger states,
"pornography makes gay men visible" and "serves to validate and
legitimate homosexuality to the viewer."^''
Pornography is a crucial element of gay men's public sexual culture.
Because public spaces are such a common setting in pornographic
scenarios, gay men can easily fantasize about homosexualizing spaces
that are often rigidly policed against such transformations: parks.
Wayne Heffman 347
bathrooms, locker rooms, gyms. And because pornography as a cultural

document operates in public spaces—bookstores, theaters, news-
stands—it further injects sexuality into the otherwise desexualized
public spaces that serve as its sites of distribution. Thus pornography
fosters a public sexual culture both in its content and in its display.
Burger elaborates on pornography's political significance:
These videos demonstrate the violation (Isoth wishful and actual) of
public (and heterosexist) spaces Porn puts gay men having gay sex
in front of everyone's face, making it impossible to ignore and confuting
the truths of the old regime. With this breakdown of time and space,
gay porn helps to erode the "truth" of our abjection. Gay porn videos
thus actively abet the deconstaiction of heterosexist social norms.^'
Pornography, in addition to making gays visible where they have
been invisible, serves a deeper purpose. As Allan Beaibe has argued,
commercial sex establishments have often taken public erotic spaces
(parks, truck stops, restrooms) that were frequently unsafe (due to
muggers, bashers, cops) and recreated them in a safer public environ-
ment: Central Park's dirt paths are simulated in a bathhouse's dark maze,
a taick stop becomes a disembodied semi-trailer inside Fred Halsted's
sex club, and public bathroom glory holes are replicated in a video
store's buddy booths. In a similar way, gay pornography not only takes
spaces where gays have traditionally been invisible and makes them
visible, it also takes spaces that have traditionally been unsafe and
makes them safe. The army doesn't have to be a hateful environment
where drunk enlistees conspire to bash men like Alan Schindler with
impunity—it can be a veritable sex club with humpy recaiits hopping
from barrack to barrack in search of cock. A locker room needn't be a
place where gay men are patrolled and abused for having roving
eyes—it could be an open sex party with naked men, steamy showers,
and benches just the right height for fucking. And a taick stop might
not be a place where rowdy roughnecks beat up fairies—it might be
an orgy of manly men looking for a good buddy to treat them right all
through the night. Pornography helps men visualize what a fantastic
world might look like if heterosexist and homophobic social codes
were successfully challenged. "We can say fantasy is just fantasy," states
journalist Michael Bronski. "But fantasies do have resonance in the
world. Pornography doeshzve an impact.""''
The impact of pornography's depiction ofthe fantastic is particularly

vital in the age of AIDS, When gay sex is inextricably linked with disease
in the minds of so many gay men, making images of sex without disease
public is itself a political act that promotes sexual freedom and erotic
fantasy. Drummer editor Wickie Stamps sees this as part of her mission
as a pornographer;
In the midst of an epidemic, when the losses at times feel staggering,
to be able to walk into a magazine shop and pick up a magazine or
walk through a bookstore and pick up a magazine where it's a positive
image of sex—it isn't all just about grief and loss, it's not ignoring it
necessarily, but you can read some hot stories, get some good
information, jerk off, see other men having sex with other men, see
the diversity of ways that men can have sex—I think that's an incredible
gift at this point in time. To say that you can still have sex in the '90s,,, ^'
Pornography helps men realize that sex is still possible, even in the
age of AIDS. So what happens when the walls of the sexual devolution
close in on public portrayals of homosex? What happens when
pornographic products are censored by obscenity laws, pushed out of
purview by zoning regulations, or turned into HIV prevention bro-
chures by educators? The fantastic—the world beyond the limits of the
real—drops out of the picture. The result: young men coming of age
while public expressions of homosexual behavior are limited, regu-
lated, and de-eroticized do not easily find ways to explore or express
sexual desires.
Sexual Politics
Exploring desire does take on added significance in the midst of the
AIDS epidemic. But finding ways to explore fantastic worlds may
actually help blaze a trail out of the reality of disease, Watney writes of
gay men, "It is through the mobilization of fantasy that we can protect
ourselves from the risk of infection,"^*
Opponents of pornography and public sex in the 1990s argue quite
the opposite, charging that, as sites of sexual fantasy, both promote a
level of sexual irresponsibility that is indefensible in the age of AIDS.
But while sexual revolution-era institutions like the Club Baths and
Joe Gage films certainly fell short of utopic sexual liberation, they
offered far more than sexual abandon to an entire generation of gay
Wayne Hoffman 349
men. They offered trust, education, freedom, and political mobilization.

Califia argues.
Was sexual license the only thing that the baths promoted? I don't think
so. As the most visible gay institutions, they made it possible for many
men to experiment sexually with other men. They facilitated coming
out (as well as made it easier for some men to remain in the closet and
still have lots of gay sex).... They taught gay men to see themselves
as members of a common tribe with similar interests and needs.^
Nonetheless, public sex opponents fear that even the possibility of
men experimenting sexually with other men will lead to what Gayle
Rubin refers to as a "domino theory of sexual peril."'" The inevitable
end results of a public sexual culture in this paradigm are AIDS and
death; fantasy is merely the vehicle leading ultimately to a destructive
reality. In order to protect young men from making the "mistakes" of
their elders, the logic follows, young men inust be restricted far beyond
the necessary bounds of safety.
As Bronski has written, "Conservatives and those demanding social
control have always argued that the realization of sexual fantasy is too
dangerous—that it will only produce more extreme sexual behavior."''
And so it seems that the foreclosure of fantasy is not incidental in the
politics of those who oppose public sex. In fact, fear of unleashing
extremes of sexual behavior through fantasy is likely one bf the prime
motivators of anti-public-sex activists—from the late journalist Randy
Shilts to his heir apparent, Gabriel Rotello—^whb seek to enforce a
more conservative sexual ethic on younger gay men in the name of
paternalistic protection and HIV preventioh.
The dilemma facing young gay men, however, is not how to
maximize real eJDidemiolbgical control even at the expense of human
desire, biit how to maxiriiize fantastic human desire at a tiine when the
horrible i-eal threatens to block out any vision of what might lie beyond
its purview.
Despite the crusades against the sexual fantastic, many radical
activists in the last few years have seen the political value of a public
sexual culture that could help queers visualize a fantastic new sexual
order. So while explicitly sexual public culture was being attacked from
within and without gay circles, a new, though limited, politics evolved
whose emphasis was first on the public, then on the sexual.
Gay activism was enjoying a radical rebirth with the advent of ACT
UP in 1987; in 1990 Queer Nation would take up the mantle of
in-your-face antagonistic sexual radicalism in a context not subsumed
by the AIDS epidemic. With slogans like "Keep your laws off my
body"—borrowed from the pro-choice movement—these groups
fought back against creeping state control over queer bodies. With
actions like queer kiss-ins, these groups made it clear that queers had
the right—even the political duty—to be public about their sexuality.
Activists sexualized public spaces once again and thumbed their noses
at repressive authorities and squeamish assimilationists.
But for young queers who envisioned themselves as sexual outlaws,
like characters out of a John Rechy novel,'^ who deliberately flaunted
their sexuality in public as a revolutionary act, the opportunities were
limited and community acceptance surprisingly low. While Queer Nation
was taking over suburban shopping malls by holding hands in the food
court, few activists were marking queer space by drilling holes in the
malls' men's room stalls. Kissing strangers in public may be a political
act, the outlaws were told, but sucking them off is bad public relations.
"The explosion of private sexual fantasy into public view is a
powerful political statement," writes Bronski.'' Especially for younger
men whose "explosions into public view" may be their first political
statements of sexuality, such demonstrations are dynamic and empow-
ering. Sexual fantasy does not end at kissing for many men, however,
and explorations of further sexual fantasy can be even more powerful
on both a personal and political level.
Fantastic Sex in an Epidemic
Creating and maintaining a public culture of queer sexuality in a
heterosexist society is a political act in any decade. Public displays of
sexuality—^whether sex clubs, pornography, activist demonstrations, or
other forms—challenge the enforcement of gay invisibility in public
spheres. They also build communal spaces where sexual behavior,
identity, techniques, and etiquette can be shared and refined. Most
importantly, they help queer people envision a sexual world outside
the restrictive boundaries of homophobia, puritanism, violence, and
disease. Public sexual culture not only makes queer reality visible, it
makes a more fantastic queer world thinkable.
Wayne Hoffman 351
The sexual devolution is being hailed and pursued by conservative

elected officials and prominent gay assimilationists alike who have
challenged new public venues, but the enduring power of the fantastic
is proving stronger than the will to cmsh it. Since the days of Queer
Nation, urban gay America has in fact witnessed a gradual resurgence
of public sexual culture. In The Culture of Desire, Frank Browning
describes the early 1990s as a "sex resurrection."'^ Sex clubs in San
Francisco, backrooms in Washington, and bathhouses in New York
have all recently returned to the public sex scene. In statistical terms,
the gradual rebirth of backroom and bathhouse culture on a large scale
in the mid-1990s represents a subtle shift more than a sea change;
backrooms and bathhouses never closed completely in the 1980s, and
even in 1996, they have not reached the same heights—in terms of
sheer number, nor in terms of freedom of sexual expression allowed
within them—they attained pre-AIDS. Still, to some observers this
public sexual renewal seems like a simple retreat to the swinging ways
of the 1970s. But there are qualitative differences.
A new backroom in 1996 cannot truly imitate a backroom from 1976;
it is not possible today for most men to view public sex (or any sex,
for that matter) except through the viral veil of safety and risk.'' The
public sex venues opening anew are not simply a nostalgic retreat to
pre-AIDS times. They are operating in a new milieu—in an epidemic.
The distinction is particularly salient for us younger men, who
cannot retreat to the backrooms of 1976—because we were in grade
school, or even diapers, at the time. For us, the new sex venues represent
the dawning of a new sexual culture we have never experienced on
such a wide scale. Today's public sexual renewal does not represent a
step backward in gay men's sexual development—either to the days of
liberation ox from the horrors of the epidemic—but rather a step ahead
in time toward a new kind of sexual and political expression.
For young men in particular, who have never known a time when
our sexuality has not been intertwined with fatalism, mortality, doom,
and danger, creating new public spheres where the fantastic can flourish
allows the possibility for fantasy to enter into our sexuality on a broad
scale. Young men can find the space to start imagining what a new
queer sexuality might look like without opportunistic infections, with-
out anti-sex censorship, without legal and societal restrictions, without
352 POLICING PUBUC SEX
anti-gay violence. We can broaden our erotic lives, deepen our politics,
and create a brave new queer world full of vision and possibility. Only
when young gay men can imagine what this fantastic world might look
like can we begin to strive to achieve it and move beyond the
communally stifling confines of the real.
NOTES
1. Larry Kramer, Faggots (New York: Plume, 1978), 171.
2. Many other reasons arose that kept young people out of bars: social pressures
against dritiking, fear of older gays, negative social connotations of bar culture.
See Gilbert Herdt and Andrew Boxer, Children of Horizons (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1993), 137. Additionally, the atmosphere of disco itself had changed
dramatically from the 1970s to the 1980s. The sexual discipline of 1970s disco
had given way to new disciplines: grief and mourning. Even "mindless" disco,
which purportedly avoided serious intellectual or political discourse, bore the
marks of AIDS by the 1980s. See Walter Hughes, "In the Empire of the Beat:
Discipline and Disco," in Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture,
Ahdrew Ross and Tricia Rose, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 156.
3. Simon Watney, Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS & the Media (Minneapblis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 132. The article to which Watney refers
appeared in England's Gay Times in August 1986.
4. The single notable exception on television is MTVs Tbe Real World, which
included Pedro Zamora. Zamora—who was not an "actor" playing a role but a
"real" gay man with AIDS playing himself—^was permitted some measure of a
sexual life on the show's 1994 season. From one perspective this role was
remarkable: it showed an actual person with AIDS continiiihg to have a sexual
life. From another perspective, it was nothing new: a gay man had sex, got sick,
and died. Zamora died while his seasoh of The Real World-was still airing.
5. See Entertainment Weekly, September 8, 1995. Also see Lynn Elber, "TV Makes
Room for Gay Characters, but not Sexuality," in Texas Triangle, February 2,
1996, 15.
6. SeeWilliarriFriedkin,dir., The Boys in the Band, 1970. See also Jonathan Demme,
dir., with Tom Hanks, Pbitadelpbia, 1993.
7. Gregg Araki, dir., with Mike Dytri, The Living End, 1992.
8. Howe and Strauss dub Xei-s "13ers." This synonymous moniker derives from
the fact that Generation X^-whose years of birth span roughly the post-baby
boom mid-1960s through i980—comprises the thirteenth generational cohort
of citizens since American independence. For the sake of consistency, and
because not all twenty-somethings trace their lineage back to colonial times, I
refer to 13ers here as Xers.
9. Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fait? (New York:
Vintage Books, 1993), 149.
10. Jay Paul, Robert Hays, and Thomas Coates, "The Impact of the HIV Epidemic
on U.S. Gay Male Communities," in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities over
Wayne Hoffman 353
the Lifespan, Anthony D'Augelli and Charlotte J, Patterson, eds, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 376, as quoted in Eric Rofes, Reviving the Tribe:
Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic (New
York: Harrington Park Press, 1S>96), 158,
11. Glen Elder, Children ofthe Great Depression (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1974), xv, as quoted in Herdt and Boxer, 8,
12. Herdt and Boxer, 7,
13. Herdt and Boxer name their four demographic cohorts Cohort One (coming of
age after World War I); Cohort Two (World War II); Cohort Three (Stonewall);
and Cohort Four (AIDS era). For the sake of consistency, I refer to Cohort Three
as Boomers and Cohort Four as Generation X, or Xers, Herdt and Boxer, 10-12,
14. Herdt and Boxer, 143-44,
15. For a detailed discussion of the generational issues surrounding AIDS from the
perspective of gay Boomers, see Eric Rofes, Reviving the Tribe (New York:
Harrington Park Press, 1996),
16. Of course, this shift was necessary to protect actors' health, and I applaud the
change on that level. In fact, from a health standpoint, the gay porn industry
stands head and shoulders above the straight adult film industry, which largely
takes no such precautions to protect actors. The point, however, is that even
imagining what sex could look like without a condom became increasingly
difficult for younger men, who couldn't draw on their own memories to
understand how the psychological impact or physical feeling of sex might be
different without a sheet of latex,
17. Rick and Dave, "Month Muffin: An Interview with Calendar King Steve Kelso,"
Frontiers, October 7, 1994, 61,
18. Under the web of censorship law, piss, cum, and even rape fantasies can no
longer be visually depicted in Drummer. Telephone interview with Wickie
Stamps, October 5, 1995,
19. Pat Califia, Public Sex: The Culture ofRadical Sex (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1994),
36,
20. John Burger, One-Handed Histories: The Eroto-Politics of Gay Male Video
Pornography (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995), 78,
21. Cindy Patton, "Safe Sex and the Pornographic Vernacular," in How Do I Look?
Queer Film and Video, Bad Object Choices, ed, (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), 58,
22. Patton, 32,
23. Michael Warner, Queer October Conference, Johns Hopkins University, October
20, 1995,
24. Burger, 4, 21,
25. Burger, 100,
26. Quoted in William Mann, "Laws of Desire," in Boston Phoenix, One in Ten,
January 1S>95, 10, Elsewhere, Bronski has expounded on the importance of
fantasy beyond the limits of commercialized, pre-packaged pornography. While
not diminishing the importance of pornography as a purveyor of fantasy,
Bronski rightly warns against limiting fantasy to what the pornography industry
produces for mass consumption. Pornography should be a tool of the fantastic,
but I agree with Bronski that it cannot dictate the totality of sexual fantasy. As
Andrew Ross argues, pornography provides the basis for shaping and illustrating
fantasy, but it does not wholly determine the content of consumers' fantasies.
See Michael Bronski, "Why Gay Men Can't Really Talk About Sex," in Flesh and
The Word 3 (New York; Plume, 1995), 387-394. See also Andrew Ross, "The
Popularity of Pornography," in No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1989), 171-208.
27. Telephone interview, October 5, 1995.
28. Watney, 132.
29. Califia, 33. While this discussion specifically pertains to sex venues, I think
pornography clearly plays a similar role. Also, regarding the baths specifically,
Leo Bersani attacks Utopian nostalgia for these pre-AIDS public spaces in "Is
the Rectum a Grave?" My point here is not to gloss over the real shortcomings—
which, in the current conservative climate in gay public debate, are constantly
invoked—but rather to highlight the possibilities, both realized and unrealized,
in public sexual culture.
30. Rubin is not speaking solely about gay male sexuality, but her discussion of
sexuality in general—specifically sexual peril—is particularly useful in this
context. See Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex," in We Lesbian and Gay Studies
Reader, Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds. (New
York: Routledge, 1993), 14.
31. Michael Bronski, "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes: Notes on the
Materialization of Sexual Fantasy," in Leatherfolk, Mark Thompson, ed. (Boston:
Alyson, 1991), 63.
32. For example, see John Rechy, The Sexual Outlaw Qi&fi York: Grove, 1977).
33. Bronski, "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes," 64.
34. Frank Browning, We Culture of Desire (New York: Crown, 1993), 80.
35. A viral (and bacterial) veil of risk was also present in the 1970s, it should be
remembered; sexually transmitted diseases existed long before AIDS, and were
always a special consideration in public sex venues. AIDS has simply amplified
this longstanding concern to deafening extremes in the 1990s. Even as a fantastic
site, public sex venues cannot entirely escape the exigencies of the real. An
argument for the fantastic is not a denial of reality; I am not advocating an end
to AIDS education, promoting unsafe sex, nor closing my eyes to the reality of
the epidemic. Just as it is counterproductive to foreclose fantasy in order to live
in the "real world," it is similarly untenable to ignore reality completely and
escape into a fantasy world. In the age of AIDS, even as the renewal of public
sexual culture opens up new opportunities for the fantastic, the reality of the
epidemic cannot—and should not—be ignored. The point is that it is necessary
for us to have both: our feet firmly planted in the real, our eyes gazing toward
the fantastic.
Jose Esteban MuAoi
GHOSTS OF PUBUC SEX

