Strong on the Law : Reason Should Rule

Los Angeles County may be going the way of New York City. Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum has asked county health officials and lawyers to study whether and how to close down gay bathhouses as a means to combat AIDS.

Before the county follows New York in moving to close the bathhouses, it should ask itself whether in fact closing the baths would reduce AIDS. The City-County AIDS Task Force thinks the bathhouses can be used to spread the word on what practices conducive to AIDS should be avoided. In the past the Task Force and county health officials argued, as did their counterparts in New York, that closing the bathhouses would do no good because the activities there would simply move to other places. (They cannot be closed on grounds other than health because the practices engaged in are legal for consenting adults.)

The whole of recorded history tends to support the point of view of the health and AIDS officials. Powerful sexual drives can sometimes be diverted but rarely stopped.

It may please politicians to engage in the pretense of action, and to look as if they are resolutely opposed to promiscuous homosexual sex, but AIDS is too serious to be trifled with this way. If closing the baths will do little or nothing to stop the spread of AIDS and if keeping them open may do some good in changing sexual practices, then does not reason dictate not closing them? The bathhouse issue in any case is marginal in the battle against AIDS. The priorities are public information, treatment of the sick, and, especially, the search for prevention and cure.