This study tells how one community-based initiative - Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York - overcame the obstacles of homophobia and fear of AIDS by organizing groups of volunteers who "bear witness" to the suffering of people with AIDS. The book explores the gay community's response to AIDS, examining the relationship between personal motives for volunteering and the broader political, social and religious contexts in which people with AIDS have been largely abandoned. The author is both a sociologist and a volunteer at the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

BEARING WITNESS IS A STORY ABOUT HOPE, a statement of faith in the human spirit. By dint of circumstance, it is two stories rolled into one. On the one hand, it is the tale of how volunteerism became the most necessary and reliable response to the political problems caused by AIDS and, on the other, it is a chronicle of how the gay community mobilized itself in the service of transformation to contain and resolve the social, psychological, and spiritual issues that the disease raised.