Sexual Ecology: The Birth of AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men

In this plain-talking report, Rotello, a gay journalist, AIDS activist and founding editor of Outweek, focuses ""on the ways that gay men ourselves--inadvertently and innocently but nonetheless decisively--facilitated the [AIDS] epidemic."" Using epidemiological studies, historical evidence and informal surveys, he cogently argues that the epidemic resulted when, in the 1970s, the HIV virus was provided a nourishing ecological niche within the human organism through, in large part, particular male homosexual behaviors, including a dramatic increase in anal sex with multiple partners; the emergence of ""core groups"" of men (suffering from high rates of sexually transmitted diseases) who engaged in extraordinarily risky sexual behavior; a rapid rise in the amount of sexual mixing between core-group members and the rest of the gay population; and a general decline in immunity among gay men, caused by repeated infections with various STDs as well as recreational substance abuse. Warning that a return to 1970s sexual lifestyles could trigger a new, more drug-resistant wave of the epidemic, Rotello suggests ways to develop a ""sustainable sexual culture"" that would offer incentives (such as the right to same-sex marriage) for moderation, fidelity and spirituality, as well as alternatives to the bar and disco scene. His brave, significant book deserves to be as widely read as Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On. (Apr.)