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Sex Positive

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Description:

When HIV/AIDS first appeared on the New York gay scene in the early 1980s, Richard Berkowitz was an S/M hustler with a penchant for partying. 'I've done everything you can do to kill yourself and I'm still standing,' he says early on in Sex Positive.

The response to the crisis quickly became political, both inside and outside the gay community, and Berkowitz began writing articles that placed him on the fringes. He believed AIDS was caused by not only the transmission of a virus but by 'multiple lifestyle factors'-in a word, promiscuity. His call for sexual restraint-coming as it did from somebody who had already had his fun-seemed like a rejection of the sexual liberties that gay men had worked so hard to achieve, and Berkowitz pissed off more powerful activists like Larry Kramer.

Filmmaker Daryl Wein presents Kramer as Berkowitz's nemesis, and it is almost touching to watch both men, older and wiser, soften views that were once unforgivingly militant.

Though Berkowitz's baggage makes him a less-than-ideal messenger- even the friends who are interviewed seem to be treading carefully- he was one of the first people to promote condoms as a way to prevent AIDS. Wein, a twenty-five-year-old wunderkind, brings a fresh point of view to decades-old debates, helped by interviews with the likes of author Edmond White and porn star Michael Lucas.