David Lourea

David Nachman Lourea (August 26, 1945 – November 10, 1992 ) was an American writer, AIDS activist, and bisexual rights activist.

Early life and education David Lourea was born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 26, 1945. He was raised Orthodox Jewish in Philadelphia, an antisemitic area at the time. Lourea later said his grandmother's encouragement to embrace his religion also made him more comfortable in his bisexuality, which he struggled with as a young man. He later earned a Ph.D. from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

Bay Area bisexual movement In 1973, Lourea and his wife Lee Olivier Lourea moved to the Bay Area seeking a bisexual community, where they met bisexual and sex-positive activists such as Maggi Rubenstein, Betty Dodson, Alan Rockway, and Lani Ka'ahumanu. He also became active with San Francisco Sex Information. Lourea and Rubenstein, along with other community activists, worked together to establish the San Francisco Bisexual Center, which opened to the public on September 23, 1976. The Center briefly operated out of Lorea's home in the North Panhandle neighborhood.

The Bi Center was heavily aligned with the sexual freedom movement, and offered a policy of inclusion, creating a space that was feminist, anti-classist, anti-racist, and trans-friendly. Its offerings included counseling and educational workshops on gender, bisexuality, and sexual health. While helping run the Bi Center, Lorea also worked as an elementary school teacher for San Francisco Public Schools. The group received national media coverage of its demonstrations near the 1984 Democratic National Convention, and pushed for bisexual visibility in politics by nominating Lani Ka'ahumanu as a vice-presidential candidate. He worked closely with Cynthia Slater to present safe sex education at bathouses and BDSM clubs.

Lourea continued his work as a sex educator throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s before his own death from AIDS complications.

Death and legacy On November 10, 1992, Lourea died at the age of 47 from to AIDS-related kidney failure. Author and organizer Naomi Tucker dedicated her book, Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions, to Lourea and his ability to inspire revolution.

Lourea's archival papers are held at the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center in the San Francisco Public Library.

Publications '"Beyond Bisexual," in Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, ed. Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaʻahumanu, Boston: Alyson Pub., 1991. "Psychological aspects of bisexuality. Psycho-social issues related to counseling bisexuals", in Bisexualities : theory and research, ed. Dr. Fritz Klein and Timothy J. Wolf, New York: Haworth Press, 1985, ; also published as Journal of Homosexuality, volume 11, numbers 1/2, spring 1985. "HIV Prevention: A Dramaturgical Analysis and Practical Guide to Creating Safer Sex Interventions" (with Clark L. Taylor), in Rethinking AIDS prevention : cultural approaches, ed. Ralph Bolton and Merrill Singer, Philadelphia : Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1992, , originally published in volume 14, numbers 2-4 of the journal Medical Anthropology.