Website—Organizing and Policy Work: Interview with Olivier Jablonski

Community Organizing

Interview with Olivier Jablonski from the radical French AIDS prevention group WARNING

See www.THEWARNING.info

November 2004

Bonjour Eric Rofès.

You've been known to me thru the reading of two of your books: "Reviving the Tribe" published in 1995, mostly concerned by the finding of solutions to re-dynamize the gay community in front of the AIDS epidemic ; then through "Dry Bones Breath" in 1998, in which you insisted on the utmost importance of the protease moment, and on the mandatory reconfiguration of the whole AIDS field. Your books have still not been translated in France, it is then necessary in the interview to point all the elements so that the French readers understand well what is it all about.

But at first, can you sum in a few lines when, why and how you've been involved into the fight against AIDS?

My AIDS work began as a gay activist in my twenties in Boston in the very early days of the epidemic, when I was the leader of the Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance (1982-1984) and organized the first massive rally and march in Boston to demand government response to AIDS, worked to put the epidemic on the political agenda of public officials in Boston, and crafted the first AIDS prevention brochure for Provincetown, a nearby gay-oriented resort.

I then moved to California where I was the executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center (1985-1988), a large service agency serving lesbians, gay men, and people with AIDS. In addition to overseeing our HIV prevention work focused on gay and bisexual men, and our medical, testing, legal, and counseling services to people with HIV, I also was a leader in the successful fight against the 1987 AIDS Quarantine Initiative, a statewide voter initiative written by Lyndon LaRouche which called for the isolation of people with AIDS in our state. During this time, I was a founding member of the Los Angeles AIDS Commission and also was the director of the 1987 National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference and National AIDS Forum in Los Angeles.

I was part of the historic June 1, 1987 protest at the White House that saw the national coming out of ACT UP, and was the co-chair of the WAR Conference, an emergency national meeting of gay and lesbian leaders to plot political strategy while we were facing an uncaring Reagan administration. I next moved to San Francisco to direct Shanti Project (1989-1993), a pioneering agency providing buddy support, transportation, and housing to people with AIDS and joined the b7oards of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Lesbian and Gay Health Association.

All this time, I was also a journalist, writing articles in the gay press focused on HIV/AIDS among gay and bisexual men in the United States. I wrote an important piece for OUTLOOK magazine in 1989 that was titled "The De-Gaying of AIDS" and this led me to study more energetically the effects of HIV/AIDS on gay men's communities in the United States. This led to my 1996 book Reviving the Tribe: Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic (Haworth), and my 1998 book Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures (Haworth). These days I am a professor at Humboldt State University here in California and teach community organizing and leadership skills, as well as courses in the fields of education, women's studies, and multicultural queer studies.

How do you envision the 25 years of the AIDS epidemic? Are there steps, changes in the paradigm of the disease?

Let me make clear that my focus and expertise has been on gay-identified men in the United States. From this perspective, I see the past 25 years as divided into several specific moments:

The Dawn of the Epidemic (1980-1984) when a new disease emerged in gay men's communities and our communities struggled between panic and denial, as we attempted to gain information about what was happening to us, educate our community, and create advocacy, service, and education organizations to respond to the epidemic. This was a period of mounting confusion and anxiety.

The Rock Hudson Moment (1985-1987) when the mainstream media and public officials in the United States first began to seriously grapple with AIDS and when gay and lesbian communities began to respond energetically to the epidemic by volunteering in AIDS care and AIDS prevention organizations, and attempting to influence public policy and legal responses affecting people with HIV such as the closing of bathhouses and the potential quarantining of people with AIDS. This was a period of intense fear.

The Crisis Moment (1988-1993) when gay men's communities in the United States experienced cataclysmic levels of death and destruction due to AIDS. These years saw the building and institutionalization of major AIDS service organizations, the inflow of large financial and human resources into the fight against AIDS, and the creation of an AIDS response infrastructure. This was a period of intense grief (i.e. the AIDS Quilt) and intense rage (i.e. ACT UP).

