Belief in the positive effects of behavior modification of youth at risk links Dan Gomes' and Matt Mutchler's essays, "'Sissy' Boys and 'Unhappy' Girls: Childrearing During the Cold War" and "A Safer Sex Liberation: Mapping an Emerging Culture." While in each case, the risks, strategies, and anxieties surrounding behaviors differ radically, separated philosophically as well as temporally, the fire which forges this link is homosexuality. The process that tempers the burning issue in each case history is the creation of a communal environment that renders (homo)sexuality safe. Gomes' analysis of child-rearing advice columns in American periodicals of the 1950s reveals the national(ized) phobia to keep the young safe from homosexuality, whereas in Mutchler's piece, the central concern is to keep young gay men safe within homosexuality, that is, to foster safer sex patterns to prevent HIV infection.

In the fantasy/denial/nostalgia world of post-War, Cold War America the beautiful, being well-adjusted meant adherence to strictly delineated gender roles. Being vigilant (which too often meant vigilante) for/against burgeoning homosexuality necessitated watching for signs, i.e., symptoms, of that deadly disease known as deviance: "sissyiness" in boys, "unhappiness" in girls.

Prevention is likewise worth a pound of cure (as if there were one in either case) against the present syndrome of deadly diseases, AIDS. Here, the deadliness is much more literal, the case much more serious. Anxiety over a child's possible "deviance" pales next to the black "plague" which has become a matter of life and death. The community project chronicled by Mutchler wastes no time in moral disputes over homosexuality; urgency demands it be accepted, dealt with, even worked with, to save the lives of those at risk. In this context, to be "well-adjusted" means to be comfortable enough about (homo)sexuality to address the problem of HIV and concomitant acts such as condom use, safer sex play, and peer communication.

The malfunction of gender role inflexibility has been recognized; countless studies have proved it causes as much anxiety as it assuages, even (if not especially) among heterosexuals. Nevertheless, its influence malingers to this day, fostered by willful ignorance, phantasmic nostalgia, and religious extremism, undermining the effectiveness of life-saving safer sex education. The community-building experiment described by Mutchler proved a success. Nevertheless, its funding was cut off, its potential as a breakwater against the rising tide of AIDS eroded by residual fears about gender that remain the legacy of the 1950s as elucidated by Gomes.