Bay Area Reporter - Friday, April 16, 1999
Richard Cornwall

The protesters, David Pasquarelli and Michael Bellefountaine of ACT UP/San Francisco, loudly complained that Katz failed to acknowledge in his lengthy report the March 24 community meeting to discuss concerns over the closure of gay bathhouses. When the protesters refused to be quiet, commission President Lee Ann Monfredini directed guards to remove them from the meeting.

Monfredini and Katz then acknowledged it would be appropriate for Katz to add a verbal description of the March 24 meeting, although Monfredini said that Katz had fully informed commission Vice President Roma Guy and herself about it prior to the public meeting. Commissioner David J. Sanchez, Jr. voiced concern over the issue not being on the agenda, and argued it was inappropriate to have it raised, but Monfredini ruled that it was worth letting members of the public voice their concerns with Katz's report.

Katz then characterized the earlier meeting as having been taken over and dominated by people who argued that HIV does not cause AIDS, a characterization that allowed him to ridicule the meeting and the protesters. (In fact, few of the speakers at the March 24 meeting had anything to do with the issue of whether HIV causes AIDS. Most were concerned with the role that bathhouses play in gay men's lives and the role they can play in public health efforts to reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases.) The report was followed by public comment by five people, limited to three minutes each.

Stephen Filandrinos argued that the issue is central for gay men, prompting Monfredini to compliment him on his good behavior, comparing and contrasting his presentation to the protest by Pasquarelli and Bellefountaine.

Dr. Stephen Murray told the commission that a large body of research supports the proposition that bathhouses can play a positive role in reducing transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. Commissioners eagerly accepted a two-page handout of references to the research that Murray offered to support his statements.

Reid Condit spoke of the length of the struggle to get the commission to grapple publicly and clearly with the bathhouse issue. The only notable reaction was from Commissioner Edward A. Chow, who asked Katz to report at some unspecified future date on what regulations the Department of Public Health (DPH) has on "sex clubs, etc." He seemed to fumble a bit for words and avoided saying "bathhouse."

The commissioners took no further action, but the issue will be placed on the agenda for a future commission meeting.

Full disclosure: The author spoke at the meeting in support of opening the bathhouses.
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