By Karen Ocamb

Activist, scholar and educator Eric Rofes died of an apparent heart attack on June 26 in Provincetown, Mass. where he was writing his 13th book. He was 51.

"For more than 30 years, Eric was our movement's visionary," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, of the longtime NGLTF board member. “He pushed us to be better, to never lose sight of what our movement for liberation is all about, and to love each other, fight for each other, and celebrate our community."

Rofes, a Brooklyn-born Harvard graduate, co-founded the Gay Community News and the Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance in the 1970s. In 1985, he became executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center (LAGLC) where he opened the first HIV testing site in California.

An organizer of the 1979 March on Washington, Rofes served as Southern California co-chair on the “No On LaRouche” committee, helping defeat Prop. 64, which advocated quarantining people with HIV/AIDS.

“Eric dedicated his entire adult life to advancing the cause of GLBT health, rights and liberation,” said LAGLC Chief Executive Officer Lorri L. Jean. ”His impressive body of work… influenced GLBT leaders worldwide.”

Rofes resigned from LAGLC in 1988 and became co-executive director with Melinda Paras of the San Francisco Shanti Project, an AIDS group, until 1993 when they resigned under a financial cloud.

Rofes received his master’s degree from the University of California/Berkeley and his doctorate in 1998. He intertwined university teaching with LGBT scholarship and activism, including convening “Sex Panic” summits to consider how HIV prevention messages failed to incorporate the culture of gay sexual desire.

"Those of us standing up for sexual freedom are neither lost in a romanticized version of the golden age of the 1970s nor dick-hungry men who are selfishly seeking more power and more privilege,” journalist Rex Wockner quotes Rofes as saying during a 1997 NGLTF Creating Change Conference. “[Even] a cursory look at the histories of our movement will show that sexual liberation has been inextricably bound together with gay liberation, the women's movement, and the emancipation of youth. Among the most effective ways of oppressing a people is through the colonization of their bodies, the stigmatizing of their desires, and the repression of their erotic energies. We believe continuing work on sexual liberation is crucial to social justice efforts."

During the AIDS crisis Rofes expressed the unspoken feelings of many. “We fear that if we open up, we’ll never stop crying,” he wrote in Reviving the Tribe: Regenerating Gay Men’s Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic. After the miracle of protease inhibitors, Rofes wrote Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures, a title taken from Ezekiel 37 in the Bible that “captures a spirit of renewal that is sweeping gay male communities.”

After his Valentine’s Day 2004 marriage to partner Crispin Hollings was invalidated by the California Supreme Court, Rofes founded www.PerfectUnion.net, “where activists for democracy and marriage equality join forces.” A memorial will be held July 15 in San Francisco.