"The conference was titled Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges: New Strategies for Preventing HIV Infection Among Men Who Have Sex With Men," he says, "and I gave a talk addressing these issues as I have outlined them in previously written works."

Signorile discussed what he insists are "ugly and exclusionary practices of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force regarding the current debates about gay male sexuality and HIV prevention."

Authors Signorile, Gabriel Rotello, and Larry Kramer, are considered by opponents--because of their views on free wheeling sexual expressions--to be among the leading spokespersons for an ideological rift in the gay movement. Their views have been labeled by some as neo-conservative and they stand accused of promoting, in the wake of the AIDS crisis, a "New Puritanism."

The author, also a columnist for OUT magazine—tours on behalf of his latest book, Life Outside. He says "We should all be concerned and appalled when one of our own national groups attempts to censor points of view in the community"

He complains:

"Six months has now passed since attacks began being launched on myself and others regarding our points of view in the sexual debates--and the attacks continue to come, furiously. However, most of the attacks on my book Life Outside and on other current writings by gay authors are not being made as way to engage a discussion--they're in fact being made in order to shut down discussion. For there have been two lines of attack in response to my book and the works of other writers.

"One has been the name calling and the demonizing and the distorting of our positions--as well as even more extreme measures, such as the stuffing of hate literature into our books in bookstores by organized groups opposed to us, and the posting on telephone polls of fliers attacking us. This has often been done as a way of diverting attention from the issues themselves, sometimes even attempting to focus attention on alleged government repression and, in a grand conspiracy theory, claiming that the works are responsible for bringing on that alleged repression.

"The other line of attack has been a censoring of points of view, literally silencing our voices from discussion in an attempt to present what the perpetrators see as the only "correct" side of the argument. In this regard, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is in a couple of weeks holding its Creating Change Conference in San Diego, and many of the people who have attacked me and others will be organizing panels there. And NGLTF, which should be the forum where the debate takes place, whose conference should be a safe environment in which an open and balanced discussion of the issues takes place and where all the sides are represented, has been completely co-opted by one side.

"In addition to having created several one-sided panel discussions on specific issues, NGLTF is hosting a town meeting as a sort of overview of these issues. The town meeting will kick off the Creating Change Conference, and the title clearly indicates their bias: "Sex Panics—the New Puritanism."

Initially, I was told that the town meeting was being put together in order to provide some 'balance' on the issues. One of the organizers told me she was interested in having Gabriel Rotello, myself and others on the panel. She never called me after that, however, and when I called her six weeks later, she feigned ignorance of our discussions and told me that she wanted to keep the panel small. She said they had one person in mind already, someone opposed to my and others' ideas, and they wanted just one other person on the panel. But, she said, they felt that person should be from the Midwest, so that the town meeting panel and the discussion were not dominated by the points of view of people from the coasts. After a runaround, and after I pointed out the unfairness in her exclusion of particular points of view, she reluctantly asked me to be on the panel as a third person, but by then it was too late and my schedule was booked. She clearly made no attempt to get someone else who might share my point of view--and there are plenty of people to choose from.

"I've now seen the line-up for the town meeting panel, sent out in a press release. It's not two people anymore. It's suddenly four people--all of whom are on the same side of this issue, and I can assure you that it's not the side of the issue that I am on. And all are from the coasts—three from the Northeast, one from San Francisco. So much for her claim that she had to keep the panel small, limited to two, and had to get someone on it from the Midwest.

"So not only has a particular point of view been cut out--censored from a discussion that was supposed to create dialogue and supposedly present both sides of the issue--but all of YOU, people from the Midwest, people who have a lot to say about this debate, have been cut out too. It's once again a discussion among people on the coasts, people with no opposition to their ideas, with no one to offer a different perspective from theirs. So much for 'dialogue' at NGLTF's Creating Change Conference."

Sex Panic, a group which opposes "The New Puritanism", is holding a simultaneous San Diego conference at which attendees at the NGLTF Creating Change conference are expected to double as visitors.