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In 1969, the Stonewall riots in New York City sounded the opening bell of the Gay Pride movement in America, and for many gay men it offered an opportunity to come out of the closet and live their lives in the open for the first time. As the gay community sought to define itself, it's not surprising that sex, once furtive and approached with no small amount of fear and shame, suddenly became openly and publicly celebrated and sought after, and in a handful of American cities, the gay scene became the center of a wildly celebratory orgy that lasted until 1981, when the discovery of AIDS led many men to reexamine their sexual habits. Filmmaker Joseph Lovett, himself a gay activist who produced one of the first major investigative stories on AIDS to be broadcast on American television, interviewed a number of men who survived the '70s for his documentary Gay Sex in the '70s, which offers a sometimes witty and sometimes rueful look back at the discos, bathhouses, underground clubs, and gay-friendly resorts which dominated the social and sexual scene of the day, as well as the stories of the men who sought to declare their new identities through sex.
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