Drop Political Volley Over Gay Bathhouses

The gay bathhouse issue has finally hit San Diego County. But even with the experience of other communities before us, there are more questions than answers on how to handle this dilemma pitting public health against individual liberty.

Do bathhouses help spread AIDS? Should they be shut down as a public health menace? Or should they be regulated to make them less desirable for homosexual men seeking an easy avenue for anonymous sex with multiple partners? If the bathhouses close, will their patrons simply go elsewhere, perhaps the parks? Would an important channel of education on safe sex practices for gay and bisexual men thus be eliminated?

Fear accompanies most discussions of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and that fear fuels a need to act.

Last week, the Board of Supervisors voted to draft an ordinance to prohibit bathhouses in unincorporated areas of the county, where none exist. The five gay bathhouses in San Diego County are in the City of San Diego. The board didn’t ignore this. As part of its action, it asked the county health officer to urge the San Diego City Council and Mayor Maureen O’Connor to regulate the bathhouses.

One might even argue that the city was the target of Supervisor Susan Golding’s proposal. With Golding and O’Connor viewed as potential rivals in next year’s mayoral election, such sparring has precedent. (Last month Golding and Supervisor Leon Williams suggested a joint city-county commission to develop ideas for a new memorial to slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the wake of the city vote that stripped his name from Market Street. O’Connor balked, saying it was a city matter.)

O’Connor, however, returned the unpopular bathhouse monkey to the county’s back. She said that bathhouses are a public health matter and that even those in the city are the county’s responsibility.

But the issue at hand is too important to fall victim to this kind of political volleyball. San Diego County has had 361 people die of AIDS; 303 others have been diagnosed with the fatal disease. In the first 10 months of this year, 33 more cases were diagnosed than in all of 1986, making the county’s AIDS rate one of the fastest growing in the country.

In a more perfect world, the men who frequent gay bathhouses would realize the horrible danger of multiple sex partners, and the baths would close from lack of customers. More than 70% of the homosexual men who have developed AIDS through sexual activity (rather than through intravenous drug use) say they patronized a gay bathhouse at some time.

But many in San Diego’s gay community would argue that education is a reason to keep the baths open. Patrons who are not “out of the closet” might read a pamphlet or hear a speaker that they otherwise would be too embarrassed or afraid to seek out.

Yet gay bathhouses should not be confused with educational institutions. People patronize them for reasons related to neither bathing nor learning. No amount of precaution is going to put them on the recommended list for the health conscious. Neither is closing them likely to make AIDS go away because an estimated 30% of the gay men in San Diego County already have been exposed to the AIDS virus.

But regulation of bathhouses is overdue. City and county officials cannot afford political buck passing, and the gay community doesn’t need moral judgment.

Rather, the city and county need to work together--in concert with the county task force on AIDS--to develop a rational public health policy for these establishments. At the very least, such a policy should require the education of bathhouse operators and patrons, similar to the requirements for food handlers instituted several years ago after an outbreak of hepatitis.