The dimensions of the future were clearly outlined: tens of thousands affected by a syndrome that would soon cost the society tens of millions in hospital care alone.

The bargaining is an attempt to postpone. So gay men bargained. Safe sex had come to mean eliminating your least favorite sexual activity and hedging on the rest.

No more research beyond perusing the government press releases. The profession that had toppled a president over a burglary less than a decade before had returned to the fold of official-statement journalism.

In December 1982, at a time when gay people more than ever needed to be encouraged into relationships, they were told their partnerships were valueless by institutions that later scratched their heads and wondered why gays didn’t settle into couples when it was so clear their lives were at stake.

According to his two-step idea, a person first needed infection with a virus that clobbered lymphocytes, a lymphotrophic virus, while a second virus caused the specific outbreak of KS.

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.

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.

“Everybody in the gay community will be dead except two of these political dinosaurs debating over whether it’s politically correct to tell people to stop having anal sex.”

“sexual activity in places like baths or sex clubs should no longer be associated with pleasure—it should be associated with death.”