Utopian Longings,
Queor Memories
1. Witnessing
Queer Sex Utopia In 1989 I saw Douglas Crimp give a
rousing and moving talk on "Mourning and Militancy" at the second
national Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference held at Yale University.'
Crimp explained the workings of mourning in queer culture as lie cataloged
a vast, lost gay male lifeworld that was seemingly devastated by the
HIV/AIDS pandemic. I want to call attention here to a specific moment in
Crimp's talk in which an idea of Freud is put in conversation with queer
spaces and practices from a historically specific gay male lifeworld;
Freud tells us that mourning is the reaction not only to the death of a
loved person, but also "to the loss of some abstraction which has taken
the place of one, such as a fatherland, lit>ert>', and ideal..." Can we be
allowed to include, in this "civilized" list, the ideal of per\'erse sexual
pleasure itself rather than one stemming from its sublimation? Along-
side the dismal toll of death, what many of us have lost is a culture of
sexual possibility; back rooms, tea rooms, movie houses, and baths;
the trucks, the piere, the ramble, the dunes, Sex was everyu^here for
us, and everything we wanted to venture; Golden showers and water
sports, cocksucking and rimming, fucking and fist fucking. Now our
untamed impulses are either proscribed once again or shielded from
us by latex. Even Crisco, the lube we used because it was edible, is
now forbidden because it breaks down rubber. Sex toys are no longer
added enhancements; they're safer substitutes.^
It has been seven years since the zenith of AIDS cultural criticism
when Crimp wrote these words. One thing that has become clear at
this moment in the epidemic is that the ideal spaces and practices that
Crimp described never completely ceased to be. During the age of AIDS
355
gay men have managed to maintain our queer sex, our spaces, and, to
some lesser degree, the incredible sense of possibility that Crimp
evokes. At this juncture, commercial sex spaces (backrooms, movie
theaters, bathhouses) are weathering a new round of attacks from both
the repressive state power apparatus and reactionary, sex-negative
elements of the gay community. Despite these eritptions of anti-sex and
homophobic policings, many gay men have managed to maintain the
practices that Crimp lists, as they have been translated in the age of
safer sex. Negotiated risks and other tactical decisions have somewhat
modified these sexual impulses without entirely stripping them away.
Taie, the moment that Crimp descrilês i.s a moment that is t-)ehind us.
But its memory, its ghosts, and the ritualized performances of transmit-
ting its vision of Utopia across generational divides still fuels and propels
our political and erotic lives: it still nourishes the possibility of our
current, actually existing gay lifeworld.
Crimp's writing stands as a testimony to a queer lifeworld in which
the transformative potential of queer sex and public manifestations of
such sexuality were both a respite from the abjection of homo.sexuality
and a reformatting of that very abjection. Tlie spaces and acts he lists
represent signs, or ideals, that have been degraded and rendered abject
wiihin heteronormativity. Crimp's essay reclaims these terms, ideas, and
remembrances, and pushes them onto a list that includes such timeless
values as fatherland and liberty. Crimp's essay thus bears witness to a
queer sex Utopia.
In a starkly dissimilar manner, Leo Bersani's own important essay
in AIDS cultural criticism, "Is the Rectum a Grave?," debunks idealized
notions of bathhouses as utopic queer space.* Bersani rightly brings to
light the fact that those pre-AIDS days of glory were also elitist,
exclusionary, and savagely hierarchized libidinal economies. Bersani's
work does not allow itself to entertain Utopian hopes and possibilities.
His book of gay male cultural theory. Homos, further extends the lines
of thought of "Is the Rectum a Grave?" in different directions."* Homos
is even more concerned with dismantling and problematizing any
simplistic, sentimental understanding of the gay community or gay
politics. Through an especially powerful reading of Jean Genet, Bersani
formulates a theory of "anti-relationality." The most interesting contri-
bution of this theory is Uie way in which it puts pressure on previous
JosA Esteban Muftoi 357
queer tlieories and betrays the ways in wloich they theorize gay identity
in terms that are always relational, like gender subversion. But this
lesson ulimately leads to a critique of coalition politics. Bersani consid-
ers coalitions between gay men and people of color or women as "bad
faith" on the part of gays. The race and gender troubles in such a
theory—ali people of color are straight, all gay men are white—are also
evident in his famous essay. Tlie limits of his project are most obvious
when one tries to imagine acaial political interventions into the social
realm, especially interventions that challenge the tedious white norma-
tivity that characterizes most of North American gay male culture.
Bersani's project does not need to see and believe in utopianism. Yet
queer politics, in my understanding, needs a real dose of utopianism.
Utopia lets us' iniagine a space outside of heteronormativity. It permits
us to conceptualize new worlds and realities that are not irrevocably
constrained by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and institutionalized state
homophobia, More importantly, Utopia offers us a critique of \he present,
of what is, by casting a picture of what can and perhaps will be. In this
essay I will look at moments in a few gay male cultiinil works that
imagine Utopia, through what I will l>e calling queer Utopian memory.
Memory is most certainly constructed, and more importantly, always
political. The case I will make in this article posits our remembrances
and their ritualized tellings—through film, video, performance, writing,
and visual culture—as having worldmaking potentialities. Furtliermore,
I will suggest that these queer memories of Utopia and the longing that
structures them, especially as they are embodied in work tliat I will
identify as public sex mimetic cultural production, help us carve out a
space for actual, living sexual citizenship.'^ This essay will single out
moments, like the above passage from Crimp, that tell, remember, and
reflect upon public sex. These texts will not be read as nostalgic
discourse, but instead be presented as moments in which queer Utopian
remembrance reenacts what Crimp has called a culture of sexual
possibility. John Giorno's short autobiographical fiction and the visual
work of conceptual artist Tony Just will serve as the textual sites for
this writing on the workings of queer Utopian memory and the
structure of feeling that is adjacent to such a reconstructed notion of
Utopia and memory, a force field of affect and political desire that I
will call Utopian longing.
358 POIICING rUBlIC SIX
2. Fucking K«ith, R«iii«mb«ring Utopia

John Giorno's You Got to Bum to Shine is a rich mosaic of poetry,
performance text, activist mission statements, and autobiographical
prose. The book reflects on Giorno's life as a queer writer and performer
over the last four decades in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Giorno's text
is the uncanny testimony of a man who has survived various risky
lifestyles. It is studded with fabulous star-fucking stories that sparkle
like tawdry gems. The reader is, for example, treated to a tell-all account
of the author having sex with Andy Warhol, a tale that satisfactorily
debunks popular myths that have circulated around Warhol to de-gay
his sexuality/
A section called "Great Anonymous Sex" recounts one of Giomo's
encounters witli another Pop Art superstar in 1982 at the Prince Street
subway toilets. In this story Giomo fucks and sucks a young man who
is later revealed to be Keith Haring. Giomo's sex narrative begins with
his entrance to the Prince Street toilets, a space rife with public
anonymous sex. Giomo writes about a plain-looking yet attractive boy
with wire-rimmed glasses, a "kid" possessed of an "unusual passion":
He was making love with great energy and focus, affection and delight,
different than the routine going on around me. The guy's heart was
pouring love and I went with the flow. 1 sucked the kid's cock (it was
cut. not large but very hard). He sucked my cock, with his eyes looking
up into mine. Two guys with poppers kept sticking them in our nostrils.
We continued alternating sucking each other's cocks. He managed a
few times to get my cock all the way down his throat and I fucked his
face, moments of surrender for both of us. The onlookers jerked off
watching us.^
Giomo's narrative rings of idealization and writerly hyperbole,

which is not to doubt the "truth" of his account. In the passage, Giomo
functions as a disseminator of public sex culture. The idealization that
his prose enacts is, within the scope of my analysis, an example of the
way in which a rich remembrance of sexual Utopia feeds a transforma-
tive queer politics. The excess that Giomo's text produces is indeed
more that simple sexual bravado. The space of the Prince Street toilets
and the practices of public sex that are rendered in his narrative
engender a certain transformative possibility.
The politics I understand as being enacted in Giomo's text are not
Jos« Eiltban Munoi 359
immediately visible. In fact, the statement would seem to run counter

to Giomo's assertions that "The great thing about anonymous sex is
you don't bring your private life or personal world. No politics or
inhibiting concepts, no closed ailes or fixed responses. Tlie great thing
about anonymous sex is spontaneity."^ I would like to suggest that while
Giomo understands this space as being one that is free of ideology, we
can still read a powerful political impulse in Giomo's text, an impulse
that is detectable in the acts that are being transcribed, the spaces that
are being conceptually rendered, and the performance of writing that
expresses his public sex history, I am most interested here in the latter
of these. The cataloging of public sex culture that Crimp performs in
"Mourning and Militancy" can be read alongside Giomo's text as an act
of queer woddmaking. More specifically, I see worldmaking here as
functioning and coming into play through the performance of queer
Utopian memory, Tliat is, a Utopia that understands its time as reaching
beyond some nostalgic past that perhaps never was, or some future
whose arrival is continuously belated—a Utopia in the present.
I will tum now to a 1964 printed dialogue between Frankfurt school
social theorists Theodor W. Adorno and Ernst Bloch on "the Utopian
function of art."'** At one point in die dialogue, Bloch turns to Adorno
and confirms a basic truism about the politics of utopianism in spite of
the climate of a mechanical age in which everything seems mechani-
cally present and therefore cancels out the possibility of utopianism:
Bloch: Thus, the fact that there is also Utopia in this area where it has
the most difficulty.,. the essential Junction ojtttopla is a critique ojwhat
is present. If we had not already gone beyond the barriers, we could
not even perceive them as barriers. lEmphasis mine.]"
Tlie saliency of Bloch's point lies not merely in the fact that
imagining any Utopia offers us something that is more than another
time but also, as in the case of Giorno and the gay male cultural workers
I am coasidering here, in that what is made available first is a critique
of the pre.sent and of its limits, its barriers. Adomo follows up his friend's
point by casting his statement within the frame of the dialectic:
Adorno: Yes, at any rate. Utopia is essentially in the determined

negation, in the determined negation of that which merely Ls, and by
concretizing itself as something false, it always points, at the same time
to what should be.
Yesterday you quoted Spinoza in our discussion with the passage

"Veaim index sui et falsi" [the true is the sign of itself and the false]. I
have varied this a little in the sense of the dialectical principle of the
determined negation and have said Falsum—the false thing—index sui
et veri [the false is the sign of itself and the correct]. That means that
the tme thing determines itself via the false thing, or via that which
makes itself falsely known. And insofar as we are not allowed to cast
the picture of Utopia, insofar as we do know what the correct thing
will be, we know exactly, to be sure, what the false thing is,'^
Dialectical thinking, especially what Adorno refers to as "the
determined negation" enables us to read Giomo's text as something
other than a nostalgic foreclosure on future political possibility. Instead,
via the lens provided by the above materialist philosophers, we can
understand Giorno's text as pointing beyond the barriers of our current
conditions of possibility, beyond the painful barriers of the AIDS
pandemic; it lets us see, via a certain conjuring of "tJie past," and for
many of us we see this past for the very first time. These pictures of
Utopia (a term that is used in later comments Adorno makes in the
dialogue) do the work of letting us critique the present, to see beyond
its "tvhat is"lo worlds of political possibility, of "what might be."
Here is another instance of Giomo doing what Adorno calls the
casting of a picture:
I unbuckled the kid's belt and he pulled down his pants. I turned him
gently around, slowly eased in the wet head and slipped my cock into
his ass, and he pushed to me and took it all. His ass was slightly
lubricated with Vaseline, I wondered if it was from this morning or
from last night, and if he had someone's cum in his ass. That thought
made me hotter and the grease made my dick fed even better. Someone
started rimming me. had his face buried in my ass, his tongue in my
a.sshole, and was nibbling and sucking, This is also a great pleasure for
me. I fucked the kid, gently at first, then gradually as hard as I could.
Sweat poured off us in sheets. From the depth of the inebriating darkness
of that underground cave, stretching my cock to the sky, I shot a big
load of cum, straight and glorious. Perfectly arisen and accomplished,
and perfealy dissolved back into primordially pure empty space. '^
This, I want to suggest, is certainly a casting of a picture of sex, but,

in the same instance, it is also a picture of Utopian transport and a
reconfiguration of the social, a reimaging of our actual conditions of
possibility, all of this in the face of a global epidemic. The picture
JosA Esttban MUROI 361
rendered through Giomo's performative writing is one of a good life

that both was and never was, that has been lost and is still to come. It
performs a desire for a perfect dissolution into a "primordially pure
empty space."
After this scene in the Prince Street toilet Giorno runs out and catches
a train in the nick of time: "I said goodbye and ! was out the door in
a flash, onto the train going uptown." Once on the train he feels himself
once again overwhelmed by the cmshing presence and always expand-
ing force field that is heteronormativity: "It always was a shock entering
the straight world of a car full of grim people sitting dumbly with
suffering on their faces and in their bodies, and their minds in their
prisons,"'^ This experience of being "shocked" by the prison which is
heteronormativity, the straight world, is one that a reader, especially a
queer reader, encounters after putting down a queer Utopian memory
text like Giomo's. I think of my own experience of reading You Got to
Bum to Shine at some predominantly straight coffee shop near where
I live, looking up after the experience, and feeling a similar shock effect.
I will once again pick up the thread of Adorno's thinking from the
same dialogue with Bloch:
INegation] is actually the only form in which Utopia is given to us at all.
But what 1 mean to say here,.. this matter has a very confounding aspect,
for something terrible happens due to the fact that we are forgiven to
cast a picture. To be precise, among that which should lie definite, one
imagines for it to begin with as less definite the more it is stated as
something negative. But then—the commandment against a concrete
example of Utopia tends to defame the Utopian consciousness and to
engulf it. What is really important here is the will that it is different.'^
In Giomo's work we can see the will that is different. There are
many reasons why these fantasies of rapturous unsafe sex might have
a damaging effect on gay men living in the AIDS pandemic. But having
said that, there is something noble and enabling about Giomo's
storytelling, Adomo. in the above lines, speaks out against a trend in
socialism (and in humanism in general) in which utopianism becomes
the bad object, Utopianism can only exist via a critique of the dominant
order; it has no space to exist outside of the most theoretically
safeguarded abstractions. In a roughly analogous way the pictures
drawn by Giomo are also bad objects in so far as they expose gay men
362 POUCING PUBUC SEX
to acts, poses, and structures of desire that may be potentially disastrous.

