Review: Sex Positive

"Let me get this gay stuff out of my system." Richard Berkowitz (pictured above in both images) did not set to be an AIDS activist, or even to live openly as a gay man. He fully intended to meet and marry a woman, settle down, and raise a family, which would have pleased his liberal New Jersey Jewish Democratic family. Enrolling at Rutgers University in the early 1970s, however, changed his life.

Berkowitz's journey from college student to S&M hustler to safe sex advocate to gay community outcast is carefully chronicled in Sex Positive, a documentary by Daryl Wein that opens today in New York after a successful series of festival screenings. (Regent Releasing will open it in Los Angeles and Denver next week and in San Francisco on July 3.) Berkowitz is nearly forgotten today, despite co-writing two key texts that introduced the concept of "safe sex" and generated considerable controversy upon their publication.

Wein's film succeeds in reasserting credit to Berkowitz, virologist Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, and the late musician / activist Michael Callen for vigorously proclaiming that a promiscuous lifestyle increased the likelihood that gay men would contract AIDS. That message, initially delivered in 1982 and 1983 when the gay community was devastated by scores of deaths and little or nothing was being done by the government to research and try to cure or at least slow the spread of the "gay disease," got them branded as "anti-sex." Yet the three men asserted that a "sex positive" lifestyle could be enjoyed as long as certain safeguards were employed.

Those safeguards were explicitly explained in a pamphlet entitled "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach," which included chapter titles that might make a blue-haired lady of the day (or a middle-aged male film critic more than two decades later) blush. Before that, Berkowitz and Callen co-wrote an article, "We Know Who We Are," that laid out some of their concerns and warnings. When it was published by the New York Native, the editors added a sub-title, "Two Gay Men Declare War on Promiscuity," which is what really sparked the outrage and backlash, according to Berkowitz. Intent on trying to save lives, he spoke out as loudly and as often as he could, even if it meant debating more respected figures, such as writer / activist Larry Kramer.

The documentary is structured as a biographical portrait of Berkowitz, who is certainly a fiery, well-spoken, highly-quotable personality. Yet there's a nagging sense that he's holding back, that certain periods of his life are too painful for him to relate. Upon prodding from Wein, we begin to understand why Berkowitz is hesitant to talk about his long years working as a highly-paid S&M dominant or the unspecified period of years that he lost to his drug addiction. He's been harshly criticized in the past for both activities, so why open himself up again, especially when they deflect attention from what he considers are the more important issues?

Unfortunately for the film, Berkowitz's reticence weakens the construction of the central narrative. Without knowing too much about what happened to him after those first, controversial years in the early to mid 80s, the story loses its momentum. Reference is made to Michael Callen's activism and the many organizations he created or supported through a brief montage, and an interview with his partner, Richard Dworkin, is featured, but he remains a supporting player.

Likewise Dr. Sonnabend, a physician born in South Africa who first met Berkowitz when he was a patient at the private clinic for sexually transmitted diseases that Sonnabend established in Greenwich Village in 1978. Sonnabend talks about various aspects of the disease and his "multifactorial" model of AIDS, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom at the time and is still (evidently) generally discredited by the medical community at large, but it seems like he should play a bigger role in the story.

As it is, the doc builds up a decent head of steam that is somewhat dissipated when Berkowitz leaves New York for Miami in the mid-80s. He had become frustrated with the ignorance, apathy, and outright opposition that he, Callen, and Sonnabend continued to encounter, and felt that he needed to get away for a while. When he returned to New York, he also returned to his S&M work, but now insisting on safer methods of satisfying the sexual needs of his clients. Meanwhile, Callen and Sonnabend continued their activist and medical / research work, respectively.

Somewhat lost in all of the genuine angst that Berkowitz suffered is how and why the safe sex message was finally adopted and co-opted by the government and public health officials. Bringing things up to date, the doc points out that HIV infection rates have risen dramatically in recent years among young people. Why hasn't safe sex education worked? Several interviewees take stabs at answering that question, without coming to a satisfactory conclusion or pointing the way to improved education.

Sex Positive accomplishes the goal of giving proper credit to the inventors of safe sex. Perhaps the doc will help open eyes to the bigger question that's still looming: After all these years, why isn't everyone doing it safely?