Supervisors Adopt Tough Bathhouse Regulations

Strict bathhouse regulations that officials say will reduce the incidence of AIDS but that homosexual activists insist will simply move high-risk sex underground, were adopted Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The regulations, effective immediately, require owners of gay bathhouses to police their establishments and kick out anyone engaging in high-risk sexual activity. County officials warn that they will move to shut down any bathhouse found to be in violation of the new requirements.

The new standards, passed on a 4-1 vote, would also apply to any other commercial establishment, such as an adult bookstore or a theater, that “encourages or knowingly allows” high-risk sexual activities on its premises. Specifically exempted are licensed hotels or motels.

A lawyer representing a coalition of bathhouse owners said the new requirements will be challenged in court if the county tries to enforce them.

“(The supervisors) passed something that is an affront to the Constitution,” attorney Dan Stormer said. Stormer, whose client is the 13-member Los Angeles Bathhouse Owners Assn., said the regulations will “severely hurt” the bathhouses, which have already reported declining patronage since the AIDS epidemic began in 1981.

“If this turns into a method of raiding places in the form of homophobia and scares people, it will keep people from going to the bathhouses,” Stormer said. Stormer said the type of high-risk sexual activity the county is trying to curb will merely move elsewhere, such as public restrooms, parks and homes.

Supervisor Ed Edelman, expressing similar concerns, nevertheless voted for the new requirements, after the board’s conservatives, Mike Antonovich, Pete Schabarum and Deane Dana, agreed to establish a panel of health experts, anti-AIDS activists and board deputies to work on AIDS education programs.

Casting the lone dissenting vote was Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who was unable to win backing for the total closure of the bathhouses. Hahn said the requirements amount to a “weak, non-effective measure.”

County Health Director Robert C. Gates said that within a week the new requirements--patterned after regulations enacted in San Francisco and New York--will be circulated to the county’s 16 gay bathhouses. He added, however, that bathhouse owners will not be required to implement them unless health inspectors determine that high-risk sexual activity is actually occurring on the properties.

“Legally, we can’t go in and demand they start hiring monitors,” Gates explained. In previous reports to the board, Gates has stated that the owners have denied that high-risk sexual activity takes place in their establishments.

Exactly what constitutes high-risk sexual activity was a point of debate. Gates’ staff determined that it is both oral and anal intercourse regardless of whether a condom is used.

Dr. Gary Richwald of UCLA’s School of Public Health, hired by the bathhouse owners to study the requirements, complained that the definition implies that condoms are superfluous in the fight against acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“(It) is absolute idiocy to put that in,” Richwald said. Gates acknowledged that condoms reduce the risk of AIDS but said they are not foolproof and that that is the message the department hopes to convey to sexually active gay and bisexual males.

Morris Kite, a longtime gay activist and a member of the county’s Human Relations Commission, told the supervisors that the new requirements will render bathhouses “joyless, cheerless, sterile places where no one would want to go.” Kite also questioned the effectiveness of what he called “sex police” to ensure that high-risk activity is not occurring at bathhouses.

New Requirements

Specifically, the new standards require bathhouse owners to:

- Provide employees to observe activity within the bathhouses at a ratio of one monitor for every 20 patrons.

- Expel all patrons observed to be engaged in high-risk sexual activities.

- Maintain a daily log of expulsions that would be available to health inspectors on demand.

- Prominently display warnings of high-risk sexual activities.

- Increase the lighting throughout the bathhouses.

- Remove all structures or portions of structures that “promote or encourage high-risk sexual activity” or block the view of inspectors. Gates said this requirement was included because health officials believe that some bathhouses provide private rooms where sexual activity has occurred.

In its vote, the board also approved $84,020 to hire inspectors to conduct spot-checks to make sure that the bathhouses are complying with the new regulations. At the insistence of Dana, health officials are also studying whether public health licenses and penalty fees might be used to finance the inspections.