But, as Adorno teaches us, the importance of casting a picture is central
to a critique of hegemony. Adorno explaias, "If this is not said, if this
picture cannot—I almost would like to say—appear within one's grasp,
then one basically does not know at all what the actual reason for the
totality is, why the entire apparatus has been set in motion."'^
It might seem as though my oscillations between the worlds and
sexual Utopias produced in Giorno and the more theoretical Utopian
musing of Bloch and Adorno are something of a stretch. To that charge
I would answer, "of course." But, beyond that, I would point to the
words with which Bloch ends the dialogue: "In conclusion, I would
like to quote a phrase, a very simple one, strangely enough from Oscar
Wilde: 'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even
worth glancing at.""'^ While it might be strange, from most vistas, that
Bloch would be quoting Western culture's most famous convicted
sodomite, it is certainly not so odd from the perspective of this queer
inquiry, Wilde's sentence, when properly broken down and appreci-
ated for its stylized precision, makes explicit the connection between
queemess, Utopia, and worldmaking. Queer woridmaking, then, hinges
on the possibly to map a world where one is allowed to cast pictures
of Utopia and to include such pictures in any map of the social. For
certainly, without this critical spot on the map we ourselves become
the pained and imprisoned subjects on the fast-moving train Giorno
describes.
3. Ghosts and Utopia

I turn now from the ghost of Oscar Wilde that haunts Bloch's thinking
on Utopia to the ghosts that circulate in the photography of Tony Just.
In 1994 Just completed a project that attempted to capture precisely
what I'm calling the ghosts of public sex. The projea began witli Just
selecting run-down public men's rooms in New York City, the kind that
were most certainly tea rooms before they, like the Prince Street toilets
that Giorno describes, were shut down because ofthe AIDS/HIV public
health crisis. Just then proceeded to do the labor of scrubbing and
sanitizing sections of the public men's rooms. The preparation of the
spaces is as central to the series as the photos I choose to focus on
themselves; the only evidence of this behind-the-scenes aspect of the
larger project are the clean spaces themselves—Just's labor exists only
EsUbon Muioz 363
as a ghostly trace in a sparkling men's room. He documented this project

through color slides and photographs (see illustrations) that focused
on the bathrooms' immaculate state and the details of such spaces. The
urinals, tiles, toilets, and fixtures that are the objects of these photo
images take on what can only be described as a ghostly aura, an
other-worldly glow. This aura, this circuit of luminous halos that
surround the work, is one aspect of the ghosts of public sex that this
essay is interested in describing.
These ghosts of public sex are the queer specters whose substance
Just's project and my own critical endeavor anempt to capture and
render visible. In part, I see the ghosted materiality of the work as
having a primary relation to emotions, queer memories, and structures
of feeling that haunt gay men on both sides of a generational divide
that is formed by and through the catastrophe of AIDS, One of the
things one risks when one talks of ghosts are charges of ignoring the
living, the real, and the material. I bolster my formulations against such
potential reservations with the work of Raymond Williams. Williaais'
notion of a structure of feeling was a process of relating the continuity
of social fomiations within a work of art. Williams explained structure
of feeling as a hypothesis that
has a special relevance to art and literature, where true social content
is in a significant number of cases of this present and affective kind,
that which cannot be reduced to belief systems, institutions, or explicit
general relationships, though it may include all these as lived and
experienced, with or without tension, as it also evidently includes
elements of social and material (physical or natural) experience which
may lie beyond or be uncovered or imperfectly covered by, the
elsewhere recognizable systematic elements.
For Williams, the concept of "structures of feeling" accounts for
the unmistakable presence of certain elements in art which are not
covered by (though in one mode, might be reduced to) other formal
systemsl. This] is the true source of the specializing category of 'the
aesthetic', 'the arts', and 'imaginative literature. We need, on the one
hand, to acknowledge (and welcome) the specificity of these ele-
ments—specific dealings, specific rhythms—and yet to find their
specific kinds of sociality, thus preventing the extraction from social
experience which is conceivable only when social experience itself has
been categorically (and at root historically) reduced.'*
UnHtled, 1994, Tony Juxt.
Printed courtesy of the artist.
Untitled, T994, Tony Just.

Untitled, 1994, Tony Juft.
Printttd courtety of the artiit.
UntiHed, 1994, Tony Juif.

Untitled, 1994, Tony Just.
Untitled, 1994, Tony Just.

EsUbaR Munoz 367
The ghosts I detect in Just's project possess a materiality, a kind of

substance, that does not easily appear within regimes of the visible and
the tactile, These elements have their own specificity but are also
relevant on a vaster map of social and political experience, To see these
ghosts we must certainly read the "specific dealings, specific rhythms"
that bring to life a lost experience, a temporally situated picture of
social experience, that needs to be read in photo images, gaps, auras,
residues, and negations. Due to the obstacles imposed by certain
preconceptions of materiality—preconceptions that are often manifest
as visual myopias—one cannot actually see the ghost of public sex in
Just's project. But if the eye is sensitized in a certain way, if it can catch
other visual frequencies that render specific distillations of lived
experience and ground-level history accessible, it can potentially see
the ghostly presence of a certain structure of feeling.
In the photos, tlie shine of porcelain and metal, the way in which
light reflects around and off these surfaces and objects—be they a
porcelain urinal or a slightly corroded chrome fixture—all of these cast
an effect that is strangely mimetic of the haunted .structures of feeling
that circulate around the sites of the project. The pictures interrogate
the curves and arches of lifted toilet seats and the rounded edges of
porcelain toilet frames. The emphasis on tile, in conjunction with the
empty foreground of the rooms, makes one think of an echo chamber.
Through an associative chain the connotation becomes one of rever-
beration and resonance. The pictures, through the negative charge of
absented bodies, instill in the spectator a sen.se of gathering emptiness.
Such an emptiness is not the project's teleological objective; rather, that
space of emptiness is meant to make room for other worlds of sexual
possibility.
The deciphering enterprise at the center of this essay accounts for
these visual effects (which are also photographic effects) as a perform-
ance of a fanfiiliar yet other-worldly affective function that leaves a certain
ephemeral trace, the appearance of which 1 am calling the pnxiuction of
ghosts. Then ghosts. Jacques Derrida, in his recent study of ghosts in
Marx, employs a notion of hauntology, which he understands to be a
conceptual tool for the understanding of being within the postmodern
age of an electronic res puhlica: "neither living or dead, present or
absent" and ultimately "not belong[ing] to ontology, to the discourse of
368 POLICING PUBUC SfX
the Being of beings, or to the essence of life and death."''^ I want to

suggest hauntology as a powerful mechanism for the work of situating
semi-public phenomena like public sex within queer history and politics.
Earlier in this essay I discussed dialectics while conjuring Adomo.
One reading of the absence of people and acts in Just's riffs on public
sex would consider these representations of hollowed-out, mournful,
and fetishistic spaces to be those of determined negations, the casting
of pictures that represent Utopia through the negative. Without ca.sting
out this dialectical optic, another critical vista, again found in Derrida's
recent Marxian study, helps us to think about ghosts in terms that
attempt to surpass the dialectic. Take, for instance, the moment in wliich
Derrida ponders what he considers to be the logic of the ghosts:
If we have been insisting so much since the beginning on the logic

of the ghost, il is because it points toward a thinking of the event that
necessarily exceeds a binary or dialectical logic, the logic that dis-
tinguishes or opposes effectivity or actuality (either present, empirical,
living—or not) and ideality (regulating or absolute non-presence). The
logic of effectivity or actuality seems to be of a limited perti-
nence— [The limit] seems to be demonstrated better than ever by the
fantastic, ghostly, "synthetic," "prosthetic." virtual happenings in the
scientific domain and therefore in the domain of techno-media and
therefore the public or political domain. It is also made more manifest
by what inscribes the .speed of a vinuality irreducible to the opposition
of the act and the potential in the space of the event, in the event-ness
of the event.^
Derrida is discussing a modality of techno-media that would

include broadcast, videographic, and cybernetic communication, not
the more established photographic technologies that Just works with
and manipulates, Nonetheless, I continue to find an edifying under-
standing of what Derrida means by the surpassing of a binary between
ideality and actuality when I consider these photographs. Within
dialectical terms. Just weighs in on the side of determined negation,
since, when one tries to unpack a dialectical opposition between "the
act and the potential in the space of the event, in the event-ness of the
event," we see with great clarity what Derrida has called the "event-
ness" of the space. Ju.st's work represents tlie ideality of Utopia while
also representing the importance of effectivity and actuality. Its negation
of physical players and its choice to represent absence permits a viewer.
Jof6 Eitcban Mufioi 369
strangely enough, to occupy a space both inside and outside the

predictability of such an established dialectical pattern.^'
4. Situating Ghosts
Tlie double ontology of ghosts and ghostliness, the manner in which
ghosts exist inside and out and traverse categorical distinctions, seems
especially useful for a queer criticism that attempts to understand
communal mourning, group psychologies, and the need for a politics
that "carries" our dead with us into battles for the [he present and future.
Ghosts have already been used by some queer scholars to explain the
relationship of homosexuality to heteronormative culture. Mandy
Merck, in a discussion that glosses ghost theory by Patricia White, Diana
Fuss, and Terry Castle, explains the relational dynamic in this way: "The
[homosexual] ghost that haunts heterosexuality is its uncanny double,
the illicit desire needed to define legitimacy. The liminality of the figure,
as Fuss and others have observed, reflects its ambiguity as a term of
exclusion which nonetheless confers interiority."'^ If the terms and logic
of Merck's analysis were to travel to other divides, beyond the
homo/hetero split to splits that are currently being reified within queer
cultures, in some branches of queer writing and in gay male commu-
nities, and between different generational and health status markers,
we could begin to decipher the ways in which the specter of public
sex—ostracized by many "legitimate" factions within the queer com-
munity—is still a foundational presence/anti-presence that performs the
illicit and helps tliese conservative factions fomiulate a "legitimate,"
sanitized gay world.
Ghost theory also worries the binary between HIV-positive and
negative men, a binary that is currently being concretized in new
gay male writing. Recently, there has been a shift away from the initial
moment of AIDS cultural criticism that concentrated on people living
with AIDS and the ways in which they are represented and "caught"
within the dominant public sphere to projects that figure the ontology
of HIV-negative men. The aim of such projects is to make HIV-negativity
a site of identity that can be inhabited despite the cultural morbidity
that characterizes this historical moment. Wliile such interventions can
be potentially valuable for activists who work on HIV prevention, the
bolstering of HIV-negativity as an identification that men should be
encouraged to "come out" into concomitantly puts a new set of
pressures on people living with the HIV virus to also be out. The
potential problem with cultural work and theory on and about HIV-
negative men is that it does not resist and, in some ways, may
inadvertently contibuie to, the stigmatization that surrounds AIDS and
HIV in lx>th mainstream North American culture and MDSphobk gay
male regional and subcuitural communities. In this essay I have been
considering what I call haunting and haunted cultural work that
remembers and longs for a moment outside of this current state of siege.
My critical move here, that of employing key words and thematics like
"ghosts," memory." "longing," and "Utopia," has been to decipher the
networks of commonality and the structures of feeling that link queers
across different identity markers, including positive and negative
anti-body status as well as bodies separated along generational lines.
Such a strategy is bom out of a partial skepticism towards projects
like Walt OdeLs's In Tbe Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HlV-Negative
in the Age of AIDS,~^ which bring the "psychological epidemic" that
HIV-negative men face to light. The residual effects of such a project
that focuses exclusively on negatives needs to be further interrogated.
Some questions that linger include; can we afford to redirect our critical
energies away from bodies that are infected by a physical virus towards
uninfected bodies that are caught within a psychological epidemic?
How would the already stigmatized lives of infected people be
impacted by this work that bolsters HIV-negative identity? Does work
on HIV-negativity produce a wedge between infected and uninfected
sectors of the gay community, further solidifying a binary between
negative and positive? In short, what might be the cost of work that
affirms HIV-negative identity for those who are struggling with and
attempting to manage illness? These questions cloud my reading of
Odets and other writers attempting to delineate HIV-negativity. I do not
want to foreclose the transformative and self-sustaining energies of such
work. Asking these questions is merely an attempt to bring the specters
that haunt such theories into the light, out of the shadow.
Instead of focusing on the different ways—psychological, others
physical, and often both—in which men suffer in the epidemic, in this
essay I have been concerned with the ways in which the politics around
queer memory, fueled by Utopian longing, can help us reimagine the
social. To this end 1 have suggested that viewing Just's photography in
EtUbaii Muiioi 371
light of Giomo's writing, and vice versa, affords the spectator a certain
understanding of the worldmaking properties of queemess. We see, for
instance, the imbrication of sex and Utopias across gay male genera-
tional rifts. We see the various circuits of narration that gay men employ.
The notion of a strategic and self-knowing modality of queer Utopian
memory, and, more importantly, the work that such a memory does,
becomes all the more possible. The Utopian longing in both artists'
work is neither a nostalgic wish nor a passing fascination, but, rather,
the impetus for a queerworld, for what Crimp has called a culture of
sexual possibility. The works I have surveyed in this article, taken side
by side, tell us a story about the primary linkage between queer desire
and queer politics. Taken further, this work allows the spectator to
understand her or his desire for politics alongside the politics of desire.
Tlie lens of these remembrances and the hazy mirages they produce
not only allow us to imagine Utopia, but, more importantly, whet our
appetite for it.
NOTES
Many of the ideas in this essay were first formulaied and "tried out" in a graduate
seminar, "Sex in Public," thai I taught in the Performance Studies program at New
York University in the fall of 1995. The experience of working with those students
on this topic enabled my thinking in many imponant ways. I have also benefited
from conversations with my colleagues May Joseph, Fred Moten, and Peggy Phelan
about different aspects of this project. Early drafts of this essay were read with
considerable care and intelligence by Wayne Hoffman, Ephen Glenn Colter, Antonio
Viego, Jr., and Ari Goid. Finally, I want to thank Tony Juai for his work, friendship,
and encouragement.
1. The talk was later published in October, a publication then under the editorial
influence of Crimp, in which queer theory in its modem incarnations began to
flourish.
2. Douglas Crimp, "Mouming and Militancy," Octofeer51 (Winter 1989), U.
3. Leo Bersani, "Is the Rectum a Grave?" in AIDS: Cultural Analysis. Cultural
Activism. Douglas Crimp, ed. (Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. 1988). 197-222.
4. Leo Bersani. //omcw (Cambridge. MA: Harvard tJniversiry Pres.s, 1995),
$. The "us" and "we" 1 use in this anicle are meant, in the first instance, to speak
to gay men in the pandemic. But beyond that, they are intended to address
people who have also been caught in the HIV/AIDS pandemic—people who
have been affected by the pandemic in ways that are lx)th direct and relational,
subjects who might be women or men, queer or stniight. The unifying thread
of this essay's "us" and "we" is a node of commonality within a moment and
space of chaos and immeasurable loss.
372 POIICING PUBIIC SEX
i. See the recent work of Lauren Berlant for a compelling reading of the political
struggle currently Ijeing staged in the public sphere between "live sex acts" and
"the dead citizenship of heterosexuallty." "Live Sex Acts (Parental Advisory:
Explicit MateriaD." Feminist Studies 21:2 (Summer 199'i). 379-404,
7. These stories include -Andy was asexual" or "Andy only liked to watch," For
more on the de-gaying of Warhol, see the introduction to my co-edited volume
Pop Out: Queer Warhol. Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flately. and Jos^ Esteban
Mufioz, eds. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996),
•. John Giomo, You Got to Burn to Shine: New and Selected Writings (New Yorkr
High Risk Books/Serpenfs Tail. 1994), 68-69.
9. Giorno, 71.
10. Em.st Bloch and Theodor W, Adorno. "Someihing's Missing: A Discussion
between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W, Adorno on tlie Contradictions of Utopian
Longing," in Ernst Bloch, 7J>e Utopian Function ojArt: Selected Esssays, Jack
Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg, trans. (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press. 1988), 1-17.
11. Bloch and Adorno, 12.
12. Bloch and Adorno, 12,
13. Giorno. 72-73.
M. Giorno. 73.
15. Bloch and Adorno, 12.
16. Bloch and Adorno. 13,
17. Btoch and Adorno, 17.
It. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1978), 133.
1». Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State oJ the Debt, the Work oJ Mourning,
and the New International, Peggy Kamuf, trans, (New York: Routiedge, 1994).
51.
20. Derrida, 63.
21. I wish to assert ihai Adomo's version of dialectics, and especially his emphasis
on the determinet! aspect of the negative, complicate deconstructive protocols.
Adorno s formulations show a great resistance to deconstructive challenges to
dialectical materialism.
22. Mandy Merck. "Figuring Out Warhol," in Pop Out: QueerWarbol. See also Patricia
WhiEe, "Female Spectator, Lesbian Speaer: The Haunting." in Inside/Out: Lesbian
Theories, Gay Vieories, Diana Fuss, ed- (New York: Routiedge, 1991), 142-72
and Terr>- Castle, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality anJ Modem
Culture Wev/ York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
23. Wall Odets, In tbe Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HlV-Negative in the Age of
v4/D5(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), See al.so Odets's essay in this
volume.
Eva Pendleton
DOMESTICATING
PARTNERSHIPS
Just as the issue of pornography
divided feminism during the 1980s, today's debates around public sex
have created a schism within queer/gay politics that threatens to
dismantle activists' fragile efforts to preserve a vital sexual culture in
the face of the AIDS pandemic. The feminist "sex wars" of tlie 1980s
were fought between two loosely defined groups: "radical" feminists,
who sought to eradicate highly visible, sexual representations of
women, and "pro-sex" feminists, who did not wholeheartedly celebrate
all pornography, but sought to protect explicit sexual materials from
state censorship.'
Feminist political battles over pornography are particularly instructive
today as the battle lines are being drawn over how best to approach, in
a political sense, public sex venues. During the 1980s, self-identified
"radical" feminists formed alliances with the most conservative elements
of state, local, and federal government to propel their anti-porn crusade.
Feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin created a
common interest with the radical right in the interests of "protecting"
women from the dangers of pornography. Recently, "radical" anti-
bathhouse activists have constaicted similar alliances with conservative
elected officials: notably, in New York City, gay journalists like Gabriel
Rotello and Michelangelo Signorile have cooperated with the Giuliani
Administration, which is currently spearheading a campaign to rid New
373
York of nearly all adult entertainment venues. This time, the root of all
evil is public sex.
In 1995, a loosely defined coalition calling itself GALHPA (Gay and
Lesbian HIV Prevention Activists) decided to take action against sex
clubs they considered "irresponsible" for failing to enforce health code
regulations. GALHPA drafted a list of demands that sex clubs must meet,
and threatened those that did not comply with public exposure as well
as swift police action. They also conducted a series of private meetings
with New York City officials to demand enforcement of the health code,
adding substantial force to their threats. It was only after GALHPA took
these actions on behalf of the "gay community" that their activities
became known to that community. These secretive tactics belie
GALHPA's self-designation as "prevention activists." On the contrary,
their campaign can best be described as "reactivism": reactionary
politics masquerading as community-based activism.
Gay and lesbian politics have grown increasingly conservative over
the last decade. While assimilationist gay men and lesbians have a long
political history of seeking acceptance in mainstream society, activists
of the 1970s introduced oppositional political practices, which are largely
defined by antagonism towards heteronormative culture. But in the
aftermath of the Reagan/Bush years, and with the AIDS crisis continuing
to take its toll on gay and lesbian communities, a politics of opposition
has been increasingly difficult to sustain. This has been especially true
within intellectual circles, as issues like "multiculturalism" and "affirm-
ative action" continue to fracture the already fragile alliances among
various oppressed groups. The intellectual and financial squeeze on
higher education has created an atmosphere of hostile competition
among minoritized peoples whose access to the inner circles of power
has never been secure, and is becoming less and less so.
The conservative political climate of the U.S. in the 1980s proved
fertile ground for assimilationists from a variety of oppressed groups—
homosexuals as well as women and people of color—to gain unprece-
dented access to governmental institutions and positions of power. As
the Feminist Majority Foundation applauds the growing numbers of
women holding elected office, it fails to condemn the decidedly
anti-feminist, reactionary politics of women like Governor Christine
Todd Whitman, whose draconian tax cuts have shredded New Jersey's
Eva Ptndlelon 375
health care and welfare safety nets. Similarly, the appointment of

Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court has provided further cause for
anxiety among left activists, as they see him contribute to the decimation
of gains made by the civil rights movement during the 1970s,
The success of assimilationist politics has nourished a new breed
of gay male conservatives in the 1990s, who struggle for inclusion within
the white, middle-class mainstream above all else,^ Gay conservatives
hold oppositional politics in contempt and scoff at the confrontational
tactics of groups like ACT UP and Queer Nation, Instead, they call for
gay men and lesbians to prove that they are "just like" heterosexuals,
by downplaying their sexuality and politely agitating for the right to
marry and serve in the military.
The world that gay conservatives imagine is a white, suburban,
domestic idyll, with gay and straight couples attending dinner parties
together, joining the PTA, and swapping recipes over the backyard
fence. Left politics of any sort, including feminism, have no place in
this universe. Gay conservatives often distance themselves from lesbi-
anism, tainted by its association with feminism, and construct a gay
community reminiscent of a gentlemen's social club. These boys are
anxious to recoup the white, middle-class privilege that has previously
been denied to openly gay men. Rather than challenge this hegemony,
they will do all they can to overcome the political handicap that
homosexuality has traditionally represented. The best way to do this,
they argue, is to assimilate into Middle America as much as possible.
Militant Queer Nationals usually have little in common with conser-
vative gay activists looking for a place at the table. People like Gabriel
Rotello and Michelangelo Signorile have built their journalistic careers
on their participation in radical queer oppositional politics, often
defined by outrageous, in-your-face tactics. Nearly every tactic they
have used, especially their use of the word "queer" as an oppositional
political strategy, is abhorrent to gay conservatives. As former members
of Queer Nation and editors of Outweek, Rotello and Signorile are not
by any stretch of the imagination gay assimilationists.
Yet on the issue of public sex, gay reactivists whose views nearly
always diverge from those of gay conservatives have incorporated some
ofthe most conservative, anti-queer rhetoric into their agenda. Although
gay conservatives have been conspicuously absent from the current
bathhouse debates, the language of "radical" writers like Rotello and

Signorile resonates with that of conservative writers like Bruce Bawer,
Marshall Kirk, and Hunter Madsen when they address the topic of public
sex. While the current controversy surrounding public sex venues is
often eerily reminiscent of the debates over bathhouse closure that took
place in the early 1980s, the continued rightward turn of gay and lesbian
politics provides a specific historical context for today's debates.
Out of Sight, Out of Danger?

At first glance, it would seem that the goal of preventing new HIV
infections would be shared by all queer, lesbian, and gay activists, and
would provide a means of bridging the assimilation/opposition divide.
Debates over whether or not to shut down gay sex clubs have, in fact,
centered around various ways to halt the spread of HIV. But the
opposing sides of the bathhouse debate are not neatly broken down
into assimilationists versus oppositional radicals.' Gay conservatives,
the most extreme assimilationists, have not been actively crusading
against public sex establishments; although gay conservatives acknow-
ledge the existence of "subcultural" activities like public sex, they keep
themselves at arm's length from them, subsuming an anti-public sex
agenda under the general rubric of assimilationism. Furthermore,
because ending the AIDS crisis is nowhere near the center of gay
conservatives' political agenda, they cannot construct the kind of urgent
mandate that AIDS reactivists put forth.
Paradoxical as it may seem, some Queer Nationalists who would
usually hold conservatives in contempt have adopted many of their
central moral tenets. In a recent interview on National Public Radio,
Rotello set up a false dichotomy between "the specter of governmental
involvement in gay sexuality" on the one hand and "the specter of
a... permanent epidemic" on the other. The lesser of two evils, accord-
ing to any "rational person," is governmental regulation. According to
this logic, anyone who wishes to defend the bathhouses is not only
irrational, but is actually colluding in the "cataclysmic holocaust" that
AIDS represents. Rotello further argued that the only viable option for
ending the AIDS crisis is for gay men to enter a "period of relative sexual
conservatism." On a societal level, Rotello listed "validating gay part-
nerships" and "legalizing gay marriage" among the primary goals of gay
liberation.'* A closer look at the tactics and rhetorical strategies of those
Eva Pendlaton 377
so-called "radical" activists who wish to close the baths reveals a

perniciously conservative underlying agenda: to domesticate and con-
tain gay male sexuality.
The latest outcry over gay sex clubs has, once again, manifested
itself as a call against the continuing spread of HIV among men having
sex with men. As other essays in this volume document, this tactic is
consistent with historical patterns of anti-gay repression; various gov-
ernmental and religious reformers have been closing bathhouses in the
name of public health since the early twentieth century. Such initiatives
have never succeeded in reducing the transmission of disease, because
they were never really meant to. Instead, the systematic repression of
queers who congregate in public has historically operated not to protect
them from real health threats, but to punish them for their very deviance
from heterosexual, monogamous norms and render the public sphere
"safe" from non-normative sexuality,'
The drive to close bathhouses is based on a view of public sex
as immoral, unhealthy, or psychologically immature, and therefore
unworthy of protection. Anti-bathhouse reactivists exploit mainstream
discomfort with public sex in order to advance their political agenda,
as anti-porn feminists used hard-core pornography to galvanize sup-
port for censorship during the 1980s, Public sex practitioners and
consumers of pornography thus become marginalized as perverts who
do not deserve political representation. During the sex wars, anti-porn
feminists reserved their greatest venom for feminists who defended
pornography, and characterized them as traitors to feminism for their
"uncritical" adoption of patriarchal sexual hierarchies,^ Today, anyone
who values public sex, both as a venue for HIV education and as a
valuable component of gay culture, must answer not only to the charge
of "libertarianism," negatively constructed as a politics of narcissistic
selfishness, but also to that of murder. According to anti-bathhouse
reactivists, preserving sexual culture is inherently selfish and has no
social, cultural, or political value; it is also deadly. Because of their
aversion toward public sex, reactivists accuse bathhouse defenders of
promoting the spread of HIV, willfully ignoring the public health
benefits of doing outreach to large numbers of men in a safe environ-
ment. Instead, reactivists would send them home to fend for themselves
(perhaps with a free gift of condoms and lube). As long as gay men
remain out of sight, their sexual behavior is no longer the concern of

the state, nor of the "prevention activists" who cannot bear the sight of
two men fucking.'
GALHPA recently produced a flyer with guidelines that sex clubs
should follow in order to "end the transmission of HIV in commercial
sex establishments." The flyer reveals, upon close examination, an
underlying moral agenda against public sex.^ Taking the New York City
health code regulations at face value, GALHPA's flyer argues that public
sex establishments-must obey rules prohibiting oral, anal, or vaginal sex,
regardless of condom use. Prohibiting these activities thus makes the
spaces "safe"; in other words, no sex is safe sex. The flyer further argues
that the best way to ensure compliance with the law is through
monitoring. There should be no place in a sex club that is out of monitoring
range; doors must be removed from cubicles so tliat patrons will not be
permitted any privacy in which to commit illegal sex acts. According to
Rotello, who was among the flyer's sponsors, "The presence of locked
cubicles in sex clubs is inherently unsafe."' He offers no explanation for
this assertion, suggesting that gay men simply cannot be trusted with
their dangerous sex drives. Removing cubicle doors so that men can
be patrolled thus makes these places "safe," that is, safe from sex.
The final guideline proposed by GALHPA most clearly reveals the
group's agenda against public, rather than unsafe, sex. It calls for
condoms and lubricants to be made available free to patrons as they
exit. This ensures the domestication of gay sex, rendering it acceptable
only if it takes place at home. Sex clubs should not, in the world view
of GALHPA, be places to have sex. Commercial sex establishments thus
become safe not from the spread of HIV, but from the visual spectacle
of men fucking and sucking. Technically speaking, GALHPA's guide-
lines would prevent the transmission of HIV in commercial sex estab-
lishments by prohibiting any sexual activity, but prohibiting sex is not
now, nor has it ever been, a realistic means of curbing the epidemic.
Tlie prohibition in this case is designed solely for the purpose of
channeling sexual activity from public to private spaces. But if the
presence of locked cubicle doors is inherently unsafe, then what about
bedroom doors? Hotel rooms? The GALHPA flyer is strangely uncon-
cerned with the difficult task of encouraging safer sex in every space,
relationship, and circumstance, focusing upon the myopic vision of
Eva Pendleton 379
ending HIV transmission within one specific venue. The anti-public sex
agenda exemplified by GALHPA is not really about preventing the
spread of HIV; it is about removing all evidence of gay sexuality from
public view.
Sex, Death, and Blame

The pathologizing of public sex in the work of Signorile, Rotello, and
well-known author Larry Kramer resonates, often deliberately, with
Randy Shilts's epic. And The Band Played On. From the very beginning
of his book, Shilts paints a picture of a frivolous gay sexual culture that
would ultimately explode into a deadly chain of contagion, Shilts relies
heavily upon such novelistic techniques as foreshadowing in order to
constaict a story of the roots of the AIDS epidemic against a backdrop
of hedonism,'" As a result, his early treatment of gay public sex is laden
with the implicit "knowledge" that it will eventually prove to be the
means by which the gay population will be decimated. The entire book
is constructed around Shilts's deployment of a predetermined hindsight,
which undermines the authenticity of his story. He traces the origin of
AIDS through the skewed lens of promiscuity-as-root-cause, leaving
out critical information about the ways in which gay communities
focused upon modifying behaviors rather than outlawing bathhouses,
developing innovative theories and practices of safer sex.
In the course of telling his version of the story, Shilts exploits
mainstream discomfort with "deviant" gay male sexual practices. In a
vivid description of sex in a bathhouse, as well as in narratives involving
public health officials, anal fisting plays a prominent role. Despite the
evidence that fisting is actually a safer sex practice in terms of HIV
prevention, Shilts brandishes it as evidence of the perversion running
rampant in gay male sexual culture. Such inflammatory tactics give
credence to his depiction of bathhouses as cesspools of contagion
unworthy of protection or even respect. The very dirty business of
having sex in public, of men putting their hands into each others'
rectums, is so abhorrent that any excuse must be used to stop it,
Shilts's cmsade against bathhouses takes place under the sign of
HIV prevention, yet he mobilizes the fear of deviant sexual practices
that are perfectly safe in terms of HIV transmission in order to advance
his cause, A writer truly concerned with the spread of HIV might exclaim
with joy at witnessing a Crisco-covered hand up another man's asshole:
380 POUCING PU8LIC SEX
They are practicing safer sex! In public! Other men can learn how to
have safer sex by watching them! But to do so would be to celebrate
a deviant sexual culture at the expense of gaining "legitimacy" for gay
men and lesbians.
Today's anti-bathhouse "radical" gay writers often rely upon pop
psychology and melodrama to paint promiscuous gay men as self-
hating victims of internalized homophobia. To these writers, gay sexual
culture is both frivolous and dangerous; instead of concentrating their
energy toward radical political action in groups like ACT UP and Queer
Nation, gay men are wasting it by running around partying and fucking.
The priority that gay men place on having a good time is not merely a
diversion from productive activism, however; gay promiscuity is, in
these texts, as it is for Shilts, the central cause of AIDS. Signorile has
used strategies to demonize public sex that replicate those used by
Kramer during the 1980s. As participants in oppositional political
activism, Kramer and Signorile have consistently rallied against public
sex as a murderous distraction from the political needs of the gay
community.
In Reports From the Holocaust, Kramer approaches AIDS activism
with grim seriousness. Before he co-founded ACT UP, Kramer's repu-
tation as a writer centered around his disdain for gay party culture.
Through his activism around ending the AIDS crisis and his writings
stemming from his work in ACT UP and Gay Men's Health Crisis, Kramer
came to vilify promiscuity;
The concept of making a virtue out of sexual freedom, i.e., promiscuity,
came about because gay men had nothing else to call their own but
their sexuality."
According to Kramer, promiscuity is nothing more than a cheap
substitute for the rights accorded to heterosexuals, such as marriage,
parenthood, and social benefits. It is not surprising, then, that he would
blame the AIDS crisis on the continued denial of social sanctions for
gay relationships;
AIDS is here because the straight world would not grant equal rights
to gay people. If we had been allowed to get married, to have legal
rights, there would be no AIDS cannonballing through America.'^
Eva Pendleton 381
Kramer spends a great deal of his book trying to galvanize gay men
into action. He accuses the gay community of having a death wish, of
colluding in its own genocide because its individual members refuse
to take responsibility for their own lives. For Kramer as well as for many
other writers, the way to take responsibility is to stop having sex.
Specifically, to stop having promiscuous, public sex.
Signorile's Queer in America similarly demonizes public sex. In his
book-length justification of outing, Signorile tells a story of personal,
sexual, and political maturation. According to Signorile's pop psychology
theory of healthy gay sexuality, one of the symptoms of internalized
homophobia is participation in public sex. As a teenager, Signorile spent
a great deal of time cruising other young Italian-American men under-
heath a boardwalk in Brooklyn. It was, he says, a place where boys
went to deal with a "madness that had taken over their bodies."'^ Public
sex was a means for coping with their out-of-control male libidos. None
of them, including Signorile, discussed homosexuality or identified as gay;
anonymous public sex was just a phase they were all going through.
After going through therapy, Signorile determined that homosexu-
ality is linked to developing emotional as well as sexual bonds with
men. The public sex of his youth was an early phase in his developing
queer identity, and it was definitely something to be outgrown. So, too,
was club culture. Once he joined ACT UP, Signorile decided that the
party-hopping he had once enjoyed no longer held any charm. Like
Kramer, he felt that gay culture was full of silly people who were
neglecting their political responsibilities in the face of the devastation
caused by AIDS.
In his book, Signorile constructs a progress narrative of a develop-
ing queer consciousness. Anonymous sex without gay identification
is among the least mature, and least acceptable, kinds of activity.
Celebrating gay identity within club culture is a step up, but the true
pinnacle of queer achievement is to live for asexual political activism.
Once Signorile became an activist, there was no longer time for such
frivolous activities as public sex. In fact, once he answered the
"wake-up call" of ACT UP, he began to see club culture as detrimental
to political progress; people were too busy partying to perform the
serious work of AIDS activism.
The true goal in these two texts seems to lie somewhere beyond
what is commonly thought of as AIDS activism; the very best activists
practice more broad-reaching anti-sex reactivism. Gay men should not
only stop running around having promiscuous sex, but should do all
that they can to make sure that no one else has it, either. To do this,
Kramer and Signorile, as well as Rotello, rely upon previously con-
structed and widely accepted narratives that falsely attribute the birth
of the AIDS crisis to bathhouse culture.
Nowhere is Shilts's anti-sex legacy more evident than in the
journalistic ravings of Gabriel Rotello, In one article he describes the
West Side Club (temporarily closed because of reactivist pressure on
the Health Department) as "a bathhouse like the legendary bathhouses
of old, those bustling hives of contagion that helped spread deatli
throughout the gay male world,"'"* Like Kramer and Signorile, Rotello
invokes a sense of "progress" in the AIDS crisis that is threatened by a
"resurgence" of public sex, Rotello's narrative depends upon an implicit
"knowledge" that public sex caused AIDS, and manipulates the reader
into thinking that today's sex clubs are exactly the same as those that
were shut down in the 1980s, neglecting to mention the widespread
education efforts that have been implemented over the past decade.
He invokes the fear that history is repeating itself, and that new sex
clubs will cause more deaths from AIDS:
Death waits in New York City's unsafe sex clubs for many a gay soul
tonight. Beneath the averted eyes of the local AIDS establishment, the
band in New York plays on. And the music is getting louder,''
Taking their cue from Shilts, writers like Kramer, Signorile, and
Rotello ignore or deliberately misinterpret the proliferation of varied
sexual activities within bathhouses, many of which are quite safe
indeed, in order to cast public sex as inherently unhealthy. In addition,
they neglect to mention the many non-sexual aspects of bathhouses—
such as dancing, swimming, playing pool, socializing, and, most
importantly, community-building—in favor of exploiting mainstream
American fears about rampant homosexual sex. In the name of stopping
the spread of AIDS, then, it becomes imperative, in their eyes, to
domesticate and contain gay male sexuality.
Eva Pendleton 383
Gay Conservatism
In the writings of gay reactivists, the blame for the spread of AIDS lies
almost solely with gay promiscuity. The only hope for ending the AIDS
crisis lies in closing sex clubs and winning sanctions for gay marriage.
For all of these writers, the only mature expression of sexuality is
monogamy. This leaves the demonized practices of promiscuity and
public sex wholly undeserving of protection. The anti-sex ideology of
these otherwise self-identified "radicals" aligns them with the most
conservative of gay writers, many of whom abhor the confrontational
tactics of groups like ACT UP and Queer Nation,
The AIDS crisis has provided the guardians of heteronormative
morality with a powerful avenue for promoting their anti-gay agenda.
And, ironically, the epidemic has enabled a particularly repugnant
brand of gay conservatism to flourish. Those who wish to assimilate
into Middle America, with all its attendant privileges, can only do so at
the expense of those they identify as truly "deviant," While conservative
gay writers posit a "natural" gay identity that differs from heterosexuality
only along the lines of object-choice, they point to promiscuous,
sadomasochistic, gender-nonconforming queers as not only self-hating
and dysfunctional, but also as out of control and dangerous, thus
making themselves look virtually normal by comparison.
After the Ball by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen and A Place at
the Tahle by Bruce Bawer exemplify recent gay conservative thought.
Both texts maintain the premise that gay pride, gay liberation, and
especially gay promiscuity are as foreign to the majority of gays and
lesbians as they are to heterosexuals. According to this kind of thinking,
most homosexuals want nothing more than to settle down in the
suburbs, get married, and have kids; the "gay subculture" of the disco-
and drug-infested urban ghetto holds no appeal for them.
For Bawer, the annual gay pride march in New York City is a source
of bewilderment, anxiety, and embarrassment; such a public display of
gay sexuality represents a public relations nightmare, Bawer believes
that gay pride should consist of thousands of gays and lesbians who
look and act just like "respectable" straight people. They can thus win
over homophobes by showing them their best (i.e,, least sexual) face.
Gay sex should exist only where straight sex (presumably) resides: out
of public view. According to Bawer's logic, to be accepted by straight

