L.A. Gay Panel Favors Closure of Bathhouses

In a surprise action, influential gay leaders in Southern California on Sunday called on the owners of homosexual bathhouses to voluntarily shut down their businesses, citing the baths’ possible role in spreading AIDS.

Directors of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles, a gay-oriented political group whose members include some with political ties to Mayor Tom Bradley and former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., said the sexual activity that occurs at bathhouses is just a small part of the problem but needs to be halted anyway because of the rising AIDS toll.

In San Francisco and New York, some large gay groups have backed legal moves to restrict the baths. But MECLA, one of the nation’s most influential gay organizations, is the first major gay community voice in Southern California to speak out against the baths.

“Businesses which provide facilities for direct sexual contact on the premises did not create this epidemic, nor will closing them end the health crisis,” said co-chair Carol E. Childs, a Sherman Oaks attorney, flanked by other MECLA officers at a press conference.

‘Act of Prudence’

“However, voluntary closure (during the AIDS epidemic) is an additional act of prudence we must advocate.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to consider legal action this week either to regulate or close the county’s 19 or 20 bathhouses and sex clubs, which are scattered in Burbank, other communities in the San Fernando Valley, in Hollywood, Long Beach, Wilmington and Pomona. There are none in West Hollywood, a city run by a majority gay City Council, where the press conference was held.

The gay community leaders stopped short of endorsing a county crackdown, but promised to launch “further positive measures to accomplish this result” such as picketing and organized boycotts if bathhouse owners do not comply.

Nonetheless, MECLA leaders said they realize that their position sends a strong message that the most powerful elements of the gay community will not try to block efforts to regulate sexual activity in the baths.

Wider Support Seen

Dr. Michael Roth, a MECLA official and Santa Monica physician who treats AIDS cases, said the group’s position will also make it easier for other organizations and agencies to support bathhouse regulation or closure.

Roth, for example, is co-chairman of the state Advisory Task Force on AIDS, a group appointed by the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian that has no position on bathhouses. “I think, personally, the state AIDS commission will support MECLA’s position,” Roth said Sunday.

Multiple and anonymous sexual contacts between men, which many bathhouses allow, has been linked to the spread of the virus responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a disorder of the immune system that has afflicted 14,519 people in the United States.

In this country most of the victims have been homosexual or bisexual men, intravenous drug users or their steady sexual partners. At least 7,450 victims have died.

Business Is Down

Since the AIDS epidemic began, the number of gay and bisexual men who visit bathhouses has declined. Several bath businesses have closed here and in other cities, and those that remain open have added gymnasium equipment and other facilities to attract new customers. Many, but not all, have also begun supplying information about AIDS to patrons and inviting nurses in to do screenings.

Some public health officials say the bathhouses are probably not a major source of contamination with the AIDS virus. But in the last month, the body of opinion has shifted sharply in favor of doing something about the baths, no matter how small the effect.

Last week the federal Centers for Disease Control advised public health authorities that it would be wise to stop sexual activity in the baths. In New York, city and state officials also began a crackdown.

In Los Angeles, county health director Robert Gates and the county’s Public Health Commission recommended using state emergency authority to regulate bathhouse sex.

The position announced Sunday by MECLA puts the region’s leading gay community voice on record as joining the efforts to control the baths.

Community Opinion

“Any gay in his right mind, who has any sense of propriety, hasn’t been to a bathhouse in years,” Robert B. Burke, an attorney and MECLA official appointed by Bradley to the city Housing Appeal and Advisory Board, said Sunday. “Because we’re perceived as the spokesmen, we felt this was long overdue.”

Gay community sentiment has been split on the bathhouses ever since AIDS was linked to the exchange of body fluids that occurs during some sexual activities.

Until now, most gay leaders have opposed action to regulate the baths because of the fear that it would lead to restoration of laws that banned sexual relations between gay men or gay women. (Sexual relations between persons of the same sex, as well as anal or oral sex between heterosexual couples, is still outlawed in 23 states, but not in California.)

Within MECLA itself, the controversy lingered for the last year and only recently began to rage as a full-scale debate, several officers said.

Members probably also felt more free to take a position, some officers said, since Sheldon Andelson, a University of California regent and the most powerful MECLA official in political circles, closed down a bathhouse that was operated on his property in Los Angeles.

Civil Liberties Concern

The new position was hammered out at a three-hour meeting Saturday at which members finally decided that health concerns overruled fears that the civil liberties of all gay people could later be abridged, officers who attended the meeting said.

“We’ll fight that battle when it comes to that,” one member of the group’s Board of Governors said.

There was sentiment in the group for the argument--put forth by some health officials and by bathhouse owners--that the location is not as important as the kind of sexual activities engaged in.

However, most members seemed to think that there is no way that bathhouse owners could adequately enforce the safe-sex guidelines that AIDS researchers say are necessary to avoid transmitting the virus.

In San Francisco, Mayor Dianne Feinstein said she plans to renew efforts to close the bathhouses there. An attempt by the city to close the baths last year was blocked in court, although restrictions were imposed.