It may seem very odd to some of us that 43 years ago Dr Charles Silverstein felt the need to compile. The Joy Of Gay Sex.  But back in the 1970’s sex education was both sparse and very straight. After all in the UK, homosexuality wasn’t legalised until 1969 ,  so no one had  felt it  necessary to try and teach gay men how to get laid, and what to do when they did hook up. 

Silverstein and his co-author, celebrated gay novelist Edmund White (who was therapist client of Silverstein)  wanted the book to be more than a mere clinical textbook. So they included a how-to guide with chapters on blowjobs, cruising and dirty talk, a gay Kama Sutra with suggested sex positions like “the crab”.

They  included chapters covering potentially controversial subjects include fisting, JO clubs and watersports, way before these fetishes even turned up in gay porn.

To ensure it was sexually stimulating the  explicit illustrations were styled after popular sex comics of the time. However having drawings of erect penises, willing bottoms and group scenes got the book banned in libraries and bookstores across North America and England.

But probably the real importance of the Book for the LGBTQ community at  the time was that it provided a lot more than just sex tips. The Joy of Gay Sex  was alone  in providing a social education to help gay men deal with complex psychological and social issues

The original edition is now out of print, Silverstein and gay novelist Felice Picano released a second and third edition in 1992 and 2003. By 1992, the HIV epidemic had made the book’s creators reexamine the importance of celebrating gay sex in an age when anal sex could kill you, and by 2003, the internet had replaced the need for the book at all.  

The Joy of Gay Sex is an important part of our history of the development of the LGBTQ  community …. and we wish it a Happy 43rd Birthday