society as both gay and human, gay people must be publicly asexual,
Bawer does not limit his attacks to the mere public display of
sexuality. He has a much larger target: gay sexual culture as a whole.
In language that resonates with Kramer's, Bawer argues that gay
promiscuity developed because of activists' failure to concentrate on
-securing domestic partnership rights. Rather than work to rectify the
legalâfld social stigmas against gay partnerships, Bawer argues, "the most
visible gay activists of the 1970s and early 1980s made almost a sacred
cause out of the right of gay men to anonymous and promiscuous sex,"'*
Following this logic, Bawer argues that urban gays who have taken
advantage of sexual freedom are to blame for the fact that gay men
were the first group to be hit by the AIDS epidemic. Like Kramer, Bawer
writes that gay men cling to promiscuity because they cannot marry,
placing the blame for the AIDS epidemic on the homophobic laws and
social stigma that discourage gay monogamy, Rotello, like Bawer, also
describes activists clinging to promiscuity as "the birthright of gay life,"''
Bawer does not, of course, cite Kramer as a source for his theory about
the origin of the AIDS epidemic; it is unlikely that he would read the
writings of a founder of ACT UP, or admit to it in public. But Bawer's
argumentation is strikingly similar to both Rotello's and Kramer's, even
though he painstakingly distances himself from oppositional gay and
queer activism. Although they often construct their political goals in
opposition to each other, conservatives and reactivists who call them-
selves "radicals" all agree that public sex must be eliminated if
homosexuals/queers are ever to achieve social and political equality,
Bawer's explanation of the "cause" of gay promiscuity relies upon a
myopic and exclusionary definition of "gay"; after all, lesbians are also
deprived of the right to many, yet lesbian culture is hardly rife with
promiscuity and public sex. In fact, reading Bawer's book, one gets the
sense that lesbians do not even exist. Like other gay conservatives,
Bawer cannot separate lesbianism from feminism, so he chooses to
ignore it. In his introduction Bawer attempts to excuse himself for his
exclusive focus upon gay men by invoking both the "innate differences
between male and female sexuality" and the entanglement of lesbianism
with feminism, which is "another ball game entirely,"'* By aligning himself
with a wider anti-feminist neoconservative agenda, Bawer constructs a
Eva Pcndltton 385
vision of suburban middle-class domesticity not altogether unlike that

of strident anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly,
But Bawer's right-wing alliances are more than just implicitly
anti-feminist. Ironically, as he tries to win friends within the Christian
Coalition, he argues that the most effective way to preserve the
heterosexual nuclear family is to grant homosexuals legal rights. Since
homosexuality is, in his view, "natural" and inevitable, closeted gay
men often marry and have children in order to cover up their true
desires. Thus it is actually the stigmatization and secrecy of homosexu-
ality that undermines "the family"; if gay couples were given equal
rights, the sham marriages that eventually destroy families would no
longer be necessary. The socially responsible thing for conservatives to
do is eliminate the need for homosexuals to use heterosexvial marriage
as a means of avoiding social stigma—by advocating gay marriage.
According to Bawer, groups like the Christian Coalition should join with
gay conservatives to advance a truly conservative, pro-family agenda
for gays and straights alike.
Such a wholehearted endorsement of extreme right-wing politics is
astounding in an era where anti-gay ballot initiatives and draconian
cuts in AIDS funding abound. Where does Bawer expect to find
religious zealots who support his supposedly pro-family, gay rights
political program? Were it not so patently homophobic, his analysis
could be amusing in its naivete. But looking to cuddle up to people
who would rather see you dead than married is no laughing matter.
Kirk and Madsen also wish to counter the stigmatization of homo-
sexuality, by way of a gay community makeover. Their book focuses
on the many ways in which gay culture and politics are offensive to
heterosexuals. Kirk and Madsen have designed media campaigns to
create sympathy for, and identification with, gays and lesbians in order
to correct the negative image that flamboyant, radical homosexuals give
to the movement. They argue that it is politically important for all
homosexuals to behave in ways that are socially acceptable. Toward
this end. Kirk and Madsen have devised "A Self-Policing Social Code,"''
Some of their "Rules for Relations With Straights" are as follows:
• I won't have sex in public places,
• I won't talk gay sex and gay raunch in public.
• If I'm a pederast or sadomasochist, I'll keep it under wraps, and out

of gay pride marches.
Kirk and Madsen argue that public sex is a matter of public relations;
as a malignant form of gay misbehavior, it must be eschewed in favor
of more respectable gay rights agendas, such as domestic partnership.
For their political agenda is not limited to image-making; they, too, wish
to redirect the priorities of gay activists:
We're not fighting for the right to suck and fuck, in full public view,
with as many one-minute stands as we can possibly line up end to end,
until our mouths and anuses are sore and we're all dying of syphilis
and AIDS, We're fighting for the right to love and marry, not merely to
blast away with our "hot love-guns," We're not fighting to eliminate
community ethics, to live like selfish brats, narcissistically and meanly.
lEmphasis in originaLp"
In this illogical system, promiscuous public sex is in direct conflict

with something vaguely referred to as "community ethics," similar to
what Bawer calls "moral standards," The reactivists who are trying to
close bathhouses are also falsely constructing a "community ethics" in
direct opposition to promiscuity; they argue that it is "ethical" to stop
having promiscuous sex. This construction is possible only if one
accepts the presumption that promiscuity in and of itself causes the
spread of AIDS,
For Kirk and Madsen, the roots of the AIDS crisis are irrelevant.
They treat AIDS as they treat homosexuality in general: as a PR issue.
In After the Ball they present a plan for a media campaign to sell gay
rights to straight America, In this context, AIDS represents an "insur-
mountable opportunity" for homosexuals "to establish ourselves as a
victimized minority legitimately deserving of America's protection and
care."^' As a public relations matter, AIDS could result in either of two
scenarios: if the crisis ends, through the discovery of a vaccine or cure,
it could create sympathy for those who have suffered. If it continues,
however, and more heterosexuals become infected, homosexuals must
find ways to avoid being scapegoated.
This construction of AIDS as simply a PR issue represents a refusal
to deal with the gruesome realities of the epidemic. Kirk and Madsen
present the two possible outcomes of the crisis as if they would occur
Evg PendUton 387
independent of social forces, history, and contemporary politics. They

also imply that there is an equal chance that either outcome will prevail,
contrary to all commonly known facts about the status of AIDS research
and the unlikelihood of an end to the crisis in the foreseeable future.
They neglect the most likely outcome, which is that AIDS will continue
to decimate communities of gay men and people of color due to
continued governmental neglect, insufficient funding, and over-vigilant
policing of sexual activity and drug use. In their projections, the AIDS
epidemic will either come to an instantaneous end, as if by magic, or
will continue until it permanently alters society. This argument implicitly
posits activists as completely helpless in changing the course of the
epidemic; in fact, our passivity is treated as a given. Instead of
concerning themselves with finding an end to the AIDS crisis. Kirk and
Madsen ask: "How, given the horrid hand that AIDS has dealt us, can
we best play it?"^^
Gay conservatives wish to win societal approval for homosexuality
in the form of marriage; to achieve this goal gay people must eschew
public sex and other forms of "misbehavior." Anti-bathhouse reactivists
wish to achieve something called "gay liberation"; to do this, gay men
need to stop having promiscuous sex and work to achieve the right to
marry. While the goals of gay conservatives fall under the rubric of
assimilation and mainstream acceptance, the goals of "radical" reac-
tivists do not on the surface have such an assimilationist bent. But their
solution to what ails gay men looks suspiciously similar to that of
conservatives: monogamy. The point of this analysis is not to argue that
the "radical" reactivists are actually conservatives in disguise, but that
their political strategies enable extraordinarily conservative, even reac-
tionary, alliances.
Containing the (Gay) Male Libido

Today's ill-begotten alliance between radical queers and conserva-
tives has been forged in the name of protecting gay men from their
own rampant sexuality—and from each other. Anti-porn and anti-
prostitution radical feminists have made similar alliances with right-
wing politicians in the name of "protecting" women from the dangers
of rampant male sexuality.
Anti-porn feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon
have thoroughly exploited the tactic of portraying men as slaves to their
388 POLICING PUBLIC SCX
sex drives. The central tenet underscoring their legal crusades against
pornography is that men are powerless to resist the seductiveness of
sexually explicit imagery; they are conditioned to respond to porn, often
against their conscious will.
In Toward a Feminisi Theory of the State, MacKinnon obsesses upon
what she considers pom's primary objective: to give men an erection.
Male sexual arousal is always, in her view, a conditioned response to
the visual stimulus of sexual imagery. Even for women, she argues, a
positive sexual response to pornography (measured in vaginal secre-
tions) may be no more indicative of arousal than the salivation of
Pavlov's dogs indicates actual hunger. All humans, but especially men,
are victims of societal brainwashing in the form of pornography. After
extensive analysis, MacKinnon concludes that male sexuality, especially
male sexual aggression, is inseparable from its visual representations:
The experience of the (overwhelmingly) male audiences who consume
pornography is therefore not fantasy or simulation or catharsis but
sexual reality: the level of reality on which sex itself largely operates,^'
MacKinnon mobilizes this equation of pornography with something
called "sexual reality" throughout her book as evidence that male
sexuality is out of control,
MacKinnon's analysis depends upon, and reinforces, that of Andrea
Dworkin, who writes:
Violence is male; the male is the penis; violence is the penis or the
sperm ejaculated from it. What the penis can do it must do forcibly for
a man to be a ^*
Because Dworkin believes that penile penetration is essentially violent

in nature, she constructs pornography as a kind of instmction manual
for men, teaching them how to perform violence against women in the
form of sexual objectification. To Dworkin, men are at the mercy of
their uncontrollable, penis-oriented sex drives; their sexuality (as it is
constructed by pornography) is inherently dangerous. Thus it is up to
feminists to try and contain male sexuality by agitating for anti-
pornography legislation.
For anti-porn feminists, "sexually explicit" equals "misogynist" and
leads to violence. For anti-bathhouse reactivists, "public" equals "unsafe"
and leads to HIV transmission.^^ Men, taken over by their irrepressible
Eva Pendleton 389
sexual urges, lose all agency and self-control under these equations.
Both arguments offer only cries of helplessness in the face of inevitably
threatening male lust. The helplessness of gay men, however, is
distinguished by its self-referentiality: We can't help ourselves. Please
keep us from hurting ourselves with our out-of-control libidos. We need
the strong arm of the law to keep our sexuality in check.
Nowhere is this rhetoric more striking than in a New York Times
op-ed piece by Michelangelo Signorile. In "HIV-Positive, And Careless,"
Signorile speculates about the possible motivations of both positive and
negative men who have unsafe sex. He confesses to a personal
reluctance to be tested because he does not trust himself to keep having
safer sex. He discusses his experiences after testing negative several
years before, when his feelings of confidence "enabled [him] to have
unsafe sex, fueling [his] desire to be carefree and a risk-taker." He
likewise fears the effect that a positive test might have on his psyche:
I'm frightened that finding out I was positive might also play into my
carefree nature, that I might in my darkest moments care little about
the concerns of an HIV-negative man. [Emphasis in original.]^^
The language of out-of-control gay male sexuality runs rampant
through a series of sensationalistic articles that appeared in the Daily
News, one of New York City's conservative tabloid newspapers. For
example, in an article with the Nancy Reagan-inspired title, "Time for
Gays to Say No to Unsafe Sex," Duncan Osborne, a "radical" gay
journalist and colleague of Rotello and Signorile, contemplates the
"anecdotal evidence" that gay men are having unsafe sex in clubs:
These are men who know how HIV is transmitted. They know how to
prevent HIV infection. But, impaired by alcohol or dmgs, driven by
denial or desire for sexually charged ask no questions anonymity, they
are returning to dangerous practices. If this was insane in 1980 [referring
to Shilts's assessment], I do not know the word for it in ^^
Promiscuous gay male sexuality is running rampant again, according
to Osborne, and carries with it all kinds of dangers. Most importantly,
in his view, the existence of sex clubs facilitates the self-destnictive
impulses of unchecked male lust.
Osborne took it upon himself to bring a witness to the "unspeak-
able" sex acts that were occurring in a variety of clubs. Dolled up in a
fake mustache, journalist Amy Pagnozzi wrote several articles for the
Daily News detailing her exploits as an undercover fag. In her brief tour
she did not see the steamy orgies of her wildest fantasies; in fact, she
admits that Zone DK "never got hotter than a high school hooky party."
Because of this absence of sex, she concludes that the strong-arm tactics
of GALHPA were working. However, she still manages to find an
exploitable target: the cubicle doors at the Northern Men's Sauna,
Pagnozzi argues that laws that require monitoring in sex clubs must be
amended to include removing cubicle doors so that unmonitorable (and
thus potentially unsafe) sex cannot occur. In response to anti-closure
activists' insistence on using the baths for safer sex education (which
could be the real reason for the absence of unsafe sex), Pagnozzi replies:
But let's get real here. What man sits around reading safe-sex pamphlets
when he's surrounded by 3Q0 naked people who want to have sex
with him and he's wearing a towel?^
Pagnozzi dismisses prevention education efforts with a nod to the "boys
will be boys" school of sex ed: no matter what you tell them, they're
going to do it anyway. The best bet is to make it as difficult as possible,
Jonathan Capehart, another intrepid undercover reporter, chronicles
his visit to the West Side Club, which he characterizes as "a trip back
in time—to a deadly era long thought gone," He describes his walk
through the corridors as "an endurance test" which forces him to fend
off the hordes of men who want his towel-clad body:
To step anywhere is an invitation. My older paramour [a man who had
cruised him earlier] finds me in a narrow hall. He touches my chest
with his hand, and pushing the limit of my nerve, I touch back. He
invites me to his room—the same room to which he'd already brought
a dark-haired young man after getting intimate with him in the hall. I
decline. How many partners had he had before we arrived? How many
more did he have after we left? Were his encounters safe? Did ^
Just what did Capehart expect to find in a bathhouse? A bunch of