The Protease Moment (1994-1997) when important changes--including new treatments--forced gay men's communities to rethink their relationship to HIV disease. This era saw the shattering of a unified gay community response to the epidemic as (a) the disease became contained and manageable among many white gay communities as it was recognized as reaching crisis levels among gay men of color, (b) people with HIV began to have vastly different experiences with treatments and different understandings of what it means to have HIV, (c) a younger generation of gay men emerged with vastly different understandings and relationships to the epidemic as older gay men. This was a period of uncertainty, hope, and renegotiation of the ways in which gay men's communities responded to AIDS, understood what it meant to be infected and forged community sexual norms.

The Post-AIDS Moment (1998-2003) when mainstream gay communities backed away from an energetic and narrow focus on HIV and began to integrate AIDS as an ongoing and unremarkable feature of community life. HIV became understood as "chronic" and "manageable" among privileged gay men, as it continued to decimate communities of gay men with limited access to treatments (men of color, drug-addicted men, men living in poverty). During this time, the AIDS response infrastructure experienced shifts in funding and status, and many grassroots AIDS organizations restructured, merged, or closed their doors. The advent of the Bush administration brought censorship and narrowing of HIV prevention campaigns and sexual research projects. This was a period for many gay men of moving beyond AIDS and charting new life courses.

In Reviving the Tribe, you insisted, in a sociologic perspective, on the consequences in terms of mental health of the continuing AIDS epidemic among gay men. You insisted especially on the trauma of the death among circle of friends. At the time, the community was succumbing to the hecatomb and wasn't seeing a way out. Your book proposed then some tracks on how to revive the community .This trauma is directly linked to this hecatomb. And the hecatomb has had consequences regarding to mental health, which ones?

I believe that nations, cultures, communities, and populations that have certain extreme and intense collective experiences where their safety is threatened and their humanity is degraded--I'm thinking here of people who lived through the bombing of Hiroshima, Jews during the Holocaust, Africans brought as slaves to the United States--suffer bizarre forms of collective trauma. This is parallel to the experience of other traumatized populations--children experiencing repeated violence and abuse; women locked into marriages where battering and rape regularly occurs.

I think that many circles of men who identified closely with gay male community life experienced a tidal wave of loss during the first dozen years of AIDS. The losses most obviously included lovers, friends, and colleagues, but extended to losses of community rituals, spaces, symbols, and meanings. The intensity of living through those years had profound mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health consequences for many of us. These consequences included profound shattering of our social networks and life expectations, bizarre changes in our relationship to our health, bodies, and sexualities, and powerful and dramatic shifts in our emotions, including anxiety, terror, numbness, depression, ennui, rage, guilt, and shame.

By 2004, time has helped some individual men to heal and brought them back into the land of the living. Other men recognized the shattering that had occurred and sought help--spiritual guidance, mental health support, sexual healing--that shifted them into a better place. But many gay men who are still living today in my country remain shattered victims of the epidemic, their souls and lives profoundly damaged and distorted. In Reviving the Tribe I attempted to draw attention to this possibility and called for a major collective effort to revive, restore, heal, and redevelop gay communities in the United States.

You were amongst the few people whom we could feel they had a long term analytic vision. That's all the question of the acceptation and the integration of the epidemic in our lives, without staying in a passive state without fight or protest at a moment when the protease inhibitors weren't even there. For you, at the time, the fight was also on the long term too? Is this long term vision still necessary?

I have refused to accept that HIV disease must remain a permanent feature of gay men's communities. I believe HIV has done horrible things to gay men's ability to love one another, enjoy their erotic lives, and build community together. It has been as destructive as a terrible earthquake or a flood and it continues to present profound challenges to community building and community health and wellness. Yet, HIV is now firmly entrenched in our communities and will not disappear quickly or easily. This is why I have argued that we need to let go of "crisis moment" responses to the epidemic that may have worked in 1987, but are not working in 2004. Instead, I have argued that we need to pull our most knowledgeable people together to create a 100-year plan to reduce and eliminate HIV among gay men's communities. I believe some kind of long-term vision and some kind of plan to fight AIDS for the long haul is incredibly important and I have remained terribly frustrated that so few people have responded to this call. Clearly, simply repeating "Use a condom every time" does not amount to a thoughtful, planned response to HIV among gay men.

