Safety in Numbers

In the early 1980s, gay men pioneered safer sex campaigns long before governments responded to the threat of AIDS. Rates of HIV transmission were drastically reduced through this successful health-related behaviour change. Gay men, however, remain the group most affected by AIDS. The challenge to health educators is to understand the early success, and to learn new strategies to prevent a second wave of the epidemic in the 1990s. This book presents an account of the accumulated knowledge in safer sex education for gay men, and analyzes HIV prevention strategies. The book also features a debate around the professionalization and "de-gaying" of AIDS education and the controversial struggle to refocus on gay men as a priority group for AIDS educators.