This is incredibly sad news. While most psychotherapists make my blood curdle -- particularly when it comes to sex politics -- Shernoff was one of the good guys. He worked hard and asked difficult questions since the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Sadly, he was diagnosed in March 2006 with pancreatic cancer, and lost his battle with the disease last Tuesday.

If you're unfamiliar with his work, see this interview he did with The Advocate in 2006 about his last book, Without Condoms. I love this quote from that interview, which sums up his approach to "risky sex" and gay men:

It’s important for me to meet patients where they are at. Good therapy provides curative emotional experiences. I don’t need to act like a nonapproving parent. With patients who have developed drug problems, I needed to advocate a harm-reduction approach if the patient in question wasn’t ready to stop using. I decided to apply that same approach to men who engage in unsafe sexual behavior so that I wouldn’t run the risk of alienating them or driving them away from my office. If I shake my finger at them and try to tell them what to do, the patient feels judged and infantilized. A harm-reduction approach doesn’t eliminate harm all together, but it can help the individual make certain choices that reduce the risk to himself and to the broader community should he choose not to use condoms during sex.

Losing another good guy from his generation is.... :(