In '95, the new treatments weren't available and the question was to stand long enough, thru a regeneration of the community in particular. You proposed a regeneration of the gay community. In Europe, the use of this expression is a problem since WWII. You were thinking in fact on a necessary effort, a new vision in the community, because gays must integrate the realities of this epidemic that doesn't stop and have a larger project than AIDS, a project which would affirm life. We shouldn't be held in hostage by AIDS but also integrate its realities: "We Must De-AIDS Gay Identity, Community, and Culture".Is this regeneration truly necessary? Isn't it a return to pre-AIDS time, with a strong commercial scene, aimed on sex and no more? And don't you think it could drive down AIDS fight? Are your proposals still of actuality?

These are really good questions and I think about them a great deal. First off, my recommendations were not made for Europe, they were articulated as specifically made for U.S. mainstream gay communities. They emerged out of my research into the long-term effects that living under extreme conditions had on the human psyche and on community health. By 1990, it was clear to some of us that some men were already emerging form the bomb shelters, insisting on getting back to life rather than continuing to live within the crisis construct of AIDS. This led me into conversations with many people about what we might do to care for our community and to avoid self-destruction if the epidemic continued uninterrupted and without change.

I began to feel as an activist and as a person with great love for gay men, that we had to allow men--for their own mental health and well-being--to exit the state of emergency and return to the land of the living. This did not mean ignoring AIDS or pretending it wasn't there, but it did mean that it had to be okay for men to move forward with their lives and not remain captive to the epidemic. In Reviving the Tribe, I created a proposal for gay men's communities, that included both removing the intense AIDS-focus from gay community life ("We Must De-AIDS Gay Identity, Community, and Culture") and committing ourselves to an ongoing effort to care for the sick and prevent the further spread of HIV ("Community Commitment to Combating AIDS Must Continue"). I believe these can both occur simultaneously and that, in fact, for most gay men and gay male communities in the United States, this is precisely what has happened over the past few years. We no longer have the intense solo focus on HIV but we continue major efforts to fight the epidemic.

I think regeneration is very necessary for both individual men and for gay communities. Living in bomb shelters or in states of emergency for prolonged periods of time has terrible consequences. No one should demand that any community remain trapped in such states for long periods of time.

You ask: ? Isn't it a return to pre-AIDS time, with a strong commercial scene, aimed on sex and no more? And don't you think it could drive down AIDS fight?

First, gay men's cultures before AIDS were not "aimed at sex and no more." They were sites, of intense social and cultural development and community building. The decade that preceded AIDS, the 1970s, is now caricatured by some as only about sex and drugs, but that is not what an examination of history shows us. This was an amazingly creative and energetic period where millions of American gay men made profound changes in their lives and came together to create community practices, rituals, social structures, and organizations that had never before existed. It was a decade when men, despite facing incredible threats (violence, discrimination, social approbation, family exclusion), took incredible personal and professional risks in order to live authentically and build community with other men. To see the pre-AIDS era as "aimed at sex and no more," ignores the many tremendous contributions of gay men during that era to American culture and to gay community life.

Second, I think our efforts against AIDS will be damaged most heavily not by men integrating AIDS and moving forward in life, but by forcing legions of men to remain locked in a state of emergency. Not only will our organizing efforts be impeded by burnt out, continuously enraged, and self-destructive activists, but we will be unable to do the work necessary to plan long-term solutions to our problems.

On the recognition of this trauma and the reaction to your proposals, how have American gays reacted?

