Senate Approves Tough Controls on Bathhouses

The Senate passed legislation Thursday that would enhance the power of local health officials to shut down bathhouses when they find evidence of high-risk sexual practices that could lead to the spread of AIDS.

The legislation, approved on a 22-0 vote without debate and returned to the Assembly for concurrence in amendments, is intended to bolster local bathhouse regulations adopted in San Diego, Los Angeles and other communities where gay bathhouses continue to operate and the incidence of AIDS has been on the rise.

Under the bill, local officials would have to produce evidence on a case-by-case basis that the bathhouses are encouraging or permitting high-risk sexual activity. Bathhouses found to be permitting such behavior could be declared nuisances and ordered closed.

Assemblyman Bill Bradley (R-San Marcos), author of the legislation, said he saw the bill as “providing a tool” to local health officials to close down bathhouses. “San Diego seemed to be reluctant to close them down, so I thought I would just pass a statewide bill,” he said.

“Bathhouses are the same as prostitution,” Bradley said, and although “money doesn’t change hands . . . the end product is the same.”

Both the city and county of San Diego have passed local ordinances that will allow health officials to shut down bathhouses that fail to meet certain conditions.

The ordinances include strict construction, lighting and ventilation regulations--including a one-person limit in any room of 30 square feet or less--that would hinder bathhouses from being used for sexual activity. The bathhouses are subject to monthly inspections.

The city’s ordinance has been challenged by the owners of four San Diego bathhouses, who claim in a lawsuit filed in Superior Court that it violates their patrons’ constitutional right to free association.

Deputy City Atty. Jim Bivins said he will seek to have the case dismissed on grounds that the bathhouse owners have not shown how the ordinance would harm their businesses. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Superior Court today.

Bivins said Bradley’s bill will give local government “another tool” in the effort to regulate bathhouses.

Dr. J. William Cox, the county’s director of health services, said in a recent interview that he believes health officials have sufficient power now to regulate the bathhouses. But he said he would welcome any additional authority the Legislature might grant.

“I would take anything I could get that would give me an increased authority to deal with a situation that’s a threat to large segments of our society,” Cox said.

In Los Angeles, a county ordinance is being challenged in court by the owners of two bathhouses, who sued after Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner threatened to shut them down for violating a county ban on anal and oral sex in bathhouses.

A 1986 study on the clientele and culture of bathhouses in Los Angeles by the UCLA School of Public Health found that, of the 807 men interviewed, 10% acknowledged having unprotected anal intercourse--the type of behavior that experts say poses the highest risk of spreading the human immuno-deficiency virus, the AIDS virus.

Another 61% said they had participated in sexual practices said by researchers to pose varying, but generally lesser risk. The rest of those interviewed reported no sexual contact. The study was funded by a grant from the Los Angeles County Bathhouse Owners’ Assn.