Council Vote for Sex Club Ducks Issues

Should the city of Los Angeles give its legal sanction to a club where gay men, in exchange for a fee, gather for anonymous sex?

Of course not. Engaging in anonymous sex is putting out the welcome map for AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. The very idea of anonymous sex also conflicts with most people’s idea of responsible conduct. This is definitely not something to teach your kids.

Yet the Los Angeles City Council endorsed such conduct last week, when it voted to permit the continued operation of a Hollywood sex club known as the Barracks not far from a residential area.

The health question was dealt with lightly in the debate and the values issue was pretty well ignored. Rather, the council treated the matter as just another zoning decision, much like giving a permit to a grocery store or a restaurant.

Make it boring. Make it obscure. Then nobody will notice how out of step this council is with the rest of L.A.

In pushing through permission for the Barracks to operate, Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg acted as if it were a matter of granting relief from oppressive zoning regulations.

City laws permit operation of such clubs but not within 500 feet of residential areas. The Barracks is near houses, apartments, a public library and an elementary school--all of which the zoning regulations segregate from adult entertainment.

Goldberg said the neighbors didn’t object.

I visited the neighborhood Tuesday to check that point out. Was Goldberg right?

The Barracks is housed in a gray one-story building, the narrow walk leading inside barred by a locked gate. A sign tells customers the club’s hours are 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. When I arrived it was mid-morning, and not a soul was around.

Next door, Javier Gonzales worked in his upholstery shop. No, he said, the Barracks doesn’t bother him. “I come early, I leave early, I never see anything,” he said.

Two doors down, Dario Cruz talked to me from behind the counter of the grocery store, where he labors from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. His last hour in the store coincides with the first hour of the Barracks’ operation.

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “What about your customers?” I asked. “‘They don’t know about it,” Cruz replied.

I walked down a nearby residential street.

“The neighborhood is oblivious to it,” said Donna Cordie, who has lived in the area for 40 years. “The people here are concerned about the quality of the schools.” She added that “the kids in the neighborhood don’t know about [the Barracks].” I talked to a mother and her two teenage daughters, standing in front of their house. None of them had heard of the controversy.

But other residents told the City Council they opposed the Barracks. But let’s say that, as the neighbors with whom I spoke seemed to indicate, Goldberg was right.

That’s not the point.

*

*

The point is that the city should not approve clubs like the Barracks anywhere, whether they cater to men, women or both.

Defenders say the clubs promote safe sex. Condoms are handed out at the Barracks, along with AIDS education pamphlets.

But as the late Randy Shilts related in his history of the AIDS epidemic, “And The Band Played On,” physicians and a substantial number of gay community leaders have long felt gay bath houses and sex clubs are a source of venereal disease and helped spread the AIDS epidemic.

Council backers of the Barracks and other sex clubs use legalisms as a defense.

“‘I don’t approve of them,” said Councilwoman Goldberg, who is gay. “I am a prude. I always have been. I do not support non-monogomous relationships.” But she said the city law permits such clubs. “If it is true it is a legal use, the only question is where you put them,” she said.

Councilman Hal Bernson, chairman of the council planning committee, which approved the measure, said the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and privacy forced the council to approve such clubs--which does not quite explain why he voted against the Barracks’ variance.

Anyway, the constitutional argument doesn’t apply here.

The council routinely rejects requests for exemptions from zoning laws, as it did recently when it refused permission for a synagogue to operate in the posh Hancock Park residential area. That action certainly violated the synagogue’s rights under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.

If the council wanted to close sex clubs because its members believe they are a threat to public health, it could do so. There’s plenty of legal authority for that. Constitutional guarantees of privacy can’t stop physicians from reporting cases of syphilis.

And, finally, as I said at the beginning, there’s the responsible conduct issue, which the council ducked.

I believe the state should sanction gay and lesbian marriage. I think gay and lesbian couples should adopt and bear children, and be entitled to the same spousal benefits as straight couples.

But, like Councilwoman Goldberg, I’m a prude. I don’t think government should sanction promiscuous anonymous sex in a disease-promoting atmosphere.

Councilwoman Goldberg should have voted our prudery. City Atty. Jim Hahn should have figured out a way for the council to ban the sex clubs, instead of providing advice that gave the Barracks a zoning exemption.

Mayor Richard Riordan, who is supposed to protect the health of the community and talks a lot about responsibility, should veto the exemption.