Effect of Regulations Challenged : Ruling Limits County Controls on Gay Baths

Los Angeles County’s effort to regulate gay bathhouses was crippled Thursday when a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of two bathhouse owners who said the county standards may actually promote the spread of AIDS.

Judge John L. Cole refused to require three Los Angeles-area bathhouses to eliminate private rooms, closely police their customers and ban high-risk forms of sexual contact, ruling that such strict controls are not supported by the most recent evidence on how the deadly disease is spread.

The county Department of Health Services sued the three bathhouses in May in an attempt to force them to comply with the regulations adopted in December.

While county health officials claim that the “anonymous, multiple-partner” sexual contact found in bathhouses qualifies them as “AIDS factories,” bathhouse owners say their establishments provide a “safe sex” alternative for men who would otherwise turn to public parks and restrooms for sexual contacts.

“There is a certain sense of hysteria or great urgency here: We’ve got to do something to stop this disease, so if we can stop the kind of contact that spreads it, we can stop the disease,” Cole said.

But with some exceptions, he said, the county “falls woefully short” of proving that its regulations will really check the spread of AIDS, while bathhouse owners have shown that they “at least provide a relatively safe, a physically safe, atmosphere in which people who desire to can meet to engage in these kinds of activities.”

Bathhouse owners--already struggling against a heavy decline in business caused by the AIDS epidemic--claim the regulations adopted by the Board of Supervisors in December are so restrictive that they would force closure of most of their establishments.

Already, at least three of Los Angeles County’s 17 bathhouses have closed since adoption of the regulations, said attorney Barrett S. Litt, representing Midtowne Spa and Melrose Baths. (The Meatrack in West Hollywood was also a party in the case.) Several others have voluntarily complied with the standards.

Deputy County Counsel Steven Carnevale said the regulations are an attempt to check the spread of a disease that has already killed 1,161 of the 2,039 Los Angeles County residents who have been diagnosed with AIDS.

“What we’re looking at is establishments that promote the very kind of contact that has the highest risk of transmission of a disease, which we all know is deadly,” Carnevale said, “We believe lives will be saved, and even a few lives saved is a great public benefit.”

But Cole noted that some of the county Health Department’s own doctors do not agree with the county’s definition of “unsafe” sex practices that are banned under the regulations.

While the county regulations suggest that AIDS, believed to be passed through the exchange of bodily fluids, is easily spread through anal and oral intercourse, bathhouse attorneys produced a series of declarations from medical experts indicating such contact is not unnecessarily unsafe if condoms are used.

‘Impressed’ by Argument

Moreover, the judge said he was “impressed” with the bathhouse owners’ argument that, while condoms and AIDS educational materials are readily available at their establishments, a ban on private rooms and most sexual activity would encourage patrons to engage in more dangerous sexual contact elsewhere.

“The county’s declarations imply that the bathhouses are seamy, filthy, dark places where distasteful sex takes place,” noted the American Civil Liberties Union in a brief filed on behalf of the bathhouse owners.

“While that image may accurately reflect the county’s moral judgments, it does not represent reality. The bathhouses are places where men gather in a spirit of brotherly affection and have sex,” the ACLU said.

A survey of more than 500 Los Angeles bathhouse patrons completed early this month by Gary Richwald, a physician who is a family health professor at UCLA, showed that 69% of them went to the bathhouses “to have sex,” while 49% said they went to use the pool or steam room and 40% said they went “to meet friends, without necessarily having sex.” (Each person surveyed could check several responses.)

Of those surveyed, 25% had an annual income of more than $40,000, and 84% had attended college (28% of those had gone to graduate school).

“I feel safe and comfortable in associating with other gay males in this non-threatening setting. Further, I do not go to gay bars because I do not like the atmosphere and the emphasis on drinking,” said a longtime Midtowne Spa patron in a declaration filed with the court, estimating he had had sex only “on six or seven occasions” at the spa in the past 10 years.

Drop in Business

The acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic itself has sharply curtailed bathhouse business in recent years. Bathhouse owners in the county have estimated business declines ranging from 20% to 50% since word of the disease began spreading through the homosexual community.

Even more profound, attorney Litt said, has been the change in activity within the establishments. Many businesses, including his clients’, now discourage anal intercourse without the use of a condom, for example, Litt said. “Safe sex” posters and handouts are prominently displayed.

“All of these changes are at least partially attributable to the fact that people have re-evaluated what makes sense or doesn’t make sense in light of AIDS,” Litt said.

Cole stopped short of issuing an order, sought by the bathhouse owners, to throw out the regulations and to prohibit the use of undercover police officers in investigating bathhouses. But he said his refusal to enforce the regulations in the current case was “a message” to the county.

The result, Carnevale said, is that the regulations are “technically intact, but we’ll need a better showing to enforce them.”