My sense is that my book Reviving the Tribe helped some gay men reframe the epidemic and rethink their relationship to AIDS activism. I know some men saw themselves in my discussion of trauma and took steps to initiate healing. The book created a huge amount of debate. Part of this is that during the 1990s one could not write about AIDS and avoid creating controversy, but part of this was that I was saying things that were seen as heretical by many colleagues in the AIDS establishment. I think one of the signs of trauma is that one feels very threatened by new thinking and new ideas and responds with anger and rage. Many of the AIDS books written during that period (1994-1998) provoked widespread controversy.

Do you think another form of trauma linked to AIDS and the HIV infection remains and has still consequences? Which ones? (I think about the ending of the hecatomb and I read in a recent canada survey that, at present time, less people know friend who died of AIDS. The trauma was caused by death of lot of friends. With HAART, things have changed, but is there again a trauma ?)

I need to think more about this question. Initially it makes me wonder if many of the people with HIV who embraced HAART didn't experience another huge life trauma when they were transformed from weak and dying people into more energetic and hopeful people living with a chronic disease. I'm not sure if this should be classified as "trauma" or whether something else isn't going on.

Fortunately, the HAART therapies came in, and you understand then the implications that result of the coming of the new molecules, and that a new paradigm is falling into its place. You are amongst the first to check out the end of AIDS as a crisis. What did it mean?

When saying AIDS is no longer a crisis to mainstream gay communities--these are communities in the United States that are primarily but not entirely white and middle-class--I am not saying AIDS isn't profoundly important and worth fighting. I am saying that the moment when gay men as a class authentically experienced AIDS as a crisis--when we were terrified, confused, and panicked--has ended. This does not mean that individual men do not move into a crisis stage, but, as a community, we think about and experience AIDS very differently in 2004 than we were in 1984. For those of us who lived through the crisis era, when we were going to funerals weekly, couldn't walk down the street in gay enclaves without seeing wheelchairs and men with canes, and opened up the pages of our community newspapers to dozens of obituaries, it is clear that we are living through a very different moment now.

For you, the time after the protease moment is a Post-AIDS era? What do you mean by that and how this time has evolved till now?

I think the Protease Moment initiated the Post-AIDS era in mainstream gay communities in the United States. By this I do not mean that people do not still become infected with HIV, or that AIDS no longer merits our attention and our energy. I am aware that other communities--include people of color communities in the United States and many nations in Asia and Africa--have now entered their own crisis moment. By "post-AIDS" I am suggesting that mainstream gay communities have moved beyond the "AIDS crisis" moment and into a different era that is even more confusing and challenging, but that reflects major shifts in our community's experience of living with HIV disease.

You questioned the relevance of the work of the organizations fighting AIDS in a chapter labeled "The Final Days of AIDS Inc." Some of these organizations are no more of use according to you, others should restructure themselves. Why?

I believe that AIDS Inc., which is an entire sector or industry that was created to combat the epidemic, is a collection of organizations, institutions, and rituals that are crisis-driven and that seem to need to be crisis-driven in order to do their work. I believe they are best focused on those communities that are currently experiencing their own "crisis moment" of the epidemic. I argued that in many parts of the United States, those organizations and rituals are properly based in communities of color (including communities of men of color who have sex with men) today, rather than in mainstream gay communities.

When they are focused on mainstream gay men's communities, they seem to use guilt and manipulation to try to pull gay men back into a crisis state. They are unable to comprehend that the bulk of gay men involved in community life--bars, organizations, rituals, dance parties, sex clubs--are not in a crisis state and have exited the bomb shelters. Because they are wearing glasses that are tinted with the "crisis lens" of AIDS, they react in problematic ways to gay male cultures, social organization, and sexual practices. I argued in the book--and I believe this has come true--that the components of AIDS Inc. will either have to restructure and rethink themselves in profound ways, or they will become less and less meaningful to many gay men and mainstream gay men's communities.

You proposed they evolve to integrate gay's health in a broader way than AIDS only, why?

