Exactly 25 years ago today, federal officials warned gay men that five homosexuals in Los Angeles had contracted a rare form of pneumonia. Soon known as gay cancer, the disease that became AIDS was largely spread (in those early days at least) by the promiscuous, sometimes drug-fueled, casual sex found in places like bathhouses. In these places, a generation of young men contracted the disease that would ultimately kill tens of thousands of them, and many millions of others around the world.moreless