The case against legalizing gay bathhouses in New York

To get a knock at your door from the Health Department in the '80s and '90s was a matter of life or death. Or, to come home from the bathhouses and find a letter from DOH, taped next to the peephole, for all your neighbors to see, saying that you may have been exposed to an infection and that you need to reach out to them ASAP, was embarrassing to say the least. Even though HIV and other sexually transmitted infections are more manageable today, we should not allow these places to exist and infect the next generation of our LGBTQ youth and straight communities.

It’s only a matter of time until the next immunosuppressive infection spreads throughout our community and go without notice for 10 years, as was the case with AIDS. By the time AIDS was detected in the early '80s, it was too late.

Recently, Assembly Member Tony Simone (who is up for reelection in November — running against Cristina Fontanelli from Hell’s Kitchen) and his counterpart, State Senator Erik Bottcher, introduced a bill that would legalize gay bathhouses.

This is unconscionable. There is nothing good that goes on at bathhouses. To claim that we can somehow make bathhouses safer flies in the face of over 100,000 lives lost in New York City during the AIDS epidemic.

This bill is a clear and present danger to the LGBTQ community and should not be passed

We have seen this trickery before: in the mid 80s, when our city wanted to close these bathhouses down at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, when the owners of these establishments were dubbed "The Merchants of Death" by gay men who demanded that these places close due to the harm they caused. Those so-called Merchants of Death pleaded with city officials not to close them, and as a measure of persuasion, the owners of those bathhouses offered to provide educational literature on safer sex, along with a single condom and some lube. Although the free lube was most certainly used, very few gay men use condoms at these bathhouses, and this literature was thrown away.

Ironically, there are some gay men in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who are in favor of this legislation. They are the same ones who survived the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s. They seem to have no problem trading the memories of loved ones (those who died a horrible death from AIDS) for an enchanted evening with a 20 or 30-year-old, who's unable to make rational decisions for themselves, being under the influence of meth (methamphetamines), "special-K," and painkillers.

PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a medication made by Gilead Sciences that’s prescribed to reduce the risk of getting HIV from sex and is said to be 99% effective when used as prescribed. The problem with these types of daily doses and injectables is that when you are young, you tend not to take your meds as directed because you think that you are invincible.

We need to focus on the addiction element prior to getting anyone housed. Otherwise, someone struggling with substance use is destined to fail. They will most likely become a nuisance to their neighbors, and in time, they will be evicted for their addiction. They will eventually have no other option left but to live on the streets again, and this will be our politicians' fault, not theirs.

Making bathhouses legal again falls into this same category of not being connected to reality. While failing to address the human element in their policies, these politicians have chosen to ignore the consequences of bad behavior and continue to put all of our lives at risk.

These bathhouses served no real good to our community then and will serve even less good to us today if we allow them to reopen. They exist to profit off the backs of vulnerable gay men, and they could care less about the number of STIs and STDs that spread throughout our community because of them.

Pharmaceutical companies were once the enemy of us gay people, and for good reason. The original drugs to treat AIDS, like AZT, were harsh, but they were the only medication that the FDA approved at the time.

ACT UP, The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, was created in 1987 to fight these pharmaceutical companies as well as government officials who refused to listen to the gay community, as thousands of our friends and family members died. They considered this to be a gay issue and not their problem until AIDS started to affect the straight community as well.

We’ve all seen these “healthcare specialists” at bathhouses before, and we’ve all walked by them while they were in their rooms; except for the handful of gay men who forgot to pick up a bottle of lube on the way over to the bathhouse, which are given out in small packages, alongside literature about safer sex and information about organizations for mental health, that hardly anyone there will read.

How gay bathhouses affect every community, especially the straight ones

Joe has unsafe sex in Bob's room, room 52, on the lower level at The Westside Club. Yes, you heard me right → I said the lower level. These bathhouses are huge and can easily serve hundreds of gay men per night. Most have rooms on two or three different floors. They are making money hand over fist and could care less about our health and public safety.

These rooms tend to be all around the same size, roughly five feet by seven feet in space. There is always a laptop playing gay porn where the men in each video are having unprotected sex to inspire more unsafe practices. They normally all have a spa, a sauna, and a weight machine within them. All of them have open showers stalls, with no partitioning between them, purposely designed for large groups of men to have orgies in.

Gay men are not using this environment to meet other gay men to have healthy and lasting relationships. The overwhelming majority of gay men who frequent these establishments do not want to know the names of the persons they are having sex with. That would defeat the purpose entirely. It’s all about anonymous sex when you get there, where the sole purpose is to count the number of times you get off each night.

I personally lost a cousin from AIDS in the '80s because of this behavior. My cousin Donna’s husband didn't tell her that he was bisexual and would frequent these bathhouses at night. First her newborn son died from AIDS, then she passed away from AIDS a few years later, followed by her husband Bobby. Their only surviving son, my cousin, lost both of his parents at the age of 12, and has been in and out of the prison system ever since.

We have dating apps now. We don’t need places like this anymore. We can swipe someone’s profile to the left if we’re not interested, or swipe to the right and DM them later when we are. Then we get to decide which apartment or house to meet up in later.

These apps also come equipped with safer sex ads as well, and there is often someone on these apps who you can talk to about addiction and harm reduction. We don’t need to go to a three-story sex factory that’s filled with hundreds of gay men per night, who have no interest in the welfare of others while renting a room or a locker there.

We have more gay clubs, more gay restaurants, and more gay bars than ever before! There is no real reason, other than financial, to revive these archaic places that will put the next generation at risk.

Bathhouses were indeed part of gay history. But these unsafe, unhealthy, unnecessary practices need to stay exactly where they belong — in the past — within the dusty pages of some history book that you can borrow from a library — or you can look-up this subject online in the comfort and safety of your home.

We do not need these bathhouses anymore.

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

ASK EACH POLITICIAN, AND LEADERS IN OUR GAY COMMUNITY WHO ARE SUPPORTING THIS BILL, TO SHOW US THEIR TAX RETURNS AND INVESTMENT PORTFOLIOS FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS!

Please use the portal below to email Governor Hochul your disapproval letter www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form

Or you can write her a letter at

The Honorable Kathy Hochul Governor of New York State NYS State Capitol Building Albany, NY 12224 NYC Office Phone: (212) 681-4580

As well as Assembly Member, Tony Simone at

simonet@nyassembly.gov

Or you can write him a letter at

District Office

214 West 29th Street Suite 1401 New York, NY 10001 212-807-7900

And his counterpart, State Senator Erik Bottcher, at,

bottcher@nysenate.gov

Or you can write him a letter at

District Office

322 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1700

New York, NY 10001

Phone: 212-633-8052

AS WELL AS YOUR DISTRICT LEADERS