The San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, May 4, 1999
John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writer

The men, under the banner of the 2-year-old Community United for Gay Sexual Privacy, have proposed an initiative that would block Department of Public Health rules that ban private rooms in gay sex clubs and require club staff members to ensure that no one is engaging in unsafe sex.

The rules, designed to prevent the spread of AIDS, are relics of another era and unfairly discriminate against gays, said Michael Petrelis of Queer Nation, a leader of the initiative drive.

"We want to increase the number of venues where adult gay men can practice safe, consensual sodomy," he said yesterday at a news conference in front of City Hall.

An election battle over the bathhouses could divide the gay community as badly as the original dispute did 15 years ago.

It was in 1984, with the AIDS epidemic raging through San Francisco's gay community, that the city ordered the bathhouses closed as a threat to public health. While many gay men backed the move, others argued that really it was an attempt to eliminate the most visible signs of gay sexuality.

"No other city shut down bathhouses during the AIDS hysteria of the 1980s," Petrelis said. In fact, he added, cities such as San Jose and Berkeley still allow bathhouses where what goes on behind closed doors is private.

Dr. Mitch Katz, San Francisco's openly gay health director, is adamantly opposed to reopening the bathhouses, which he believes could lead to more unsafe sex and an increase in the number of HIV cases. Others in the health community also are concerned that a resurgence of bathhouses, with the image of casual, promiscuous sex they carry, will send the wrong message to gay men.

"San Francisco has always taken a more aggressive attitude toward HIV prevention because we've had to, with our infection rate so high," Katz said. "Our rules only apply to businesses, because people making money off these establishments have a responsibility to the community."

But times have changed, argued Robert Cornwall, a backer of the measure. "We're not going back to the '70s, when no one knew about safe sex and no one gave a damn," he said. "We've all lived through that."

The initiative effort comes after nearly two years of unsuccessful attempts to get the bathhouse restrictions reversed, Petrelis said. Two weeks ago, a pair of gay activists disrupted a city Health Commission meeting by going face-to-face with the commissioners and demanding action on the bathhouses, before being hauled out of the meeting in handcuffs.

The initiative has been turned in to the city's Department of Elections for review. If approved, the group can begin collecting the 10,200 signatures needed to put it before voters in November.

If the initiative gets on the ballot, its backers must look for votes beyond the gay community if they want to see it passed. Petrelis is confident that San Francisco voters will see the initiative as an attempt to provide gay men with the same measure of privacy others already possess.

"San Francisco at the end of the gay '90s is a perfect place to endorse safe sodomy behind closed doors," he said.
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