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 came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.”

Death-camp motifs had been de rigueur that year because a state senator from Orange County, John Briggs, was campaigning statewide for a ballot measure that would ban gays from teaching in California public schools.

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.

The linguistic roots of AIDSpeak sprouted not so much from the truth as from what was politically facile and psychologically reassuring. Semantics was the major denominator of AIDSpeak jargon, because the language went to great lengths never to offend.

What good were gay rights if they were all dead?

Under the rules of AIDSpeak, for example, AIDS victims could not be called victims. Instead, they were to be called People With AIDS, or PWAs, as if contracting this uniquely brutal disease was not a victimizing experience.

“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.”

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.