AIDS Panel Takes Aim at Bathhouses : County Task Force Is Unanimous in Recommending Closure

A special task force of the Los Angeles County AIDS Commission has unanimously decided to recommend closure of all bathhouses to help prevent the spread of the AIDS virus, it was learned Wednesday.

The recommendation must still be approved by the full commission and by the Board of Supervisors. But sources said the task force’s recommendation is likely to be upheld by both bodies. However, the move may not escape a legal challenge similar to one several years ago that blocked the county’s efforts to regulate bathhouses.

Closure of bathhouses has long been a controversial issue here and in other cities. In San Francisco, the last gay bathhouse closed its doors more than a year ago after the city moved in court to shut bathhouses down on the grounds they posed a threat to public health.

Two years ago, Los Angeles County adopted regulations designed to discourage the spread of the AIDS virus by requiring bathhouses to eliminate private rooms and ban high-risk forms of sexual contact.

Dispute Over Regulations

But Superior Court Judge John L. Cole refused to enforce the regulations, noting that some of the county health department’s own doctors did not agree with the county’s definition of what constituted “unsafe” sex practices to be banned under the regulations.

Gary Fowler, head of the AIDS bathhouse task force, said there is now stronger medical evidence of how the disease spreads to justify closure of bathhouses--and to also convince a judge of this necessity.

“The medical opinion now is that any high-risk sex behavior is a risk to the public health and has a high probability of spreading the AIDS virus,” Fowler said. “It seems to some of us that it is rather unbelievable to say that safe sex is being practiced in these bathhouses.”

He added that closing the area’s 16 bathhouses would be aimed largely at the recalcitrant AIDS virus carrier who continues to expose others by frequenting bathhouses and engaging in unsafe sex.

Across the United States, more than 50,000 cases of AIDS have been reported, including 10,954 in California, according to the Centers for Disease Control. There were 4,069 cases reported in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in 1987, up from 2,559 the year before, county health officials said.

Fowler said that Los Angeles is the only major city left in the United States with active bathhouses. “It’s very sad that owners of bathhouses have been so avaricious they can’t see for themselves the danger.”

But others have countered that if bathhouses are closed, the people who frequent them will simply go elsewhere, possibly to more public and more dangerous locations.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief on behalf of several Los Angeles bathhouse owners in 1986 denying that the bathhouses are “seamy, filthy, dark places where distasteful sex takes place” and asserting that they are “places were men gather in a spirit of brotherly affection and have sex.”

While declining to comment on the task force’s conclusion, Rabbi Allen Freehling, chairman of the county AIDS Commission, said, “I have not talked to one person who has given me any reason to justify continuation of bathhouses in Southern California.”

Dr. Monroe Richman, a member of the task force, said: “The practices that go on in bathhouses constitute a public hazard. . . . Any educational efforts thus far by the Department of Health Services have been trivialized by the individual sex pursuits in the bathhouses.”

He added that the City of Los Angeles should get involved in closing bathhouses here because most of them are within the city and licensed by the city to do business.

“When the health department says (to the city) that you’ve got a contaminated beach, the beach gets closed down. What about the bathhouses? You’re talking about a public health hazard here.”