On Nov.16, eight men gathered in a brightly-lit room in the evening, which was set up classroom style, with desks, chairs, and computers. Each man sat in front of his own computer, but it was not a conventional lecture. They were at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center on Market Street, learning about gay online cruising, and how to be safer doing it in a course called “You’ve Got Male.”

“We’re going to talk about cruising online, and provide you with hopefully at least a small set of tools that will make cruising a little bit easier, a little more pleasurable,” said the evening’s facilitator, Michael Scarce. “And hopefully reduce some of the risks and headaches and hassles that are often associated with finding sex online.”

The course is done through the STOP AIDS Project, which uses community-based programs to help prevent the transmission of HIV through the San Francisco gay and bisexual male community on a new type of frontier: Internet hook-ups.

The project’s work encompasses different types of programs, such as Condoms Now, which uses 90 businesses throughout the city to distribute free condoms to gay and bisexual men, and Our Love, which focuses on gay and bisexual black men. Now they are turning their attention on what has been dubbed “The Bathhouses of the New Millennium,” by conducting research, “You’ve Got Male” courses, and grassroots outreach.

“Doing online outreach with gay, bi, and trans men in particular, because that's such a new field, there is a great deal of unexplored terrain,” said Scarce, who is also the program’s Internet Intervention Coordinator. Scarce is working with the Centers for Disease Control on developing national guidelines for doing Internet-based outreach with regards to HIV.

One option Scarce has explored involves what is known as the Gay Men’s Hankie Code. The system was popular in the 70s, and, according to Scarce, is now mostly used within the leather, S&M communities. The code is a system of color-coded handkerchiefs, whose color and position on the body symbolizes what type of sexual interests a gay or bisexual man is looking for.

“So, if you’re a fisting bottom, you might wear a red hankie in your back right pocket,” Scarce explained. But because gay men tend to be visually oriented, and don’t spend much time reading text on cruising Web sites, they sometimes end up in less-than-desirable situations, he said.

“They end up in situations, like they might be in recovery, and they might find someone who is offering them a glass pipe or something,” Scarce said. “If they had the forethought, they would not have been there, and yet, here is this immediate temptation that might trigger them to do something they wouldn't have ordinarily done, had there been more clarity or communication.”

Scarce said a digital hankie code could be implemented so a user’s photo could be uploaded with a visual symbol of what his sexual preferences are.

Social marketing – the dissemination of information via a media-savvy way – and CD ROMs handed out during the Castro Street and Folsom Street Fairs have also been ideas Scarce has thought of during his two-months in the position.

“Another idea I had was to approach a number of the public computing sites around the city that are frequented by gay men, whether it's the San Francisco Public Library coffeehouses in the Castro, and … maybe just putting a customized desktop wallpaper, with our message on all those machines,” Scarce said. “Or to set the default browser or homepage to have people automatically go to a site we've engineered to get them to think about their health and decision making.”

Although the STOP AIDS Project is venturing into a somewhat newer territory, it’s not the first to be concerned about the Internet. The Bay Area Young (BAY) Positives program, which works with HIV-infected gay youths, has done Internet outreach since 2002, according to program director, Catherine Toyooka.

Still, there is a need for the type of outreach the Project provides, according to Scarce, who acknowledged that Internet hook-ups are inevitable, and that education is more effective than abstinence promotion.

Kevin Roe, a community organizer with gay cruising site, Magnet, agrees.

“Magnet is probably one of the premiere online cruising sites in the Castro, and from our standpoint as long as men (a) know their HIV status and talk with other people about that, and (b) their other STD statuses, have the info and proper treatment and testing, go for it,” Roe said.

While SF State’s Queer Alliance does not have specialized Internet outreach programs, there is a clear need for them, says QA alumnus, 20-year-old art major, Jordan Green.

“I think it’s very effective way of reaching a population that wouldn’t be reached by a traditional ad or campaigning method,” he said.

The club has already began crossing the Internet divide by setting up accounts with established communities such as MySpace and Yahoo.

“We don’t really talk about hooking up online,” said biochemistry major Vi Le, 20, the secretary, CFO and vice director of QA. “Our group is more a social group, so we just talk about what’s going on in our lives.”

But Scarce is hoping STOP AIDS can shift focus to those who are risking their health by online hooking up, and can help reduce these risks.

“[The program] is about enabling men to make informed decisions, not just in terms of health and whatnot, but in terms of information on who they're going to meet and what they really want,” Scarce said. “So, that's our goal.”