In the United States, groups reported a sharp fall-off in participation in support groups and educational programs after 1992. Many of us at conferences wondered what we could do to grab the attention again of gay men, how we could again bring about strong and active participation. One group surveyed their participants and found a huge hunger for information about other health issues beyond HIV. When they started offering programming about other issues--prostate cancer, depression, sexually transmitted diseases--they found participation increase. We also realized that many other gay men's health issues affected whether someone remained uninfected--issues such as substance use, mental health, genital health--and other issues were involved in keeping positive men healthy. These days I feel the most effective work on HIV prevention doesn't even mention HIV, but is focused on sexual empowerment, personal well-being, and broader mental and spiritual health.

Being logical with your book, you organized a gay's health conference in 2000 in the Colorado. The gay men's health as a whole is not usually envisioned in France, where we stay usually focused on HIV. How did his conference develop? Did it reach your goals? How much further did the subject went after?

Yes, I've been part of discussions with people from Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States about the utility of promoting a "gay men's health agenda" that is broader than HIV/AIDS. I am not sure whether this would be effective in other countries, but in my country working under the rubric of "gay men's health" has opened up many new possibilities for our work with gay men and allowed us to tackle a range of issues that may related to HIV infection but are also independent of it--things such as crystal usage, syphilis, aging, the use of Viagra.

We have organized three national gay men's health summits thus far--2000 and 2001 in Boulder, Colorado, and 2003 in North Carolina. These summits have become places for people to talk about a range of health issues facing gay men but they have been especially important for people to work together to think deeply about HIV prevention and where we should be going right now. The largest summit drew over 500 people who were working to improve the health and wellness of gay men's communities. We're currently working on the next summit in October 2005 in Salt Lake City and people wanting information should contact us at gmhs3@aol.com.

There is right now in France a debate on the new forms of HIV infection prevention. Two schools are facing each other: on one side the associations which are standing on the all condom credo. on the other one, one of the major ones, AIDES, wants to broaden prevention under the risks or harm reduction angle. For example with slogan like "without condoms, use some lubricant at least", some information on the risk scale, the importance of the viral charge. What's your opinion?

I cannot speak for France because I do not know your local culture and history. All health promotion work must be rooted in local cultures and history. In my country, I believe the "use a condom every time" credo ends up causing more problems than solutions for certain populations of gay men, even while it might support and assist others. I do not think most gay men benefit from directive approaches to prevention--things that say "do this" and "don't do that." I think most men need information and support as they navigate through the pleasures and risks of sex.

This messages of risks reduction have been used in campaigns in UK by the GMFA (Enjoy fucking campaign) and the THT (Facts for Life campaign). Nevertheless, it seems there's no scientific studies on the effectiveness of risks reduction. Is this a way to explore all the same?

We do not have any studies that illustrate the long-term effectiveness of the condom credo either. I do believe we need to offer various approaches to gay men because different populations of gay men will benefit from different approaches. I do believe some gay men respond best to the directive, use-a-condom-every-time approach. At the same time I believe that approach may have contradictory effects on other populations of gay men.

We see regularly news on he relationship between crystal meth and risky behaviors. Do you think this link is that obvious? How to conciliate an homosexual society based on pleasure after the hecatomb and prevention? Do you think we have integrated a culture of risk or a culture of the management of risk?

I think people spend a HUGE amount of time and money trying to understand sexual behavior that they consider risky. They seem to think it is bizarre that gay men would ever have anal or oral sex without a condom (I don't think it is bizarre). So they find ways to "prove" that we have unprotected sex is because of (a) a lack of "self-esteem," (b) internalized homophobia, (c) depression, (d) the trauma caused by so much AIDS-related loss, (e) the fact that young gay men have not experienced any AIDS-related losses, (f) crystal use, (g) a death wish, (h) internet chatrooms (i) inaccurate assumptions that our partners are negative.

Most men, I expect, engage in unprotected sex because of the meanings they take away and the pleasures the act provides them. The act of getting fucked and having the sperm dumped in a condom may have very different meanings for a man than getting fucked and having the sperm shoot deep inside your butt. Like it or not, using a condom likely changes the meaning and the practice of anal sex in significant ways. For some men, the meaning and pleasure comes from having another man's sperm deep inside his ass. If you add a condom to the picture, that meaning and pleasure will not occur.

