This collection of essays offers a wide-ranging examination of the place of AIDS in gay activism, literature, film, news reporting and gay culture. The contributors stress the connection between language and moral responsibility.

Chicago's War on Syphilis, 1937-1940, offers valuable lessons to those struggling to deal with today's AIDS epidemic. The Chicago Tribune, one of the first newspapers to discuss the disease, followed daily developments, including a new pre-marital testing law, court-ordered screening of selected individuals, creation of testing stations in city parks, and the steadily rising count of those tested for it. The time was the late 1930s, however, and the disease was syphilis. The Chicago Syphilis Control Program was launched in 1937, an important part of the U.S. Public Health Service's nationwide...