Several weeks after the release of "Sexual Ecology", a new activist group called "Sex Panic! "was formed in New York City, in part to combat the book's agenda. In an interview in "LinguaFranca" founding members Gregg Gonsalves, an AIDS activist, and Michael Warner, an English professor, described how "Sex Panic!" arose during a meeting of a support group for HIV-positive men.""We had our support group," Gonsalves says, "and at the end, it moved to talking about Gabriel Rotello's new book, and we all got sort of exercised about it.” "We were just sitting around and talking about how depressing it was that we kept hearing these stories about bars being closed," says Warner. "And then we kept turning to the gay press, and instead of seeing coverage about this or resistance to it, we would see these reactionary screeds by Rotello and writer Michelangelo Signorile." Says Gonsalves, "And we thought, why don't we do something about this?" Gonsalves recruited among grassroots activists, and Warner, along with art critic Douglas Crimp recruited scholars. About fifty people showed up at the first Sex Panic organizational meeting in late May.” ""Sex Panic!’s" name was derived from the work of late gay historian Allan Bérubé, who described historical ‘sex panics’ as “moral crusades that lead to crackdowns on sexual outsiders.” The contention was that "Sexual Ecology "and" "other works by gay writers such as Michelangelo Signorile, Larry Kramer and Andrew Sullivan were encouraging a governmental backlash against gay sexual freedom and contributing to a crackdown on New York City gay bars and sexual venues.