Unsafe sex is—quite literally—killing us…. Unsafe sex with a number of partners in San Francisco today carries a high risk of contracting AIDS and of death. So does having unsafe sex with others who have unsafe sex with a large number of partners.

Westmoreland was also surprised at the gullibility of the press. It was as if the initials M.D. or M.P.H. after these officials’ names had conferred upon them the credibility of Moses. Didn’t reporters know how to ask that tough second question? Or was it the more likely scenario, that they simply did not care?

The U.S. Constitution might be construed to allow the right to commit suicide, but the ramifications of bathhouses did not end with the patron. These people went to other places, picked up and infected others. The Constitution did not grant the right to take other people with you.

“Advice on safe sex, while perhaps well meaning, is actually collaboration with the death regime that delights in blaming ourselves and would pin the blame on us. The myth of ‘safe sex’ fosters the finger pointing when anyone of us does come down with a disease: ‘You see, we told you so. We brought it on ourselves.’”

The fear inspired by this one story defined the context within which AIDS was discussed for the next crucial months.

“We’re both in it for the same thing,” he said. “Money. We make money at one end when they come to the baths. You make money from them on the other end when they come here.”

With AIDSpeak, however, many of these same spokespeople were now arguing that bathhouses must stay open because gay men were such sex fiends that they would be screwing behind every bush if they didn’t have their sex clubs.

“I was extremely cautious about my choice of words. I didn’t want to go on the record either way. I was smart enough not to say it wasn’t there. Technically, I was not inaccurate.”

He hadn’t told anybody about the cases, however, because he had written a paper that was under submission at a medical journal.