An organization that is seeking to repeal a 1985 New York state health code that banned oral and anal sex in businesses and was used to close dozens of sex clubs, bathhouses, and porn shops and theaters has asked the state Department of Health, which wrote the code, and Gov. Kathy Hochul to repeal that code and write new code that would allow bathhouses to again operate in New York.
“Bathhouses were closed 40 years ago because there were no better options, but that is no longer true,” Joe Hickerson, founder and executive director of New Yorkers for a Modern Health Code, said in a statement. “We are confident a review will lead to the repeal of a ban that conflicts with the department’s own public health strategies and those of every other state in the country.”
The 1985 code, which is enforced by local health departments, was intended to end the transmission of HIV in venues where gay and bisexual men enjoyed sex. That code was amended in 1994 to include vaginal sex. New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene practice was to inspect businesses to look for violations of the code and file nuisance abatement lawsuits seeking to shutter businesses where violations were observed. A small number of bathhouses avoided being closed by requiring their customers to have sex only in private rooms where they could not be seen.
Hickerson’s petitions to Hochul and the state health department accurately assert that the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) prevent a person from becoming infected with the virus when used correctly and that current treatments for HIV can reduce the virus in a person’s body to the point that they are unable to infect others — commonly known as undetectable = untransmittable. Those effective public health tools have replaced the 1985 code, which was more of a blunt instrument than a treatment, as HIV prevention tools.
“The scientific advancements since the ban was adopted have been substantial,” one petition reads. “PrEP reduces the risk of sexually acquired HIV by 99 percent, and large international studies have found no linked HIV transmissions from partners with sustained viral suppression. The Department’s own AIDS Institute formally endorsed Undetectable = Untransmittable back in 2018.”
Some sex venues in the city have been used by public health groups to distribute vaccines and to test for HIV, hepatitis C, and sexually transmitted infections. They also make referrals to doctors for people who want PrEP and PEP. New bathhouses could provide access to gay and bisexual men who are harder to reach.
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who now works at the Callen Lorde Community Health Center and previously worked for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the city’s health department, and GMHC, is known for using sex venues to deliver health services to gay and bisexual men.
“My own work in these venues has shown that they can also be powerful environments for health outreach and prevention,” Daskalakis said in a statement issued by state Senator Erik Bottcher and Assemblymember Tony Simone when they issued draft legislation that would repeal the 1985 code. “By bringing people together rather than pushing them into less visible settings, we create opportunities to build trust and deliver services that improve health outcomes.”
Bottcher and Simone, who are both gay, drafted the Public Health Modernization Act that would require the state health department to repeal the code and create rules that would regulate the operation of bathhouses in New York. Hickerson is asking Hochul to instruct the state health department to repeal the code and write new rules that would regulate the operations of bathhouses in New York. Hickerson’s view is that his approach is faster than legislation.
In a press statement, Hickerson said “40 years is long enough. The department shouldn’t wait to be forced to modernize a rule that is clearly outdated.”
The state already has a law that requires state agencies to review their rules every five years, but it applies only to rules that were promulgated after 1997. In July of this year, Hochul signed an executive order that required state agencies to streamline their operations and review their rules with an eye on reducing their impact on small businesses.
Neither the New York State Department of Health nor the governor’s office responded to a request for comment on Oct. 14.
The effort to repeal the 1985 code has already come to the attention of some on the far right. An article in Decision: The Evangelical Voice for Today quoted Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary saying the bathhouse proposal as “safe spaces” for sex was “immoral and reprehensible.”
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was founded in 1845 as the result of a schism among Baptists over the morality of slavery, with the Southern Baptists aggressively defending slavery. Later, they defended segregation and white supremacy just as aggressively. In 1905, Thomas Dixon, Jr., a Southern Baptist minister wrote “The Clansman,” a book that celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and was adapted by D.W. Griffith as the basis for his 2015 silent film “The Birth of a Nation,” with the nation being the Klan. In 2021, Beth Moore, who had a 50-year career in the SBC, left the denomination, saying it was still rife with racism, misogyny, and idolatry, with idolatry being a reference to the Southern Baptists’ worship of Donald Trump.
Mark