I want to say this next part carefully and respectfully. I am not sure I believe that using crystal causes men who otherwise would not get infected with HIV to become infected. Studies show correlation not causation. I know many newly HIV-positive men believe crystal is what caused them to seroconvert, but I am not sure I am convinced. My colleague Tony Valenzuela argues that the crystal epidemic has its roots in what is unresolved in gay men about AIDS. This makes me wonder whether the stresses, anxieties, confusion, and trauma of HIV--along with the havoc AIDS continues to wreak on gay men's identities--serve as a pathway into crystal use for many men. I wonder if all of the unresolved trauma that I write about in Reviving the Tribe might be a catalyst for crystal use.

What Tony wonders is whether positive men haven't figured out how "todo" the lives they didn't plan on living in the long term, especially while in this limbo between life sustaining meds and a cure. He argues, "We still, subconsciously, live as if our days are numbered, even with this reality of chronic but manageable. We all learned this grand lesson of living in the moment, understanding life could end tomorrow and so therefore cherishing today. But ironically, that is not a sustainable existence. I think positive men long to take life for granted. Seizing the day as this precious gift, indefinitely, is too much to bare. We're not wired that way."

This makes me wonder whether many gay men who are still uninfected experience different, but parallel, confusions and contradictions that moves some of them towards substance use. And whether the fact that AIDS is now endemic to gay male communities--as poverty is to many poor communities--brings with it the culture of AIDS that I discuss above, and hence drive substance use.

I think most Western societies are cultures of pleasure so I do not begrudge gay men their share of pleasure. I think gay men mostly have a culture of management of risk in the United States, despite the fact that most HIV prevention organizations seem to believe we don't. I think most gay men do a good job of negotiating their sex so that they maximize pleasure and minimize risk. And most of us do this without the support of our HIV prevention organizations. In fact, many of us do this despite the hurdles thrown in our path by HIV groups.

The 90's have been rich in authors and essays on AIDS. It has been the occasion of polemics you describe well in your book, on the responsibility of promiscuity or of the recreational drugs using in parties in the risky behaviors. You heavily criticize the founder of Act Up Larry Kramer, or Gabriel Rotello or Andrew Sullivan. My last visits to to gay bookshops in New York and Chicago have shown me some decadency in the gay or queer production, and a quasi disappearance of the books of thought about AIDS. Gay Light Bookstore is closed in NY city. What's happening? Are there new polemics?

I did critique Kramer and Rotello, but generally find Andrew Sullivan's writings on HIV/AIDS helpful and enlightening.

Yes, there was a spate of essays and books during 1995-2000 that could be seen as polemics about gay men and AIDS and there have not been many since that time. I think publishing houses recognize that there may not be a huge market for such books, that gay men's primary interests are focused elsewhere. At the same time, I think the conflicts that emerged during that period in the 1990s were not pleasant or fun for any of us. Gay men took sides in this debate and some long-time friendships were destroyed. This might also discourage people from diving into the wreck of AIDS writing.

Do you share the opinion of Mr Fierstein upon the culture of disease between gay men?

I greatly admire the theatrical work of Mr. Fierstein but I think his writings about this "culture of disease" are uninformed and I know they are unhelpful to our communities. He writes as if finger-wagging or guilt and shame are all we need to change sexual practices among gay men. I much prefer people admitting what many people within HIV prevention have admitted for almost a decade now: that since HIV has become broadly entrenched in our communities, we don't really know what to do to reduce or eliminate it from our community. It is my belief that the guilt and the shaming continue to drive the epidemic rather than reduce it. Such finger wagging might make Mr. Fierstein look like a good responsible gay man, but I don't believe it helps us fight HIV. Yet I must say, many people in my country believe that what Mr. Fierstein has stated is an important part of bringing down new infections and that more gay leaders should be speaking out in this way.

