In his book, Surviving AIDS

Introduction

It was midnight, Friday, June 27, 1969 and New York City's finest were preparing to raid a gay bar at 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Patrons were being led out into a warm and festive atmosphere (as if in celebration of the life and death the previous day of Judy Garland, a gay favorite)-until the paddy wagons arrived. As the police got rough, one self-proclaimed "bull dyke" punched a cop and knocked him out cold. Then all hell broke loose. That night and the following saw melees unlike anything before-gay men, lesbians, transvestites, and bisexuals-all had taken arms against a sea of troubles. These were the Stonewall Riots by some and the Stonewall Rebellion by most gay historians.

A sea change is what it was; from that time forward gay sexuality was in the open-the fast lane became crowded. Where gay men had assumed fixed classical roles, as in anal intercourse where one partner was always dominant and the other always submissive, they now freely interchanged roles and relished it. Sex clubs, bathhouses, and meat racks were all open and thriving. A typical visit to such establishments resulted in an average of 2.7 sexual encounters. Many, if not most, were anonymous. Sex with multiple partners (as in many hundreds and even thousands) was the norm; abstinence was unheard of. Oral-genital, oral-anal, genital-anal, etc., nothing was barred. Fisting, rimming, water sports, you name it. What had been closed groups of sexual partners broke down, as they shared experiences with partners from beyond the small circles of their friends. Anonymous sex was everywhere. Sado-masochism and leathers were all the rage.

As the rate of casual sex skyrocketed, so too did the rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Gonorrhea reports tripled and syphilis reports quadrupled between 1965 and 1975. On August 27, 1976, the CDC reported two cases of penicillin resistant gonorrhea, called PPNG, for penicillinase producing Neisseria gonorrhea. By October there were ten more cases. Even as far away as Liverpool, England, 40 cases were reported. One third of all new cases were coming from service men returning from the Philippines. By May 1977, PPNG had been detected in seventeen countries and the US had 150 cases, most in New York City. Not only PPNG, but herpes simplex II, HSV-II, and new strains of gonorrhea and syphilis were running wild.

Gay men were especially susceptible to these new classes of STDs. Entamoeba histolytica, normally a third world infection, was being commonly found in the bowels of gay men who lived in the fast lane. The general name for this was Gay Bowel Syndrome.

In his book, Surviving AIDS (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), pop singer Michael Callen wrote,

I calculated that since becoming sexually active in 1973, I had racked up more than three thousand (emphasis added) different sexual partners in bathhouses, back rooms, meat racks, and tearooms. As a consequence I also had the following sexually transmitted diseases, many more than once: hepatitis A, hepatitis B, non-A/non-B hepatitis; herpes simplex Types I and II; venereal warts; giardia lamblia and entamoeba histolytica; shigella flexneri and salmonella; syphilis; gonorrhea; nonspecific urethritis; chlamydia; cytomegalovirus (CMV), and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) mononucleosis; and eventually cryptosporidiosis