ABSTRACT
The central argument of the first half of the chapter is that gay culture is intensely and narrowly focused on sex, and that this obsession is responsible for the horror show of AIDS and the continuing toll it takes on our communities. The chapter focusses on the answers to the problems emerging from a dynamic in which statements made by contemporary gay writers sound increasingly like the statements of antigay crusaders. The first part of the chapter focuses largely on Michelangelo Signorile's and Larry Kramer's analyses of "gay male culture". The chapter uses these men's work to illustrate what occurs when critiques are generated from worldviews locked inside the AIDS state of emergency and epidemiological reports that are scrutinized through the crisis-tinged lenses of 1985. It scrutinizes a parallel critique of contemporary "gay community" drafted by therapists, substance abuse counselors, and AIDS prevention workers in San Francisco and published as a centerspread essay in a local gay paper.
