A Standards Issue, Period

Los Angeles County’s public health chief wants to license the county’s 11 gay bathhouses and sex clubs. Bathhouse owners want the Board of Supervisors to nix the proposal, which their well-connected lobbyist calls “extremely discriminatory” and a violation of the civil rights of gay men. That such a debate still goes on in the third decade of the HIV epidemic is unbelievable.

The regulation of bathhouses is not an assault on civil rights; it is a weapon against a public health crisis. A federal study in March found new HIV infections among patrons of L.A. County’s bathhouses and sex clubs to be twice as high as in the gay population overall and seven times higher than in the general population.

The study also found that 71% of bathhouse customers came to the whirlpool baths and small private rooms specifically to have anonymous sex, and more than a third used drugs such as methamphetamine that are often associated with unsafe sex.

San Francisco, no slouch when it comes to gay rights, recognized early on the link between anonymous sex, drugs and the spread of HIV. In the 1980s, its streets clogged with funeral corteges, the city shut down its bathhouses. On these pages we have advocated that L.A. County do the same. So far, the five supervisors, apparently afraid of any uproar, show no sign of doing so.

Licensing is a halfway measure, and tough to enforce. It would simply allow the county to yank a license if inspectors found that patrons weren’t using condoms. But the supervisors have not uttered a peep of support for even that, holding sex clubs to a lower health standard than nail salons, which are licensed.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county health director, has not let that deter his efforts to erase complacency about a disease that has infected millions worldwide. His campaign, by the way, does not discriminate by sexual orientation.

When four local sex-film actors tested positive for HIV earlier this year, Fielding called for a ban on unprotected sex in the production of porn movies, saying condoms were the sex industry equivalent of hard hats.

The gay-bathhouse owners and their lobbyist may be big spenders when it comes to political campaign contributions, but porn production in the San Fernando Valley is a mainstay of the region’s economy, and that hasn’t stopped Fielding from urging state lawmakers, who govern the regulation of working conditions, to mandate the use of condoms -- which, ironically, are already required by most gay porn productions.

At the very least, county supervisors should hold gay bathhouses to the same standards as gay porn films.