Background
Berkowitz was born to Jewish parents and raised in New Jersey, where he attended Rutgers University in the mid-1970s.
Berkowitz was born to Jewish parents and raised in New Jersey, where he attended Rutgers University in the mid-1970s.
The award-winning 2008 documentary Sex Positive directed by Daryl Wein is about his life and activities. While in college, he organized what he believes was the first gay rights protest in the state, demonstrating against an anti-gay effigy hung by the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. After college, Berkowitz moved to New York City in 1978 or 1979, earning a living as a self-described South&M hustler.
Even before Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was recognized as a syndrome, Berkowitz became concerned about protecting his clients, many of whom were married, from sexually transmitted diseases.
He met physician Joseph Sonnabend and became a patient, learning from Sonnabend the practices for risk reduction that would later become known as safe sexual These claims were considered controversial by early leaders of Gay Men"s Health Crisis, such as Larry Kramer, and many activists took issue with the language of their message and its implications.
The 1983 pamphlet How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach by Callen and Berkowitz (in consultation with Sonnabend) is widely considered the first sex-positive guide to practicing safe sexual Berkowitz tested positive for Human Immunodeficiency Virus in 1984 but was able to avoid taking any anti-viral drugs until 1995.
The film was released on Digital Video Disc in June 2010.