David Nachman Lourea (August 26, 1945–November 10, 1992) was an American writer, AIDS activist, and bisexual rights activist.
He was raised as Orthodox Jewish, and was openly bisexual.
In 1967, he earned a B.F.A. from Temple University; he later earned a Ph.D. from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. He was involved with San Francisco Sex Information after moving to that city in 1973, and was one of the early members of the San Francisco Bisexual Center (which was active from 1976 to 1985). In 1981, he and Cynthia Slater "presented safer-sex education workshops in bathhouses and BDSM clubs in San Francisco." In 1984, he finally persuaded the San Francisco Department of Public Health to recognize bisexual men in their official AIDS statistics (the weekly "New AIDS cases and mortality statistics" report), after two years of campaigning. Health departments throughout the United States began to recognize bisexual men because of this, whereas before they had mostly only recognized gay men. He was also one of the founders of Bisexual Counseling Services.
He died in 1992 from kidney failure associated with AIDS.
The David Lourea Papers, 1940–1992, are held at the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center in the San Francisco Public Library.
Childhood and Adolescence (1946 - 1964) David Lourea grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which was very antisemitic area in the 1950's, and confessed to feeling "terrified" of his bisexuality as a young man as he didn't know what it meant and never heard the word bisexual until he was 26 years old. David said he "Learned to become comfortable with his bisexuality through his religion" thanks to his grandmother's encouragement. "My grandmother taught me its okay for me to be Jewish even though the rest of the world doesn't think that, which made it easier to get that I'm alright for being a minority within a minority, although I don't think my grandmother was trying to make me feel better about being bisexual" - David Lourea in "Bay Area Bisexual History: An Interview with David Lourea" Bisexual Politics, Tucker 1995
Bay Area Bisexual Movement (1973 - 1984) In 1973 David who was also a teacher and his wife Lee moved to the bay area as they were seeking a bisexual community stating "If a bi movement was going to happen, it would begin here." - David Lourea
David and Maggie Rubinstein began working together after a meeting in her attic in 1973. David worked with Maggie Rubinstein to create the San Francisco Bisexual Center, which coincidentally opened its doors to the public on September 23, 1976. (23 years later bi activist Micheal Page would unknowingly pick this same day to create Bisexual Visibility Day in 1999)
The team was hopeful that they could gain acceptance in the gay and lesbian community they felt that they would appear be non-threatening, and that would be enough. Unfortunately this was a time when the "Bisexual Chic" fad was happening causing an uphill battle as the bisexual center hosted all sorts of events and workshops on gender to exhibitions, and performances. Their membership spiked from 150 members to 450 quickly due to media exposure from fighting the Briggs initiative.
The Briggs Initiative disallowed gay and lesbian teachers from working in public schools in California. Laws like The Briggs Initiative don't exclusively discriminate against gay people however. David was himself a preschool teacher so this directly affected his life as "obviously bisexuals don't get half of a job, they get fired." Homophobes don't half love bisexuals as the general consensus in either the gay or straight communities has been the only "good bisexual is a closeted bisexual."
The bisexual center team was made up of quite a few political radical bisexuals and believed In a policy of inclusion of all human rights were important to them, they were feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, anybody who identified as a woman had the right to be there so a lot of transgender people started coming to the bi center. The bi center even ran ads in transgender magazine's about gender workshops such as in the February edition of "The Gateway" Vol 2, 1980"There were a lot of transvestites and transsexual who came to the bi center because they knew they weren't going to be turned away because of the way they dressed" -David Lourea