Today, thoughts of San Francisco might include exorbitant wealth and housing costs, crap apps, homelessness, the Gay Mecca, and 4 million syringes given-out annually. But, does a struggling economy come to mind?
Boosting the economy is the reason given by supervisors that voted July 21 to unanimously revive gay sex clubs. These aren’t your local massage parlors with a tip for a happy ending.
This amounts to sites for sex with multiple partners and the opportunity to see ‘shows,’ a euphemism for live orgies. The restrictive gay bath house rules were instigated in 1984 at the height of a frightening and deadly health crisis. One was a requirement that the clubs could no longer have private rooms with locked doors in areas reserved for sex. The other was that management had to monitor sexual activity.
The proposed 2020 rules prohibit the management from watching others having sex and brings back privacy. The old rules shut down enterprises but did not alter unhealthy behavior.
The 1984 limitations on bathhouse conduct (no locked doors with mandated supervised sex) caused most bathhouses to close. New public health rules in 1997 extended the 1984 restrictions to all commercial sex clubs and sex parties.
Today, medical breakthroughs have made HIV less transmittable and more treatable. (HIV is still transmittable and incurable.) However, breakthroughs permit formerly destructive behavior.
"What this ordinance will do is allow for adult sex venues to be a part of our economic and cultural recovery when it is safe to do so," Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said in a July 9 meeting. "During the '70s and early '80s, bathhouses were the focal point of gay social life in San Francisco, and were important community meeting places for friends to gather to share stories, dance to the latest disco hits, or watch a live show." What?
Rafael is either really naïve, a liar or was to young back in the day to dip – in for a go and a show. When very sick men arrived at San Francisco hospitals with no immune system medical people triple gloved and gowned for the mysterious malady. It was soon labeled the “gay disease” as it ravaged the male subculture.
Medical specialists discovered that this entertainment was not innocent dancing, storytelling, and watching "live shows." Instead, men used ‘poppers’ (isoamyl nitrite) so they could engage in repeated sexual contact with dozens of men per night.
Participants weren't just trading HIV/AIDS (HIV- human immunodeficiency virus, AIDS - acquired immunodeficiency syndrome); they were passing the buffet of sexually transmitted ailments.
With California currently shut down by a medical Kabuki Dance to control a strain of the common cold the timing seems odd to add venues where a male engages in multiple sex acts with other men per visit. Will the bath houses mandate condoms like today’s facemasks?
Beaches, restaurants, salons and churches are closed but bath houses are a go. Well, maybe all these pleasure sites will be considered no-risk when there is a mandatory Corona vaccine?
Reckless behavior spread a disease that has killed 692,790 Americans, almost all from the narrow demographic of gay men. (AIDS has killed around 32 million people worldwide since the early 1980s.) Currently, around 1.1 million people in America are HIV-positive, with 6,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2018.
Re-opening the bathhouses will also see a spike in other sexually transmitted infections. Chlamydia can lead to sterility for both men and women. HPV (human papillomavirus) can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.
Researchers fear that gonorrhea is on the verge of becoming antibiotic-resistant. Syphilis after nearly being eradicated in 2000 saw 30,644 new cases in 2017 mainly involving MSM (men having sex with men). Gonorrhea is unpleasant, but syphilis is deadly.
Maybe the local health officer should expand the Covid - 19 ‘dash board’ to include sexually transmitted infections, domestic violence, child abuse as well as suicides and overdose fatalities. It would help us put our pandemic-stopping strategy into cultural perspective.
(Get Lou’s podcast at “No Hostages Radio” and his articles at nohostagesradio.com)
###