From The Ashes ...

In Defense Of Bathhouses

An effort to close Los Angeles’ bathhouses blames the clubs for all the unsafe sex, and that’s not fair or right.

By WAYNE BESEN - via New York Blade
Friday, July 23, 2004

NEW ATTEMPTS TO shut down or over-regulate Los Angeles’s bathhouses are highly discriminatory, encroach on personal freedom and will do little to slow the spread of HIV.

A recent study of L.A.’s bathhouses funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention shows that HIV infection rates among gay men who sought testing in bathhouses were double those of gay men tested elsewhere and seven times higher than HIV rates among the county’s general population.

Let’s be honest, bathhouses are not the healthiest environments. People who go and engage in risky behavior are either ignorant or crazy and are likely compromising their health for the pleasure of anonymous sex.

But there are a lot of other unhealthy behaviors in society that people engage in simply because they are pleasurable. Yet, no one is proposing over-regulation or an outright ban on these “vices”.

For example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is regularly photographed smoking cancer-causing cigars. Hollywood produces movies with glamorous stars smoking cigarettes, even though the CDC estimates that 400,000 people die prematurely each year from smoking.

More than 60 percent of Americans aged 20 years and older are overweight, with illnesses linked to obesity killing approximately 280,000 people a year. Yet, fast food chains are on nearly every corner.

The World Almanac says auto accidents killed 44,000 motorists in 2002, yet nearly everyone has a car.

IF THE HEALTH department is closing down bathhouses without taking drastic measures to eliminate these other risky behaviors, it is only fair to conclude that the crackdown is based on discrimination.

This discrimination is not of the traditional anti-gay variety, and even many gay-friendly politicians and gay leaders find bathhouses objectionable.

Still, bathhouses make for an easy political target to attack because gay men enjoying anonymous sex is not a popular pastime, such as ordering an artery clogging Happy Meal at McDonalds for the kids.

Even mainstream gay activists are loath to defend the baths knowing that right wing groups will distort what they say and falsely claim that gay civil rights groups endorse sex clubs.

But if you allow that there is no fundamental right to go to bathhouses, you must also allow that there is no fundamental right to smoke at cigar bars or pig out at Burger King.

THOSE IN SUPPORT of closing the baths like to point out that San Francisco closed its bathhouses in 1984. There is a strong argument to be made that this might have been the right move in 1984 because AIDS was a relatively new disease and a temporary state of emergency had to be declared to improve awareness.

I liken what San Francisco did to recalls of beef when a Mad Cow Disease scare occurs.

But times have changed and such drastic action is no longer needed. What we need is more education in these places. Every bathhouse should be equipped with condoms and lubrication, as well as a person from the health department offering anonymous HIV testing.

One bathhouse in Chicago goes a step further and sometimes offers the services of a mental health worker who can talk to people and help them make healthy, smart choices.

Instead of taking the wise route, the L.A. Department of Health is proposing new rules that appear to be intended to drive bathhouses out of business. The proposed restrictions allow the health department to close a club if patrons have unprotected sex.

Though well intended, this rule is as absurd as shutting down General Motors because a driver of a GM vehicle gets a DUI. Individuals, not clubs, can only be responsible for personal behavior. This rule is unfair to bathhouse owners, arbitrary toward patrons and wholly unenforceable.

Another proposed rule would allow health inspectors to regularly visit unannounced during peak hours. But that’s like L.A. sending a monitor into Wendy’s to tell overweight patrons, “You sure look fat, would you consider not getting a shake with your fries?”

In an editorial urging the closing of the baths the L.A. Times admits that the Internet makes containing HIV a more difficult challenge. Closing the baths will only result in a redistribution of the disease, not a reduction, as bathhouse patrons take their risky behavior to parks and the Internet.