Movie Documents Three Men's Efforts to Promote Safe Sex During Onset of HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Early 1980s

The Los Angeles Times examined the documentary movie "Sex Positive," which chronicles the lives and efforts of three men who sought to promote safe sex during the early years of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. According to the Times, late singer-songwriter Michael Callen, activist Richard Berkowitz and Joseph Sonnabend, a virologist and personal physician of Callen and Berkowitz, together "actually invented the notion of safe sex." With professional guidance from Sonnabend, in 1983, Callen and Berkowitz co-authored "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach," the "first document to identify and advocate 'medically safe sex,' which encouraged condom use" along with other practices, the Times reports. "Sex Positive" will debut in theaters on Friday (Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 6/14).

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