Scott O'Hara

Porn star and sex activist Scott O’Hara died from complications relating to AIDS on February 18 in San Francisco. He was 36.

O’Hara had a long history in the sex industry, stripping in clubs, posing for magazines, and acting in Gay porn movies. Between 1983 and 1988, O’Hara performed in over two dozen videos, including Below the Belt, In Your Wildest Dreams, and Head Over Heels. He stopped performing in adult films when he began battling AIDS.

But O’Hara continued to be an ardent writer and activist around sexual liberation, even as he struggled with lymphoma and Kaposi’s sarcoma.

At the March on Washington in 1993, O’Hara launched Steam magazine, billed as "the literate queer’s guide to sex and controversy." Not a porn magazine, Steam blended sexual culture and politics in new ways, bringing together guides to cruising spots with serious editorials and intellectual perspectives. Many of the Gay community’s most articulate sexual thinkers contributed to the quarterly journal, including John Preston, Eric Rofes, Michael Bronski, and Samuel Delaney.

When his publishing company, PDA Press, launced Wilde in 1995, O’Hara hoped to create a sort of Gay Playboy, blending erotic fiction and pictures with serious criticism and cultural coverage. But the advertisers never came to the new color glossy, and by 1996, PDA Press closed, folding both publications.

"We tried to get rid of people’s hang-ups about sex," O’Hara told The Washington Blade at the time, proud of his accomplishments even in the face of bankruptcy. "Along the way, I raised the level of professionalism in Gay publishing generally, and opened a dialogue on matters of sex."

Often drawing controversy for his stances - supporting public sex, sex without condoms, and the North American Man-Boy Love Association - O’Hara continued to write about sexual politics in publications like the Advocate and anthologies including Policing Public Sex. He published a collection of short stories called Do-It-Yourself Piston Polishing (For Non-Mechanics) in 1996 and his memoir, Autopornography: A Life in the Lust Lane, last summer.

O’Hara was also a longtime fan of musical theater. This January, Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco produced O’Hara’s own musical Ex-Lovers, for one month. The show closed four days before O’Hara died.

"For cruisers around the world, this will come as sad news," said Keith Griffith, O’Hara’s former business partner in PDA Press. "Scott used his fame from a porn career and his editorial bully pulpit at Steam to spread the gospel that sex is good and normal between consenting persons."

A memorial Web site has been set up at www.scottohara.com. Plans for a memorial service are currently being made, and will be posted to the Web site when they are finalized.

-- Wayne Hoffman