Subject: Reopen SF baths, now!
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 16:53:02 -0500

For Immediate Release                        Contact: Michael Petrelis
November 8, 1996                                             (415) 621-6267

                 SEX CLUB LEGISLATION TO BE DEBATED AT 

                              PUBLIC HEALTH MEETING;

                  GAYS DEMAND BATHHOUSES BE RE-OPENED

San Francisco - The Coalition for Healthy Sex, a group of sex club owners,
AIDS service organizations and the San Francisco Department of Public
Health's AIDS Office, will be holding its regularly scheduled monthly meeting
next week. Among the issues to be discussed are: the proposed regulating of
sex clubs, and a demand by patrons of such establishments to allow the
bathhouses to be re-opened.

  WHAT:    Public Meeting

  WHERE:   SF AIDS Office
                25 Van Ness Avenue, 5th Floor

  DATE:     Tuesday, November 12

  TIME:      4:30 p.m.

This meeting will be the first opportunity for members of the gay community
to discuss the sex club legislation. Gay AIDS activist Michael Petrelis will
propose that the Coalition endorse re-opening bathhouses in San Francisco.

"If sexually repressed Washington, DC, can operate a gay male bathhouse, in
the shadow of the US Capitol building, no less, why can't San Francisco?
Bathhouses would allow me to rent a room and comfortably engage in safe
sodomy, by using the Reality anal condom, behind closed doors. Which is
possible at the Steamworks in Berkeley, and the Watergarden in San Jose,"
said Petrelis, who frequently goes to sex clubs. "It's time San Francisco
re-join the ranks of cities with gay bathhouses. After all, bathhouses and
sex clubs don't spread AIDS, people practicing unprotected sex do, and that
behavior probably happens more in hotels on Nob Hill."

The Coalition for Healthy Sex is backing the sex club legislation, which
should be considered by the Board of Supervisors at the end of November. At
this juncture, no town hall meetings are planned for the gay community to
have input into the legislation. Some letters to gay newspapers indicate
opposition to the legislation exists at this point.
                                          --30--

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 00:51:59 -0500
Subject: SF sex club legislation

(STATEMENT PRESENTED AT THE S.F. COALITION FOR HEALTHY SEX MEETING.)

               Kill the legislation, not gay sexuality
            by Michael Petrelis, Ph. # (415) 621-6267
                            November 12, 1996

 The proposed sex club legislation must be killed for two reasons. 1) The new
regulations would do nothing to stop AIDS transmission amongst gay men. 2)
The legislation would greatly increase government control over an important
aspect of gay life. While I believe there should be uniform fire and building
codes for the sex clubs, the legislation goes far beyond that.

 Halting AIDS was dealt a serious setback when the health department closed
the bathhouses in the 1980s, in response to AIDS hysteria. AIDS prevention
has been dishonest ever since. Gay men have paid for that deceit with our
lives because many of us naively believed  where we engaged in sex was a risk
associated with AIDS, not what kind of sex we practiced. San Francisco is the
only city in America, indeed the world, that shut down all of its gay
bathhouses. 

 Now, under the guise of wanting to protect gay men who visit sex clubs,
Supervisor Tom Ammiano, the health department, AIDS service agencies, and the
Coalition for Healthy Sex have put forward legislation that grants the police
department expanded power over who operates the sex clubs. Excuse me, but in
light of the police bust on the New Year's Eve AIDS party, why would gays put
any more control over any aspect of our lives and institutions in the cops
hands?

 The new legislation requires applicants who want to run a club to submit
fingerprints to the cops. What this has to do with stopping AIDS, or
guaranteeing there are well lit fire exits in the clubs, is beyond me. It
seems like a police power grab and makes me nervous.

 The matter of mandating safe sex rules, as determined by the health
department, is somewhat good intentioned, but still troubling. I simply don't
believe it ever benefits the gay community to allow the government, any
branch of it, to rule over our sexual conduct. Since when did the gay agenda
include relinquishing personal responsibility for healthy sex to bureaucrats?

 If our health department were serious about halting AIDS in the gay
community, it would FINALLY make free penile condoms permanently available in
gay bars. The department could also educate gays about the Reality anal
condom, and make it available free at sex clubs that permit anal sex. Give me
the tools, not the rules.

 Finally, debate must begin to allow bathhouses to re-open. There is no
scientific evidence proving bathhouses, or sex clubs, are more responsible
than hotel rooms or bedrooms for gays contracting AIDS. Bathhouses could
serve not only as sexual gathering spots, but AIDS education centers as well.
San Francisco should re-join the ranks of cities with a gay bathhouse, since
many gays want one here.

 It's time to kill the sex club legislation--not gay sexuality.