Right now we can see in Europe a few nasty bugs coming back like Shigellosis, LGV, Syphilis, even sexual transmission of VHC during hard relationships. Rotello had talked about them in his books when he was evoking the gay New York before AIDS, marked by a high prevalence of tropical diseases. to find all these illnesses roaming around, more or less benign, what does it make you think?

It makes me think we need to improve sex education and health education throughout our culture, and ensure that all people have access to quality medical care and free condoms. It also makes me think we need to work to reduce shame and guilt around sex, eliminate the laws that make specific types of sex illegal, and end the Puritanism that infuses our culture.

Is there something still to be done amongst gay men? Something new?

This is the question we have been asking for about 10 years in the United States. Most people answer it with simple answers and short-term approaches--new ways to market messages to gay men, as if social marketing were the entirety of effective health promotion. Or advocating for gay leaders to denounce those who have unsafe sex. I believe we need to move away from short-term solutions and look towards long-term approaches and I have been arguing that there are a few things we might do:

We might create a long-term plan to reduce HIV among gay men. By "long-term," I mean that we need to create a 100-year plan that aims to bring down the level of HIV in successive cohorts of gay men. I believe this will be a slow and gradual process, but that it will not happen without planning. The idea that we can stop HIV today among gay men if everyone just behaves themselves is naïve and unhelpful. I've dreamed of a series of long meetings that bring together some of our best researchers, activists, organizers, and theorists from many different disciplines and begins to envision a path forward. I called for this 10 years ago. Thus far, none of the powers that be in the United States have embraced this call.

We might initiate a major community-wide process of confrontation with the powerful effects that the epidemic has had on gay men's communities and cultures and face all the ways our lives have been damaged by the epidemic. This needs to be the first part of a larger plan for reviving and redeveloping the infrastructure of gay community and culture and focuses on community healing. It involves healing ourselves and our culture from the profound traumas of the crisis years.

We might engage in broader work that focuses on creating gay men's health movements that are intended to provide information and support to communities of men on a wide range of health issues and that understands the need to work towards the overall wellness of our subcultures and communities. This would be an activist movement focused on removing laws that oppress gay men, increasing sex education for all communities, and directing research funding to diverse technologies and treatments to reduce the spread of HIV.

On which issues are you working now? Why have you gone in another direction? What will be your next release?

I continue to work on gay men's health issues and contribute energy to building gay men's health movements in the United States. I am the program chair for the upcoming National Gay Men's Health Summit in October 2005 in Salt Lake City and I invite interested Europeans to consider joining in this event.

I have not "gone in another direction." I have been working on gay men's health issues since the 1970s when I wrote my first book looking at suicide among gay men and lesbians and founded several programs to support queer youth. My 30 years of community involvement has always included a major thread focused on community health and wellness. Through good times and bad times, when my work is popular and when it is unpopular, I continue to work for the health and wellness of queer communities.

You might think I've "gone in another direction" because many of my recent publications have focused on public schools and education reform in the United States. This has been the other major thread in my career, as during my activist years in Boston I worked as a teacher, school administrator, and child advocate. These days I work as a university professor and direct a program focused on educating elementary school teachers. I've recently published a book on charter schools, a recent school reform initiative in the United States. In the next year, I am publishing two additional books focused on reconceptualizing our work on gay and lesbian issues in education.

I'm currently writing two additional books, one is a social history of gay men's cultures in the United States from 1972-1983, the pre-AIDS decade of bathhouses, discos, and protests against Anita Bryant. I've been doing that research for 10 years. The other book is an organizing manual for queer activists and a personal memoir organized around 35 central incidents in U.S. queer activism over the past 30 years.

I have always intended to write the third book in the trilogy that began with Reviving the Tribe and Dry Bones Breathe, and have been keeping notes and files, but I won't have time to work on that project for another year or two. That book will focus on the nascent gay men's health movement in the U.S. and tackle some of the contemporary debates about barebacking, crystal usage, gay skinhead culture, and Internet sex.

Thank you, Dr. Rofes!