New York Newsday - Thursday, January 26, 1995
FOR SALE: STATE-OF-THE-ART UNSAFE SEX
by Gabriel Rotello
	New York - With little controversy, and under the very nose of the AIDS estab
lishment, a huge new bathhouse opened in Chelsea this week. A bathhouse like
the legendary bathhouses of old, those bustling hives of contagion that
helped spread death throughout the gay male world. A bathhouse with eighty
private bedrooms that can be locked from the inside, so that the occupants
can have sex free from the prying eyes of safer-sex monitors. 
	A lot of people, gay and straight, are shocked when they hear that the baths
are back. But they shouldn't be. The opening of the West Side Club is a
natural development in the context of gay New York's response to the HIV
epidemic. We have evolved from almost complete intolerance of commercial
multipartner sex (1986), to muted tolerance as long as it was scrupulously
safe (1987-1988), to denial and confusion when it entered the gray zone of
possibly unsafe (1989), to indifference when it became blatantly unsafe
(1990-today). The only surprise about the return of the baths is what took
them so long.
	The owners of this new bathhouse, Next Magazine publisher David Moyal and
Townhouse bar owner Paul Galluccio, have little to fear from the city's tepid
AIDS establishment. A spokesman for Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says
the commissioner's hands are tied unless the bathhouse seeks a permit for its
sauna, which it has not yet done. The City Planning Commission, which
enforces the moratorium on new sex-related businesses, says bathhouses aren't
covered under the moratorium. And Gay Men's Health Crisis director Jeff
Richardson says that although he is certainly "not celebrating" the return of
the baths, GMHC's policy is to work with such places, not work to close them
down. 
	That approach may seem pragmatic, but it certainly sends a powerful signal
that gay and AIDS groups sanction the return of the baths. That attitude
inevitably erodes the sense of urgency in the gay world about safety, and
undermines the moral authority of groups like GMHC when they argue to society
at large that AIDS is an emergency that deserves an emergency response.
GMHC's cooperative approach even provides cover for the operators of this
inherently unsafe establishment.
	And make no mistake. The presence of locked cubicles in sex clubs is
inherently unsafe, which is why such cubicles are banned even in relatively
tolerant places like San Francisco. When I asked co-owner Paul Galluccio how
he could justify them in the middle of an epidemic, he pointed to GMHC.
"We're going to have GMHC in here twice a week lecturing on safe sex," he
told me. "GMHC is working with us." The implication being, if GMHC is
cooperating, who could object?
	Who indeed? The fact is that plenty of AIDS workers and prevention bureaucrat
s actually defend the new enterprise. They argue that bathhouses don't create
a demand for multipartner sex, they simply channel that demand into an
environment where people can obtain safer sex education. Which these bureaucra
ts then provide, thereby earning their livings. 
	Many behavioral experts scoff at this rationale, however, citing the fact
that when the "costs" of doing something go down, the number of participants
invariably goes up. Multipartner sex in the alleys and parks of New York
carries significant costs: danger, discomfort, risk of arrest, mugging,
bashing, you name it. But put that activity in a clean, even luxurious space,
and the cost goes way down. According to classic economic theory, the demand
will go way up, and so will the behavior (and, invariably, infection). It
works for fast food. It works for fast sex just as well. 	
	Paul Galluccio and David Moyal apparently know this. Their place is state of
the art. They also apparently know how safe they are from New York's AIDS
establishment. After all, they opened their new bathhouse just a few doors
down from the Gay Men's Health Crisis headqarters.