men sitting around playing bridge? His writing sensationalizes the
undifferentiated and unspecified "promiscuity" of this anonymous
suitor. If the author himself cared about whether this man was having
unsafe sex, he might have asked him a few questions, like any good
investigative reporter. Or, he might have joined him in the cubicle for
a latex-and-lube-filled extravaganza, since condoms and lube are given
Eva Pendleton 391
to each patron upon entering the baths. Instead, he chose to portray

his rejected sex partner as a victim of his own sex drive, as someone
who presumably does not care about safer sex.
It is striking that none of these reporters witnessed actual sex acts;
they are simply outraged by the fact that groups of men congregate
with the intent to have sex. Most of the "anecdotal evidence" that
Osborne refers to involves unprotected oral sex, which numerous
recent studies have determined to be an unlikely route of HIV trans-
mission,^ The social threat represented by unabashed promiscuity
emerges over and over again as a subtext in these articles. The final
message: keep public venues sex-free, for fear of unleashing the
monstrous sexuality of gay men.
Conclusion
Defending public sex is not simply a form of self-serving libertarian
politics, as anti-bathhouse reactivists claim. Attacks on public sex, under
the sign of HIV prevention, enable frightening and potentially deadly
alliances between gay reactivists, who purport to represent "the gay
community," and the most conservative of politicians and ideologues.
This kind of cooperation leads some so-called radical queers to
demonize non-monogamy, which makes them look just like the
assimilationist gay conservatives who seek to domesticate gay sexuality.
But alliances with the right wing are fundamentally flawed in another
way: anti-gay conservatives will inevitably use their ties with gay
"radicals," their temporary and strategic "friends," to undermine all other
goals of oppositional movements," In New York City, a government
that threatens to raid sex clubs in the name of protecting the gay
community is also poised to eradicate nearly every adult entertainment
venue within the borough of Manhattan—recently passed zoning
legislation could be used to shut down nearly every gay business on
Christopher Street, including gay bookstores. As this zoning initiative
demonstrates, the City of New York is not in the habit of looking out
for gay people's best interests.
Queer, gay, and lesbian activists who wish to maintain oppositional
political practices in the face of rampant gay conservatism must pay
attention to the lessons learned by feminists during the sex wars:
namely, to suspect emerging alliances with the right wing and to
mobilize in defense of sexual self-determination. Contrary to the beliefs
of conservatives and anti-sex reactivists, the AIDS crisis will not be

brought to an end by domesticating partnerships. The continued
existence of varied sexual practices and subcultures is essential to
maintaining and promoting alternatives to heteronormativity. Instead
of attempting to eradicate public sex, AIDS activists must learn from
the past by developing livable, sexy prevention strategies for the future.
NOTES
1. Some of the key pro-sex feminist texts that emerged from this time include:
Carole S. Vance, ed., Pteasure and Danger: Exploring Femate Sexuality (3osx.on\
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984); Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon
Thompson, eds.. Powers ofDesire: The Politics ofSexuality (Ue-w York: Monthly
Review Press, 1983); FACT Book Committee, Caught Looking: Feminism,
Pomograpby and Censorship (New York: Caught Looking, Inc., 1986).
2. Recent texts written by self-identified gay conservatives include: Andrew
Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (New York:
Alfred A. JCnopf, 1995); Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobi-
ography (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992); Bruce Bawer, A Place at the
Table: The Gay Individual In American Society (New York: Touchstone Books,
1993); Bnice Bawer, ed., Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy (.Ne^
York: Free Press, 1996); and Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Bali-
How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 9O's (New York:
Plume, 1990).
3. By "assimilationists" I mean people, both liberal and conservative, whose agenda
is focused upon gaining inclusion into mainstream institutions, such as the
military. For these activists, social institutions like marriage and the military are
not in and of themselves subject to criticism or attack: their fault lies solely in
their exclusion of lesbians and gay men. For "oppositional radicals," on the other
hand, the critique does not end at the issue of exclusion; they often target the
institutions themselves as inherently unequal and fundamentally flawed. These
two general categories of "assimilation" and "opposition" contain complex and
widely divergent political practices, but for now I will focus upon the distinction
between these two approaches in order to provide a context for today's debates
around public sex. For a more thorough analysis of the term "queer" in its
various permutations, see Lisa Duggan, "Making It Perfectly Queer," Socialist
Review 22:1 0anuary-March 1992), 11-31.
4. Gabriel Rotello, interviewed on "All Things Considered," National Public Radio,
June 1, 1995.
5. See in particular essays by Berube, Alexander, and Gilfoyle in this volume.
6. Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of tbe State (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1989), 135-36.
7. The willful ignorance of anti-bathhouse reactivists about the role of the state in
gay sexuality is astounding in the context of Bowers v. Hardwick, which found
Eva Pendleten 393
that, even within their own homes, homosexuals have no constitutional right
to engage in sex acts prohibited by state and local law.
8. Among the endorsers of this document are Rotello, Signorile, and Osborne.
9. Gabriel Rotello, "For Sale: State-of-the-Art Unsafe Sex," New York Newsday,
January 26, 1995.
10. For an in-depth analysis of Shilts's narrative techniques, see Douglas Crimp,
"How To Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic," in Crimp, ed., AIDS: Cultural
Analysis, Cultural Activism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
11. Larry Kramer, Reportsfrom the Holocaust: Tbe Making of an AIDS Activist (New
York: Penguin Books, 1990), 274.
12. Ibid., 178.
13. Michelangelo Signorile, Queer In America: Sex, tbe Media, and the Closets of
Power (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), 28.
14. Rotello, "For Sale: State-of-the-Art Unsafe Sex."
15. Gabriel Rotello, "Sex Clubs Are the Killing Fields of AIDS," New York Newsday,
April 28, 1994.
16. Bawer, 31.
17. Rotello, "Sex Clubs are the Killing Fields of AIDS."
18. Bawer, 14.
19. Kirk and Madsen, 360.
20. Ibid., 380.
21. Ibid., xxvii.
22. Ibid., xvii.
23. MacKinnon, 198.
24. Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Putnam,
1981), 55.
25. Thanks to Lisa Duggan and Michael Warner, political cartographers, for mapping
these equations.
26. Michelangelo Signorile, "HlV-Positive, and Careless," New York Times, February
26, 1995.
27. Duncan Osborne, "Time for Gays to Say No to Unsafe Sex," Daily News,
November 20, 1994.
28. Amy Pagnozzi, "Gay Group Measures Prevention in Lives," Daily News, February
15, 1995.
29. Jonathan Capehart, "Getting Undressed, Going Undercover," Daily News,
February 6, 1995.
30. Because of these studies, GMHC has revised its policy against unprotected oral
sex. See Dave Nimmons and Ilan Meyer, "Oral Sex & HIV Risk Among Gay
Men," Research Summary (New York: Gay Men's Health Crisis, 1996). See also
California HIV Testing and Counseling Quarterly Report, Department of Health
Services, July-September 1994 for data that confirm that oral sex presents a
relatively low risk for transmitting HFV.
31. For a detailed analysis of the ways that these alliances operated to undermine
feminism in the anti-porn movement, see Lisa Duggan, "Censorship in the Name
of Feminism," in Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars (New York:
Routledge, 1995).
Andrew Ross
EPILOGUE:
CALCULATING
THE RISK
At the very moment when freedom

from risk was becoming a dominant social promise, AIDS education
had the task of pioneering entirely new protocols of safety. While
knowledge about HIV itself remained provisional, the theory and
practice of education appeared to be settled from very early on. Yet the
prospectus for HIV prevention turned out to be quite contingent and
subject to revision as proof of its successes or failures was turned in.
Much of the impetus for this book arose from evidence that the
calculus of risk, established as part of the founding paradigm of AIDS
education, was being widely ignored, even among the most highly
informed. For all kinds of reasons, young gay men were having unsafe
sex again and becoming infected in rising numbers. Some of these
reasons appealed to a form of group fatalism: a belief that infection is
inevitable, sooner or later. Others appealed to group solidarity: who
wants to grow old and watch their peers die young? Still others were
driven by blind faith: a spurt of sex existentialism here, a nod to
providentialism there, and votive signs of the tribal faith in deviance
everywhere. Most of the reasons are inchoate and will never be
adequately documented, despite the impulse of public confession that
accompanied the phenomenon. The trend for unsafe sex may be
short-lived, or the situation may get worse. More likely yet, the next
development will confound all our predictions.
395
What has become clear, however, from debate arising from the data
is that responses to risk are as socially variable as the viais itself is
genetically variable. Accordingly, the single-factor premise of AIDS
Education 101 has proven to be as flawed as the belief in a magic bullet
cure is delusional. Of course, I don't mean to suggest anything more
than a casual analogy between the behavior of the virus and social
behavior around its effects. That way lies bad anthropomorphism,
where we invariably end up with a B-movie, supersmart virus outfoxing
all our moves. But just as there are good reasons for stripping the virus
itself of social attributes, it is a mistake to see scientific attributions to
the virus as if they were simply and wholly clinically generated. Better
than any sociologist or ethnographer of laboratory life, AIDS activism
has wrecked science's myths of autonomy and objectivity. Aside from
the intervention of activists in the protocols of science itself, the full
documentation of the funding history and the researching of treatments
has provided stark evidence of social interest at every step of the way,
from the politically motivated squeeze on federal monies to the bottom-
line mentality of corporate drug companies, who are resistant, as Mark
Schoofs points out in this volume, to developing a costly vaccine that they
will be pressured to "give away to the Tliird World." And in their inability
to meet the crisis, we are reminded once again of the debt owed by
science's institutions to the same social forces, economic interests, and
industrial conditions that are responsible for the most chronic diseases
of the day. Most of these ailments, like cancer, are tied to the environ-
mental conditions created by successive industrial regimes. Biomedical
research and practice have been too beholden to the dominant
industrial order to treat its effects with the requisite ethical autonomy.
From the very first, AIDS was a fully social crisis, developing along
lines of power and prejudice, some of them old and familiar, some of
them emerging out of new forms of community, new forms of fear.
Much more than a health crisis, the appearance of AIDS has become
an epochal marker of the apocalyptic global anxieties of the late 20th
century. Locally, the course of the crisis has been charted through the
development of very distinct forms of consciousness. Within gay
communities, morally and politically on the frontline of the crisis, the
politics of identity has been in a constant state of revision, capriciously
orbiting around a relatively stable core of HIV-positives and PWAs, In
Andrew Ross 397
the most recent alteration of this political landscape, the psychosocial

needs and concerns of the uninfected have come to the fore. Hitherto
neglected in communities marked by their identification with the
infected, Walt Odets argues that prevention strategies need to be
tailored specifically to those "living with AIDS" who are HIV-negative,
As a PWA for whom AIDS has been something of a liberating experi-
ence, Scott O'Hara outlines the issue with a degree of philosophical
starkness: "The life of a Negative, at this point in our history, seems to
me the most irrelevant and pointless of positions; and the continual
fear of conversion under which most of them live is equally distressing,"
In this new focus upon the complex, emergent identity of the "Nega-
tive," fresh ideas about the future of HIV prevention are now being
forged. As ever, the social laboratory of community experience is
outperforming government agencies and pharmaceutical labs.
Because of these successes, the psychologies of fear, anger, and
mourning associated with AIDS have been heightened and sharpened
in the micro-environments of urban gay society, nowhere more so than
in the hothouse milieu of AIDS activism, which has provided the most
innovative model for the theory and practice of action, emotion, and
strategy within oppositional politics since the late 1960s, Since the
temporality of activism moves in and out of sync with the larger social
clocks of mainstream institutions, activists' responses are as often
ghettoized as they are engaged and absorbed into the lead stories of
the day. It is nonetheless remarkable that the specific psychology of
risk pioneered within AIDS education resonates so strongly with the
developing political culture of risk and security in advanced capitalist
societies in general.
With the appearance of nuclear, chemical, and genetic hazards from
which no one can declare themselves immune, the political economy
of personal, as well as national, security has been reconfigured. The
social distribution of risks is becoming the dominant template for
managing the social distribution of wealth. Some influential commen-
tators, like the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, argue that the rules of
recognition, compensation, and avoidance requisite to a "risk society"
have already displaced the conventions of acquisition and underdevel-
opment characteristic of social hierarchies based solely on the accumu-
lation of wealth,' Security and safety in the form of freedom from risk
is what is increasingly on offer. Where risks are already built into the
future—as a result of, say, the generation of industrial hazards—a
complex system of calculation arises, whereby levels of risk are
normalized, underestimated, and nullified by expectations of some
massively deviant hazard. Each new nuclear plant disaster or massive
oil spill, for example, has upped the ante of what is considered
acceptable. Legal, cultural, and economic rules have evolved to institute
these norms. Risk assessment is now the favored administrative ration-
ality of fiscal policymaking, increasingly demanded of all government
regulatory programs. The reach of this calculus into daily cultvire has
been pervasive. It is no surprise that when we wish each other well, we
say, "take care," whereas the parting greetings of our parents' genera-
tion were more likely to wish prosperity in some shape or form. Implicit
in such admonitions is the expectation that there are risks—in the air
or in our blood—that have not yet been revealed by technoscience.
The AIDS crisis unfolded in this environment of risk, and has played
no small role in its intensification, providing a test case for safe conduct
along the way. The difference is that while most chemical or genetic
"risks" are generally assumed to be unavoidable, and are therefore
factored into our future calculations, AIDS activism has pioneered the
ethics and practice of active prevention. Consequently, the risk culture
specific to AIDS is based on the premise that the future can be
changed—^by actions in the present. This might be described as an
anti-dystopian premise, inasmuch as it is designed to avert a bad future.
By being defined in the negative, however, it declines the frankly
Utopian energies and desires that have traditionally characterized the
principle of sexual liberation among gay people.
From the outset, this contradiction has troubled the direct momen-
tum of the AIDS movement, with one component driven by the
liberatory impulse to "Save Sex," and the other by the redemptionary
tendency to "Save Us from Our Sexuality." Each boasts a long and varied
history in the chronicles of modern sexuality, with antecedents in
traditions of libertinism and moral puritanism alike. One of the greatest
challenges of HIV prevention has been the re-education of desire within
a sexual community that has pursued civil rights precisely on the grounds
of the de-regulation of sex. Consequently, the commitment to anony-
mous, public sex had assumed the status of a sacred principle among
Andrew Ross 399
the defining elements of queer identity. Challenges to this principle,

especially from within the community, have always had a decidedly
heretical cast. Recently, as Eva Pendleton demonstrates, they have
received a substantial moral boost from emergent strains of gay political
conservatism at the core of mainstream public institutions of govern-
ment and media.
The occasion for this book was a local conflict, in New York City,
which nonetheless encapsulated many of the larger tensions created
by the education-regulation dialectic described above. It being New
York, real estate interests had to be involved. Whether in Times Square,
Greenwich Village, or Chelsea, the zoning/sex club affair of 1995, as
David Serlin argues, was shaping up to be a classic case of the
ascendancy of property value over civil rights. But the intervention of
activists, both on the right and the left, transformed the affair into a
public forum about the future, not simply of HFV prevention, but of
queer politics itself. The city's proposed enforcement of health codes
in public sex clubs generated an indignant. Stonewall-like response.
The greatest anger, however (much of it politely sampled in this
volume), was reserved for GALHPA's active support for the city's
regulatory plans. This compliant call took place in a context quite
different from the debate about the closing of bathhouses that took
place in the mid-1980s. In the interim, AIDS activists had succeeded,
beyond all expectation, in winning access to the government agencies
and scientific institutions they had initially targeted (although the
effects of their activism had generated very little in the way of
promising new treatments), A gay lobby of sorts was recognized by
the Clinton White House, Proximity to power brought with it a newly
hygienic template for queer politics, one that did not seem very queer
at all. Like other social movements in pursuit of full civil rights, the gay
movement appeared to have reached the point when a conservative
wing might emerge.
In certain times and places, this could be construed, in the abstract,
as a healthy development—a relatively benign symptom of newly
achieved recognition within civil society. In the mid-1990s, however,
with the Christian Coalition's pit bulls snapping at the heels of every
shirker of its sexual loyalty oath, gay conservatism's wholesome agenda
had an ominous ring to it. More pointedly, lives were on the line, and
4 0 0 POLICIHG PUBLIC SEX
the future of HIV prevention hung somewhere in the balance between

