Homosexual Bathhouses

Your Editorial Pages (Nov. 26) contained two pieces on the subject of homosexual bathhouses. This double-barreled attack on the efforts of responsible citizens and community leaders to see that bathhouses are closed merely restated all of the old, worn-out arguments for keeping open these establishments, which are a blight upon our society.

They say that if we close bathhouses, the homosexuals will just go somewhere else to have unsafe sex and that bathhouses are a good place to educate homosexuals about safe sex practices. The same arguments have been offered to justify legalizing prostitution, but they do not hold water. Sodomy committed in public should not be raised to the level of a protected civil right. Therefore, closing bathhouses is not an infringement of anyone’s rights.

The Times editorial says that “it would be a mistake” to close all homosexual bathhouses because that would be a “policy of blanket action against AIDS.” What is wrong with a blanket policy to provide protection to our citizens against a killer? I submit that a blanket policy is exactly what is needed against all businesses that are established specifically to provide opportunity for actions that are proven to spread an epidemic from which no one has survived. Nothing less than blanket action is adequate!

Let me draw a parallel. When it was discovered last year that cheese from the Jalisco cheese factory was killing people, the health department took the appropriate “blanket” action of closing the whole plant. They did not say that, through education of the factory personnel, the danger could be reduced. The tragic results of the problems at the Jalisco cheese factory resulted in the death of less than 100 people.

Well, it is reported that in Los Angeles County there are 30 factories, called bathhouses, where a fatal disease known as AIDS is being spread. To date, Los Angeles County has reported in excess of 1,200 AIDS cases, which have already taken the lives of more than 650 people. Though no one is claiming that bathhouses are responsible for all cases of AIDS, for the health officials of the county to permit any known producer of this virus to continue to operate is the height of irresponsibility. In fact, if they do not shut down the bathhouse AIDS factories, by the same rationale they should reopen Jalisco cheese with instructions to go and sin no more.

WILLIAM E. DANNEMEYER

Member of Congress

39th District

Fullerton