The sex wars are back.

Remember the Sex Wars? Back in the Late '70s and early '80s, gay men and lesbians engaged in passionate debates over sexuality. Should we encourage or discourage promiscuity or monogamy? Is vanilla sex liberating or self-loathing? Are S/M and fisting healthy or self-destructive? Should gay people defend sex clubs and baths or are they exploitative and consumerist? Does being gay mean you have to endorse an anything-goes approach or that you ought to reject it? What about same-sex marriage? Or anonymous sex? Or even intergenerational sex?

We were inventing a movement and a community from scratch and trying to define what that movement stood for and what that community should be like. People who had lived in the sexual shadows for generations were suddenly free to construct our lives in ways that--at least theoretically--might lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

The sex wars were sometimes bitter, but they were also vital and immensely healthy. Then AIDS descended in the early '80s, and the sex wars ended, at least among gay men. Gay male sexuality was faced with a biological onslaught so dire that suddenly the question seemed not how to be happy but how simply to survive. We shifted to a different challenge: constructing a gay sexuality that would encourage people to use condoms and avoid infection.

By the mid 1990s, with AIDS a permanent part of the landscape, a few brave writers and thinkers began raising the old issues, this time in the context of AIDS. Walt Odets and Eric Rofes raised questions about basic happiness in the face of risk. Is survival itself the ultimate goal of gay men? Can sexuality be held hostage forever to the specter of HIV? Those voices encouraged questions by others. And now, suddenly, it seems the sex wars are back.

My book, Sexual Ecology, is often cited as having ignited the current controversy, but it is just one of many books and articles that have helped renew the debate. In the June issue of Poz, Stephen Gendin celebrates "barebacking," unprotected anal sex between HIV-positive men. In his book Life Outside, Michelangelo Signorile describes the destructive aspects of gym culture and drug use at circuit parties. In a Viewpoint column in the July 8 issue of The Advocate, Scott O'Hara endorses sexual risk taking. In New York City a group called Sex Panic! warns of a nationwide campaign against sexual freedom. In San Diego activists plan a national conference focused on these issues.

Echoes of this debate can be heard in town meetings, around dinner tables, in gay publications, and on the Internet. People have stepped forward to brave controversy and sometimes vilification to express opinions others are sure to hate. It's like old times, but this time with HIV in the mix.

The debate is fueled by events as well as activists. Promising new AIDS drugs have led some to believe the crisis is virtually over. Studies indicate a rise in risky sex, with participants often citing the new therapies as the reason they feel safer about being unsafe. Meanwhile, a growing number of people are developing multidrug-resistant strains of HIV, leading to the possibility of a recharged, untreatable epidemic.

The stakes are high: nothing less than survival and the form gay sexuality should take. As a result, some people fear debate so much, they seem determined to try to shut it down. Writers like Gendin and O'Hara have been stigmatized for advocating what some consider "irresponsible" positions. A smear campaign has labeled those like me, who consider ourselves sexual realists, "neocons" or "antisex AIDS activists" or even "turds." And, as with any debate, ego and personality play destructive roles.

Anybody who has read my book knows I passionately disagree with some of these opinions. I believe the scientific record indicates that the way we constructed gay male sexuality in the 1970s was guaranteed to lead to epidemics. Any rational discussion needs to take epidemiology into account. But nothing is resolved by silence. From where I sit (which is right in the middle) I see the new sex wars as a tremendously positive development, a sign that we are struggling to come to terms with the reality of sexually transmitted diseases and the imperative of sex and trying to make sense of both.

Where will it lead? Who knows. Maybe nowhere. Maybe people's sex lives are not much affected by talk. But one thing is certain: AIDS has now consumed more than half the time since Stonewall. We've been through a lot. We're still going through a lot. It only makes sense that we have a lot to talk about.