the organic education of desire and the preservation of a politics that
did justice to those historical traditions, institutions, and practices of
gay life that have been caricatured and celebrated alike as a "culture
of promiscuity,"
The essays collected in this volume document many aspects of the
conflict and show how and why the controversy over closing the sex
clubs became the inspiration for rethinking priorities and reviving
flagging energies within the AIDS movement. Whether it will be
remembered as a significant turning point in the direction of queer
politics remains to be seen. For the time being, the writers in these
pages have responded to the activist injunction to be historians of the
present. For the activist, the time is always here and now, and the whole
world, if it is not always watching, nevertheless feels as if it is turning
around us,
HOTES
I. Ulrich Beck, RiskSociety: Towards a New Modernity, Mark Ritter, trans, (London:
Sage, 1992),
CONTRIBUTORS
PRISCIUA ALEXANDER is currently affiliated with the North American Task Force
on Prostitution, FROST'D (which does outreach to street workers in New York
City), and Columbia University School of Public Health, where she is a
graduate student. Prior affiliations include the World Health Organization,
Global Programme on AIDS, where she was focal person on sex work and
AIDS; COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics); the California Prostitutes
Education Project (CAL-PEP); and the National Organization for Women, where
she organized a task force on prostitution and served on her chapter and state
boards and the national board of directors. At the moment, her work concerns
ideas of contagion and pollution,
AUAN BIRUB^, an independent scholar and a founder of the San Francisco
Lesbian and Gay History Project, has, since 1978, written, lectured, and
presented slide shows on U,S, lesbian, gay, and transgender history. He is
author of the award-winning book Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay
Men and Women in World War II (Free Press, 1990), He co-wrote the 1994
Peabody Award-winning documentary film based on his book. In 1994-95, he
was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
at CUNY, and in 1996 he was awarded a MacAnhur "genius" grant. He is
currently writing a history of queer work and gay activism in the Marine Cooks
and Stewards Union from the Depression to the Cold War entitled Shipping
Out (Houghton Mifflin, forthcoming),
JAY BLOTCHER, a journalist, publicist, and activist, co-produced a weekly lesbian
and gay TV show with host Vito Russo and worked at the St, Marks Baths and
The Saint—all during his first year in New York City, Media Coordinator for
the founding chapters of ACT UP and Queer Nation, he has written for the
New York Native, Cbristopher Street, OutWeek, POZ, Out, and Men's Style.
Currently, he is Director of Media Relations at the American Foundation for
AIDS Research.
EPHEN GLENN COLTER is a writer and Ph,D, student in the American Studies
Program at New York University, He is also a member of AIDS Prevention
401
Action League, a safer sex party promoter, co-organizer of APAL's Save Our
Sex party, and founder of Menage a Trois at Bard College,
LISA DUGGAN teaches lesbian and gay studies and the history of gender and
sexuality in the American Studies Program at New York University, She was a
founding member of the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce, and has written
widely on sexual politics. She is the co-author, with Nan D, Hunter, of Sex
Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Gulture (Routiedge, 1995) and author of
Sapphic Slashers: Love, Murder, and Lesbian Desire, 1880-1920 (University of
California Press, forthcoming),
P.J. EDWARDS is a free-lance writer and AIDS prevention activist living in New
York City,
MARC E. ELOVITZ is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian
and Gay Rights and AIDS Projects, His most recent articles focus on families
created by lesbian and gay people and the use of social science research by
proponents and opponents of adoption by lesbian and gay people. He has
taught "Sexuality and the Law" at Rutgers Law School and is currently Adjunct
Professor of Law at New York Law School,
STEPHEN GENDIN is co-founder and president of Community Prescription
Service, the nation's only HIV+ owned and operated mail-order prescription
service. He is a member of the Treatment Action Group and serves as Executive
Vice President of POZ magazine. He was an original member of ACT UP/NY,
founder of ACT UP/Rhode Island, and founder of ACT UP/NY's Treatment and
Data Digest. He also served on the Executive Committee of the 1987 March on
Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights,
TIMOTHY J. OILFOYLE is the author of City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution,
and the Commercialization ofSex, 1790-1920 Q^.Vff. Norton, 1992), which won
the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians, He is presently
completing a book on "underworld" subcultures of Victorian America, Gilfoyle
is an associate editor of ihe Journal of Urban History and an associate professor
of history at Loyola University Chicago,
WAYNE HOFFMAN is a Ph,D, student in American Studies at New York University,
He is also a free-lance journalist, whose cultural reporting and syndicated media
column, "Public Image," have appeared in over two dozen publications,
including the Washington Blade, Boston Phoenix, Bay Area Reporter, Philadel-
phia Gay News, Texas Triangle, and Metroline. His personal essay about unsafe
sex and the generation gap, "Hear O Israel," appears in the forthcoming gay
youth anthology Generation Q: Inheriting Stonewall Wyson, 1996),
AMBER HOUJBAUGH has 30 years' experience as a national organizer, educator,
filmmaker, and writer. She has worked as a theoretician and activist on issues
such as prisoners' rights, homophobia, women's rights, incest, domestic
Contributors 403
violence, rape, race and class oppression, and sexuality. For the last ten years
she has worked as a health educator: as a pre- and post-test supervisor of New
York City's AIDS hotline, in the New York City Commission on Human Rights
AIDS Discrimination Unit, and, finally, as Director of the Lesbian AIDS Project
at Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, Her documentary. The Heart of the
Matter, which focuses attention on women's sexuality through the prism of
AIDS, won the 1994 Sundance Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award and
premiered nationwide on PBS's POV series in 1994,
CAROL LEIGH (A.K.A SCARLOT HARLOT) has been working as a prostitute, activist,
and interdisciplinary artist in San Francisco for over fifteen years, A founding
member of ACT UP San Francisco, Leigh co-founded the Coalition on
Prostitution and is media representative for COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired
Ethics), She represented San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women
on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Task Force on Prostitution, Leigh's
videos, including Outlaw Poverty, Not Prostitution, have won numerous awards
from groups such as the American Film Institute, Recently, Leigh directed
Masturbation Memories, pornography from a woman's perspective, Leigh is
featured in Annie Sprinkle's Sluts and Goddesses video workshop and teaches
"Prostitution 101" at the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco,
JOHN LINDELL is a visual artist based in New York whose wall drawings,
sculptures, photographs, and videotapes have been exhibited most recently at
the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, Galerie Analix in Geneva, and
Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,
LORING MCALPIN is a visual artist based in New York, His most recent
installations have been exhibited at NGBK in Berlin,
JOSt ESTEBAN MUNOZ is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at Tisch
School of the Arts, New York University, where he teaches queer theories and
critical race studies. He is the co-editor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (Duke
University Press, 1996), Everynight Life: Culture, Music and Dance in Latin/o
America (Duke University Press, forthcoming), and a special issue of the
journal Women and Performance titled "Queer Acts" (1996), His book,
Disidentifications, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press, The essay
included in this volume is from his current project, a manuscript on the
worldmaking properties of minoritarian memory and performance,
WALT ODETS is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Berkeley, California,
A member of the AIDS Task Force of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association,
he has spoken frequently at professional conferences on HIV education and
prevention for gay men. In addition to his contributions to AIDS and Public
Policy Journal, he has authored two chapters for Therapists on the Front Line:
Psychotherapy with Gay Men in the Age of AIDS (American Psychiatric Press,
1995) and a book, In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Betng HIV-Negative in the
Age of AIDS {Duke University Press, 1995).
SCOTT O'HARA is a retired porn star, rentable from your local video store in at
least 26 videos. He was the editor of Steam magazine—"The Literate Queer's
Guide to Sex and Controversy"—for three years. His first collection of short
stories, Do-It-Yourself Piston Polishing (ForNon-Mechanics), will be published
by Badboy in 1996.
EVA PENDLETON is a Ph.D. student in American Studies at New York University
and a professional sexual deviant. Her essay, entitled "Love for Sale: Queering
Heterosexuality" will appear in Whores and Other Peminists, edited by Jill Nagle
(Routledge, forthcoming).
ALISON REDICK is a writer and activist in New York City. She is a Ph.D. student
in the American Studies program at New York University. She has written for
the Lambda Book Report znd Distributed Art, Inc.
ANDREW ROSS is Professor and Director of the American Studies Program at
New York University. His books include The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life:
Nature's Debt to Society (Verso, 1994), Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and
Technology in the Age of Limits (Verso, 1991), and No Respect: Intellectuals and
Popular Culture (.Routledge, 1989). A columnist for Artfonim and co-editor of
the journal Social Text, he is also the editor of TTie Science Wars (Duke
University Press, 1996) and Universal Abandon? (\5r\wersiVf of Minnesota Press,
1988) and co-editor oi Microphone Fiends iV.oux\edge, 1994) and Technoculture
(University of Minnesota Press, 1990).
MARK SCHOOFS is a journalist who has reported on AIDS for a decade. He
currently writes about the epidemic and other subjects for The Village Voice.
From 1988 through 1989, Schoofs edited Windy City Times, Chicago's lesbian
and gay newspaper, where he wrote one of the first articles about the difficulty
of maintaining safer sex. He now lives in New York City.
DAVID SERLIN is a writer, composer, musician, and doctoral candidate in the New
York University American Studies Program. He is currently writing a dissertation
about the cultural politics of experimental medicine during the Cold War.
KENDALL THOMAS is Professor of Law at Columbia University, where he teaches
constitutional law, communications law, legal philosophy, critical race theory,
and law and sexuality. His writing has appeared in several law journals, as well
as in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Assemblage: A Critical Journal
of Architecture and Design Culture, and Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power-
Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and tbe Construction of Social Reality,
edited by Toni Morrison (Pantheon, 1992). Thomas is co-editor of Critical Race
Theory (New Press, 1996). He is currently at work on a book entitled Corpus
Juris (Homo)sexualis: Figures of Gay and Lesbian Sexuality in the Body of Law.
SELECTED
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INDEX
role of primary prevention in, 115-38

ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash during 1980s, 13-14, 47, 95-96, 99
Power), 27, 100-101, 109, 143, 380 during 1990s, 107-10
Adorno, Theodor W,, 320, 359-62 toward changing laws, 141-63
AIDS and use of term "second wave,"
beliefs in inevitability of, 102, 126, 91-103
131, 133, 136, 395 See also APAL; CAPA; GALHPA;
equals death, equation of, 101-102 Politics, queer
federal spending for victims of, 175 AIDS Health Project, 132-35
number of cases of Alexander, Priscilla, 254
in New York City, 99, 306, 313 essay by, 186, 221-37
in U,S, gay population, 119, 121 APAL (AIDS Prevention Action
worldwide, 168 League), 15-17, 28-29, 34, 40, 92,
as social crisis, 395-400 100, 105, 108, 111-14, 143
strains of, 170 Appropriations Act of 1988, l6l
vaccine for, 167-82, 396 Astor, William B,, 264
government programs to assist, Atchley, William, 221
174-76, 178-81 The Attic, 32-35, 43
pessimism about, 168-70
private funding for, 171-77, 181-82 B
spending on, worldwide, 168 Baker Street Club, 209-10
successes in approaching, 170-71 Barry, Kathleen, 235
versus treatment drugs, 173-74, Bathhouses
176-78 compared to sex clubs, 75
AIDS activism development of, 185, 187-88
communication as tool in, 105-14,127 in Canada, 212-13
conflicts in, ix-xi, 98, 398-99 early history, 189-92
future of, 16-17, 89-90, 99, 114 and Gay Liberation Movement,
goals of, 109 200-206
impact of, 396-99 and McCarthyism, 196, 199
for medical research, 167-82 in New York City, 35-38, 95-96,
409
192-96, 200-203, 296-98 Capehart, Jonathan, 36, 93, 390

in San Francisco, 95-96, 196-203, Capri Theater, 110, 155-56
209-12, 214-19, 223-26 Cascade AIDS Project, 134-35
social costs of fight over, 209-17 Castle, Terry, 369
and urban politics, 206-208 Castrodale, Woody, 124
during World War II, 195-96, 198, CDC (Centers for Disease Control),
210-12, 219 information on AIDS issued by,
potential benefits of, 217-19 152-53, 161-62
Bawer, Bruce, 376 Charen, Mona, 323
A Place at the Table, 330, 383-86 Chevalier, Maurice, 271
"Be Here for the Cure" campaign, 128-29 Childs, Richard S,, 280
Beck, Ulrich, 397 Civiello, Mary, 26-27
Berkley, Marc, 34 Clit Club, 55-66, 68
Berkley, Seth, 181 Colter, Ephen Glenn, essay by, 90, 141-63
Bersani, Leo Columbia Study, 91-92, 95, 97, 98-99
Homos, 356-57 Committee of Founeen, 274-81, 283
"Is the Rectum a Grave?," 356 Comstock, Anthony, 277
Bembe, Allan, 95, 223, 347 Conservative politics, influence of, on
essay by, 185, 187-219 gay community, ix-xi, 233-35, 319,
BID (Business Improvement District), 325, 331-33, 351, See also Politics,
48-49, 283 queer, conservative
Blackwell, Elizabeth, 270 Contagious Diseases Act, 222, 230
Blankenship, Wayne, 128 COP (Coalition on Prostitution), 256
Bloch, Ernst, 320, 359, 361, 362 COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired
Blotcher, Jay, essay by, 23, 25-44 Ethics), 254, 255-56
Bolognesi, Dani, 169, 179 Crimp, Douglas, 13, 96, 355-57, 359, 371
Bowers v..Hardwick, 151-52, 296-98 "How to Have Promiscuity in an
Boxer, Andrew, 343 Epidemic," 91, 93
Brandt, Allan, 230 Crosby, Howard, 270
Bratton, William, 36 Cummings, Mary, 322
Britt, Harry, 224
Bronski, Michael, 347, 349, 350
Brothels, See Prostitution Daly, William, 282
Brown, Willie, 201, 260 Dana, Howard, 134, 135
Browning, Frank, The Culture of Dangerous Bedfellows, l6
Desire, 351 essay by, 13-20
Burger, John, One-Handed Histories, Dean, Lara, 95
345-47 Delaney, Martin, 176
Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter, 158 Delany, Samuel R,, 159
Byrnes, Thomas, 271 "Street Talk/Straight Talk," 145-46
Demuth, Charles, 193
Derrida, Jacques, 367-68
Califia, Pat, "Public Sex," 53-55, 345, 349 Diamond, Justice Marylin G,, decision
Callen, Michael, 113 by, 305-7
CAPA (Community Aids Prevention Dilley, James, 133
Activists), 15-17, 29, 92, 108, 114 Divine Bella, 337
Index 411
Dock, Levine L., 221 generation gap in, 342-44

Dorman, Burt, 172-73 identity of, 52, 396
Draizen, Carol, 257 media representation of, 26-28, 111-
Duggan, Lisa, essay by, ix-xii 12,340-41,389-91. See also specific
Dworkin, Andrea, 235, 373, 387-88 journalists
open communication in, 55, 105-14
percentage of tested in, 129-30, 136
Earle Theater, 302-5 percentage of unprotected sex in, 136
Edwards, P.J., essay by, 186, 295-316 relationship with lesbian community,
Eisner, Michael, 263 326, 334, 335
Elder, Glen, 343 during 1980s, 121-24, 337-39
Elders, Joycelyn, 69, 147 during 1990s, 124-25, 339-40, 342.
ELISA blood test, 117-18 See also Sexual devolution
Ellington, George, 265 self-concern in, 109, 113-14
Elovitz, Marc E., essay by, 186, 295-316 solidarity in, 32, 34
Enright, Richard E., 276 threats to, ix-xi, 136-38, 369-70
Erenberg, Lewis, 281 Gay Liberation, bathhouses and, 200-206
Esparza, Jose, 171 Gender, impact of, on politics and
The Examiner newspaper, 255 public sex culture, 54, 59-60, 63-64,
67-68, 151, 222, 233-36, 325, 331.
See also Prostitution
Fannin, Shirley, 225 Gendin, Stephen, essay by, 90, 105-14
Fast, Patricia, 179, 180 Ghost theory. See Hauntology; Queer
Fauci, Anthony, 175-76, 179 Utopian memory, ghost theory and
Feinstein, Dianne, 224, 225 Gilfoyle, Timothy J., essay by, 186,
"First wave," 94-96, 99 263-83
Flexner, Abraham, 230 Giorno, John, 320
Fosdick, Raymond, 278 You Got to Bum to Shine, 357-62
Foucault, Michel, The History of Giuliani, Rudy, 42, 47, 108, 373
Sexuality, xii GLAAD CGay and Lesbian Alliance
Fradd, Brandon, 174, 175 Against Defamation), 26
Francis, Don, 181 Gladwell, Malcolm, 48
Freud, Sigmund, 355 GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis), 29,
Fuss, Diana, 369 34, 37-38, 40, 43-44, 114, 176-77
Golar, Justice Simeon, decision by,
303-304
Gaffney, Michael, 214 Gold, David, 177
Gain, Charles, 201 Gopstein, Doron, letter by, 296-97
Gallagher, Tom, 48 Grace, William R., 273
GALHPA (Gay and Lesbian HIV Preven- Grey, Annie, 268
tion Activists), 15-17, 28, 34, 38, 40, GRID (Gay-Related Immune
91-93, 97-102, 374, 378-79, 399 Deficiency), 121-22
Galuccio, Paul, 35-38 Grover, Jan Zita, 96
Gay community
disenfranchisement of uninfected in, H
122-32, 135-37, 397 Hadden, Archibald, 267
412 P01ICIH6 PUBLIC SEX
Hallinan, Terence, 253, 255 Hollywood Twin Theater, 308-16

