After being closed 40 years ago in the height of the AIDS pandemic, there is now a suggestion that it is time to allow gay bathhouses to reopen in San Francisco
City Supervisor Rafael Mandelman who represents District 8 – including the Castro has made a proposal that would update existing bans on adult establishments, and would only prevent them from “offering private rooms with locking doors.
Mandelmen has said of the law right now “Our current regulations for adult sex venues were put in place as an emergency measure at the height of the AIDS crisis when San Francisco was desperate to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS. Decades later, with the emergence of PrEP and in light of San Francisco’s reduction in HIV diagnoses to under 200 for the first time since the 1980s, these regulations — including a ban on private rooms and required monitoring of patrons’ sexual activities — have no public health rationale and need to be changed.”
Whether there will still be a demand for the bathhouses these days where on-line apps like Grindr has made hookups for sex so much easier is still to be determined, although it certainly has stopped all the Gay Saunas in Europe. Maybe nostalgia for the old concept of seeing naked flesh live rather than on a screen will take on again
The good news from San Francisco is that 2018 was the first year they reported less than 200 new HIV diagnoses, and they found themselves on track to reach their goal of achieving a 90 percent reduction in new HIV cases.
