[2] It was founded to oppose both mainstream political measures to control sex, and elements within the gay community who advocated same-sex marriage and the restriction of public sexual culture as solutions to the HIV crisis.
[8] Giuliani had passed laws that made it harder for sex-related businesses to operate in central city areas, forcing many to close or relocate to the waterfront.
founder Michael Warner wrote, served to stigmatize sex and sexuality in ways that had negative consequences for public health efforts to combat HIV and AIDS.
[11] As well as mainstream politics, the group opposed the anti-promiscuity arguments of prominent gay rights campaigners Larry Kramer, Andrew Sullivan, Michelangelo Signorile, and Gabriel Rotello.
[12] Sullivan's arguments for marriage included the assertion that it was a good defense against the spread of HIV and AIDS; Rotello argued similarly that these diseases could not be eradicated so long as a 'core group' of gay men participated in risky sex.
[13] The organization's name references a concept used by historians to describe repressive measures against sex in the name of the public good; 'sex panics' in this sense have been documented since at least the nineteenth century.
[8] A Gay City News journalist, evaluating the group's role in the history of sex scandals through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, described the choice of name as an act of self-empowerment.
[8] Feminist authors Eva Pendleton,[7] Jane Goldschmidt of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,[7] and literary critic Ann Pellegrini[7] were also early members.
We are committed to HIV prevention through safer sex, sexual self-determination for all people, and democratic urban space.The group argued that the best response to sexual health crisis was to promote safer sex, and argued that approaches that contradicted the 'condom code' - the advocacy of barrier methods as the only sure protection - actually undermined efforts to curb the crisis by encouraging carelessness and hypocrisy.
[5] Sex Panic!, Kramer said, was "on the way to convincing much of America that all gay men are back to pre-AIDS self-destructive behavior that will wind up costing the taxpayer a lot of extra money.
Michael Warner had told The New York Times that "It is an absurd fantasy to expect gay men to live without a sexual culture when we have almost nothing else that brings us together".
Through the crisis, Andriote said, gay men had acquired a broader common experience than "a priapic brotherhood of sexual rebellion", offering an alternative grounds for a group politics of identity.
[18] Tim Dean called the group's criticism of Rotello and Signorile "utterly confused and defensive", but noted its significance in re-energizing AIDS debates and reviving the political argument over gay assimilation.
[7] Craig Rimmerman similarly praised the group's "invaluable contribution" to sustaining gay and lesbian grassroots activism and fighting "normalizing tendencies" in public discourse about sexual health.