Hallinan, Vincent, 253 Horizon program, Chicago, 343-44
Hammerstein, William, 277 Howe, Neil, 342
Hancock, Mel, 322 Howe, Robert, 266
Haring, Keith, 358 Hunter, Nan D., 95
Harlot, Scarlot, See Leigh, Carol
Haseltine, William, 226 I
Hauntology, concept of, 367-68, See Identity politics. See Gay community,
also Queer Utopian memory, ghost identity of; Politics, queer
theory and
Hellfire, 29-32
Helms Amendment, 152-54
J
Jacks of Color, 57-61, 63, 65-66
Herdt, GUbert, 343
Jackson, Lidell, 24, 53-71
He's Gotta Have It, 38-42
Jarman, Derek, 235
Hewitt, Abram S., 273
Johnson, Ron, 27, 31, 34
Hilleman, Maurice, 169, 178-81
Jordan, Frank, 253
Hrv prevention, strategies for
Joseph, Stephen C, 221
battle over, 107-10
Just, Tony, 320, 357, 362-63
blood testing, 117-18, 129-30
photos by, 364-66
failure of, 115-16
history of, 117-18, 145
how laws prohibit, 142-63
Kellor, Frances, 271-72
primary prevention, 116-19, 123, 125
Kerrison, Ray, 323
model for, 130-36
Killen, John, 180
obstacles in implementation of,
Kirk, Marshall, 376
136-38 After the Ball, 383, 385-87
of reactivists, 376-79, 383, 388-89, Klein, George, 50-51, 263
See also Politics, queer, reactivism Kneeland, George, 271-72, 276
regulation of prostitution, 226-29, 260 Koff, Wayne, 178
and risk assessment, 395-98 Kramer, Larry, 96, 320, 379, 381, 382, 384
secondary prevention, 116-18, 123 Reports From the Holocaust, 380-81
sex clubs as sites for information, Kraus, Bill, 224, 235
16, 29, 96, 98, 217-18
spending for, 177, 181-82
tertiary prevention, 116-17 The Lambda Report, 333
undifferentiated education Lawrence, C.A., 268
definition of, 118-21 Leigh, Carol, essay by, 186, 251-62
failure of, 125-30 Lein, Morton, 280
history of, 121-25 Lesbian community
use of pornography in. See and abandonment of desires, 334-36
Pornography, importance of absence of, in debate over HrV, 324
See also Safe sex, education; Sex clubs, assumptions about, 332-34
closures of; STD prevention current battles of, 330-32
Hoffman, Wayne, essay by, 320, 337-52 division in, 326, 329, 334
Hollibaugh, Amber, essay by, 319, and HIV information, 327-29
321-36 lack of self-knowledge in, 326-27,
Index 413
334, 335 96, 192-96, 200-203, 296-98

lack of sex spaces for, 61-63 incidence of Hrv in, 99, 306, 313
safety issue for, 63-64 prostitution in, 234, 263-83
sudden attack on, 319-20, 323-25, 329 public sex culture in, 14-17. See also
visibility of, 55, 70 Public sex; Sex clubs
See also Clit Club; Gender, impaa of sanitary code of, 142, 148, 295-96,
Lindell, John, essay by, 24, 73-80 299-302, 305, 313-14
Littiejohn, Larry, 224, 235 sodomy laws of, 150-32
Livingston, May, 268 zoning laws of, 35, 36-37, 42-43,
Lynn, Wauhope, 273 45-52, 64-66, 149-50, 263, 391
See also Times Square
NIAID (National Institute of Allergy
MacKinnon, Catharine, 235, 373, 387-88 and Infectious Diseases), 178-79, 182
Toward a Feminist Theory of the NIH (National Institutes of Health),
State, 388 175-76, 178-81
Madsen, Hunter, 376 Niles, Nathaniel, 266
After the Ball, 383, 385-87
Mann Act, 230 0
McAdoo, William, 267 Odets, Walt
McAlpin Device, ISillus. essay by, 14, 90, 115-38, 397
McCabe, James, 264 In Tbe Sbadow of tbe Epidemic, 370
McNeil, John, l68 O'Hara, Scott, essay by, 24, 81-86, 397
Men's Prevention Project of Cascade, O'Rourke, Tom, 272
134-33 Osborne, Duncan, 93, 101, 391
Merck, Mandy, 369 "Time for Gays to Say No to Unsafe
Meyer, Man, 93 Sex," 389
Miles, Sara, 94 Osgood, Dean, 268, 273
Milk, Harvey, 212, 218 Otto, Richard, letter by, 300-301
Millard, Charles, 47, 49 "Outcome population," 116
Minsky, Morton, 277
Mojica, Benjamin A., 155-36 P
letter by, 313-15 Page Law, 230
Moore, Clement Clarke, 264 Pagnozzi, Amy, 93, 390
Moscone, George, 212 Palmer, Ken, 39, 41
Moss, Frank, 275 Panicali, Dennis, 173, 182
Moyal, David, 35-36 Parkhurst, Charles, 273-74, 283
Muftoz, Jose Esteban, essay by, 320, Patton, Cindy, 13, 96, 346
353-71 "Between Innocence and Safety,"
139-60
N Pendleton, Eva, essay by, 320, 373-92,
Neel, Joe, 100 399
Nesline Device, 72illus. Pin-wheel of dead ends, 76illus
New David Cinema, 303-7 Politics, queer
New York City conservative, xi, 17, 31-32, 63, 98,
health codes of, 13, 26 109, 111, 233, 237, 334-33, 339-40,
history of bathhouses in, 35-38, 95- 349, 374-76, 378-79, 383-87, 389,
414 POUCING PUBUC SEX
391-92, 399-400. See a&o GALHPA Politics, queer, reactivism

as form of resistance, 81-86 establishments for
future of, 102-3, 320, 373, 391-92 as community centers, 339, 350
of gender. 5ee Gender and real estate values, 24, 46-51,
governmental response to, 18 108-9, 263, 276-77, 283
history of, 15-18. See also Bathhouses, See also Sex clubs
development of future of culture of, 69-70, 350-52.
lesbian, 330-36. See also Lesbian See also Politics, queer, Utopian
community performativity of, 56-57
progressive, ix-x, 52, 349-50 in pornography, 346-47, 349. See also
of race. See Race Pornography
reactivism, 320, 374-84, 387-89, 391-92 privacy issue of, 298.
representation as issue in, x-xi question of right to, 53-55
during 1980s, 13-14 role of, in gay communities, 52
during 1990s, 15, 18-19 See also Promiscuity; Prostitution
Utopian, 320, 338-39, 350-52, 371, 398. Purret, Elize, 266
See also Pornography, as political PWA (Person With Aids), 83
issue; Queer Utopian memory
See also AIDS activism
Pornography Queer Nation, 319, 350
censorship of. See "Sex wars," feminist Queer Utopian memory, 355-62
importance of, 339-40, 344-48 ghost theory and, 362-71
as political issue, 348-50. See also
Politics, queer, Utopian
Posing Horse, lAillus. Race, impact of, on politics and public
Positive Connections newsletter, 134 sex culture, x, 58-61, 67-68, 97-98,
Powell, Adam Clayton, Sr., 267, 269 110, 269, 325, 331-32
"Prevention Plan for Clubs and Other Raymond, Janice, 235
Entertainment Establishments" Reactivism. See Politics, queer, reactivism
(Bureau of HIV Program Services), Reagan, Nancy, 337
158-59 Redick, Alison, essay by, 90, 91-103
Prevention strategies. See HIV prevention Regulation, governmental
Promiscuity emotional impact of, 111-12
as detriment to politics, 380-87. See also over bathhouses. See Bathhouses,
Politics, queer, reactivism development of
monogamy versus, 81-82, 97, 380, 384, of prostitution. See Prostitution,
387 regulation of
See also Sexuality, uncontrolled male public sentiment on, 100-101
Prostitution, regulation of, 222-23, 225- ramifications of, 17-18, 233-37
34, 251-62 theoretical justification for, 92, 94-96.
in Times Square, 263-83 See also Conservative politics
Public sex underlying reasons for, 90, 302. Seealso
assumptions about, and HIV, 26, 92, Sexuality, systems for controlling
93-94, 97. See also HIV prevention; See also New York City, specific
Unsafe sex codes of
demonization of, 379-82. See also Risk assessment, 395-98
Index 415
Risk groups, 96-97, 120, 295 double use of term, 94

Rist, Darrell Yates, 26-27 explanations for, 110
Rockefeller, John D,, Jr,, 274 GALHPA concerns over, 91-93, 99
Rockefeller Foundation, 168, 173, 181 See also Columbia Study
Rofes, Eric, 14 Seidman, Steven, 233
Roosevelt, Theodore, 226 Serlin, David, essay by, 24, 45-52, 399
Rose, Joseph, 50 Sex clubs
Rosenthal, Esther, 257, 258 closures of, 30, 33, 42, 95-96, 99-100,
Ross, Andrew, essay by, 395-400 108-10,148,149,155, 296-98, 300-
Ross, Hattie, 272 301. SeealsoBaihhouses, develop-
Rotello, Gabriel, 17, 36, 92, 93, 98, ment of
101, 320, 349, 373, 375-76, 378, compared to backrooms, 63
379, 382, 384 compared to bathhouses, 75
Rubin, Gayle, 349 design of, 24, 73-80
Ruffing, Bob, 198 monitoring in, 35, 77, 112-14, 300-
Ruppert, Jacob, Jr,, 276, 278 301, 307, 378, 390
operators of, 23, 25-44, 67
as sites for safe sex education, 16, 29,
Sabin, Albert, 169 96, 98, 217-18
Safe sex television report on, 26-27
education, strategies for, 69-70, 96, zoning laws effecting. See New York
98,99,102,105-10,113-14, 217-18. City, zoning laws of
See also HIV prevention See also Public sex, establishments
invention of, 91 for; specific clubs
maintaining practices for, 99, 100, "Sex wars," feminist, x, 325, 326, 330,
102, 110-11, 146 373, 377, 387-88, 391
and public sex culture, 27, 60, 65, Sex workers. See Prostitution
77-78, 340-41 Sexual devolution, 320, 337-52
See also Unsafe sex Sexuality
Safer Sex Handbook for Lesbians and feelings of shame, 80
(Lesbian AIDS Project), 321-25, 332 freedom of, 53-56, 70-71, 82
Salk, Jonas, 169, 172 history of, xii
Salvin, Harry, 280 importance of communication on,
Samaha, Jean Paul, 253 54-55, 105-14
San Francisco systems for controlling, 221-37.
history of bathhouses in, 196-203, See also New York City, sanitary
209-12, 214-19, 223-26 code of; Politics, queer, reactivism;
prostitution in, 252-62 Prostitution, regulation of
Sanger, William, 226 uncontrolled male, 387-91. See also
Santiago, Luis, 176 Promiscuity
Schoofs, Mark, essay by, 90, 167-78, 396 Sheldon, Louis, 321-23
Schultz, Alan, 178-79 Shilts, Randy, 96, 228, 229, 235, 320, 349
"Second wave" And tbe Band Played On, 93, 379-80
APAL/CAPA concerns over, 92 Siegel, Norman, 50
versus continuation of epidemic, Signorile, Michelangelo, 92, 93, 100,
99, 110 109, 235, 320, 373, 375-76, 379-82
"Hrv-Positive, and Careless," 389 See also Promiscuity, monogamy

Queer in America, 381 versus
Silvermatl, Mervyn, 224, 225 motivation for having, 389, 395
Sinnott, James P,, 281 See also Safe sex
Smith, Charles Stewart, 277 Utopian politics. See Politics, queer,
Snow, William, 178 Utopian; Queer Utopian memory
Social learning theory, 129
Sodomy laws. See New York City,
sodomy laws of Vaccines, nature of, 169, See also AIDS,
Speaking Up newsletter, 134 vaccine for
"Sporting male" culture, 267, 270-71 Vaid, Urvashi, Virtual Equality, 55
St, James, Margo, 254 Van Wyck, Robert A,, 270
St, Marks Baths, 195, 196, 201-3, 296-98 Vining, Donald, 196
Stamps, Wickie, 348
STD prevention, history of, 222-23, 225- w
26, 229-33, See also HIV prevention Wakefield, Michael, 38-42
Stevenson, Edward, 192 Wallace, Wally, 32-35, 43-44
Stoddard, Thomas, 234-35 Waller, Lenny, 29-32
Stone, George, 268 Warhol, Andy, 358
Stonewall Inn, raid on, 200 Warner, Michael, 14, 102, 346
Strauss, Bill, 342 "Why Gay Men Are Having
Structure of feeling, concept of, 363-67 Unsafe Sex," 98, 146
Sturz, Herbert, 263 Watney, Simon, 340, 348
Watson, James, 181
West, Mae, 281
"Target population," 116-17 West, Rachel, 254
Taylor, Jocelyn, 24, 53-71 West Side Club, 35-38, 95, 382, 390
Thomas, Clarence, x, 375 White, Dan, 212
Thomas, Kendall, essay by, 24, 53-71 White, Patricia, 369
Times Square Whitin, Frederick, 274
prostitution in, 263-83 Whitman, Charles, 274
redevelopment of, 48-49, 108-9, Whitman, Christine Todd, 374
186, 263 Wilde, Oscar, 362
See also New York City Wiilemse, Cornelius, 275
Tolentino, Julie, 53, 59, 61 Williams, Emlyn, 193
Williams, Madge, 269
u Williams, Raymond, 363
Unsafe sex WIPS (Women in Public Spaces), 257
assumptions about, 92, 93-94, 101-102
and being PWA, 82-86
in monogamous relationships, 97, 98, Zohar, Uri, 28

Dangerous Bedfellows, Ephen Glenn Colter - Policing Public Sex - Queer Politics and The Future of AIDS Activism-South End Press (1996)

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Dangerous Bedfellows, Ephen Glenn Colter - Policing Public Sex - Queer Politics and The Future of AIDS Activism-South End Press (1996)

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Lisa Duggan

W e are living in a terrifying time of

we see another fracturing begin. In the debates over the policing of

Dangerous Bedfellows would like to

SOUTH END PRESS is a nonprofit,

"Sex at the end of the millenium is extraordinarily complex. Addressing

"During a time when anti-sex gay conservatism increasingly dominates the

criticism turned fertile new ground in gay and lesbian studies. As

larger-than-life bus advertisements, or hunky centerfolds in pom at

A Brief History of 1995

categories for organizational purposes rather than absolute divisions

SEX CLUB OWNERS:

In a world of silent partners and

transmission, yet fought restrictions that merely reflected anti-sex

Action League (APAL) or Community AIDS Prevention Activists (CAPA).

LENNY WALLER / HELLFIRE

Waller learned well; even now, he quotes court transcripts by heart,

Asked whether he has attempted to reason with other clubowners

WALLY WALLACE / THE ATTIC

PAUL GALUCCIO / WEST SIDE CLUB

the community, and people stayed away, he claims, resulting in lost

bust—coupled with threats from community activists in GALHPA—has

HIV infection through cocksucking, (A pamphlet, which I might add,

THE TWILIGHT (ZONE)

Commission in areas where such businesses can operate legally: mostly

encourage them to decide, by democratic mandate, how to deal with

and political imperatives to reshape the city in their own interests,

homeless people), BIDs have encouraged residents and tenants to

city," argued Joseph Rose, head of the Department of City Planning. In

"George wants to be known for putting up Class A office buildings in

Gay reactionaries who advocate the redistricting or outright eradi-

the practice of "public sex" is insepa-

KENDALL; I thought I'd Ijegin by asking you for your thoughts on an

JOCELYN: Well, ultimately, even though Califra's essay is framed

KENDALL: Is it true that freedom of sexual expression has to include

something we really need to talk more about. People want the

LIDELL: Well, I Started Jacks of Color as a political statement more

JOCELYN: I wanted to add an interesting thing about the Clit Club.

KENDAU: Who came up with the name?

LIDELL: That and LUST are two of my favorite names.

LIDELL: But it does both so well.

because of the name Clit Club. I mentioned earlier how liberating it

LIDELL; That is a very important point, especially since many of the

2000, as a society I would wish that we would be able to find a way to

KENDALL: It's a bid for respectability, which is willing to trade off

SOCIAL STRUaURM Posing Horse

imaginations, allowing us to interpret and embellish information

The notion of drift is essential to the experience of a sex club, where

run a business. But even if it is a sellers' market, it is curious that all

caused by herpes). Post-coital hygiene (not just for the prevention of

and architectural elements, As adults, we can .still relate to childhood

consumers everywhere, demand improvement from the businessmen

pursue sex, in whatever form pleases them, in as many venues as

for me (and yes, I do get fucked regularly without condoms). In reality,

censure—that wouldn't have been acceptable had I been Negative,

Barbed slogans and cutting-edge acts

along with the ongoing challenge posed by the intractability of AIDS.

Cay people invented safe sex. We

in 1992, that projected a rise in seroconversion among primarily black

officials and lobbied them secretly in the interests of regulating public

sex-negative and fundamentally homophobic position that equates the

Crashing the Second Wove

practices in press and political discussions of AIDS masks the evidently