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Mr. Gay Sex

You've probably never hear of Richard Berkowitz. But if you've ever used a condom -- or asked your man to -- with the goal of protecting yourself from HIV, you have him to thank.
By Corey Saucier

In the concluding scenes of the documentary Sex Positive, which chronicles Richard Berkowitz's efforts in the early 1980s to get gay men to embrace safer-sex practices to save themselves from certain death, some of the people working at today's most prominent agencies that focus on making people aware of how to protect themselves and others from HIV are asked if they've heard of Berkowitz. And each says no.

Both Berkowitz and his friend Michael Callen (who did become a revered voice in the AIDS fight before he died of the disease in 1993) took up the disease-control concepts of their physician and friend, Joseph Sonnabend, and began urging gay men to avoid unprotected sex as early as 1982 -- and were treated as pariahs by a segment of the gay community that accused them of being sex-negative.

Inspired by Berkowitz's book, Stayin' Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex, published in 2003, Sex Positive brings to light -- through Berkowitz's eyes as well as through those of some who once stood against him -- the daunting quest he took on to save the lives of the men around him and ended up making the concept of 'safer sex' almost second nature for today's generation.