Margaret Hamburg, the city's health commissioner, denied that a fear of appearing homophobic had slowed the city's response. Shortly after the editorial appeared, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani fired Matthews.ĭr. The city's position was called into question by a January 23 Daily News editorial quoting Health Department spokesman Steve Matthews as saying the city was treading lightly in cracking down on the clubs for fear of appearing to be homophobic.
The city said it has been enforcing the health code and has more than 30 sex-club inspectors. "To invite the government to do so is to bring the repressive forces of the state on us." "We do not believe that the government has a role in telling adults what they can do sexually," said Marc Elovitz, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's national AIDS project.
Opponents of a crackdown say that for gay men, having sex where and with whom one chooses is a hard-won right. "As long as the law remains unchanged, to enforce it is to campaign against public sex, not unsafe sex," said Michael Warner, who wrote a Village Voice story called "Why Gay Men Are Having Risky Sex." Neither Paul Gallucio, who owns the West Side Club, nor Michael Fesco, promoter of Zone DK, returned repeated calls.ĪIDS activists who oppose a crackdown complain that the state health code makes no distinction between sex with and without a condom. Rotello and others are campaigning to force the clubs to comply with the state health code, which prohibits oral, anal or vaginal sex in commercial establishments. Gabriel Rotello, former editor of the now-defunct gay magazine Outweek, wrote in New York Newsday that during a visit to another sex club, Zone DK, he had witnessed "a murder-suicide" - two men having unprotected sex. It is a 1970s-style bathhouse with private cubicles where patrons' sexual practices cannot be monitored. The debate flared in February, when the West Side Club opened in New York. "There's very little anal sex, and all the anal sex that I see in these clubs is protected," he said.
Many are a new type of club that emerged at the end of the 1980s, "essentially mutual masturbation or group masturbation places," said Jim Eigo, a writer and AIDS activist who was one of 400 people at a community forum held to debate the issue last month. Now, although the city does not have an official count, activists estimate that there are 30 to 50 clubs in New York where gay sex is taking place. He felt the clubs had to be closed to slow the AIDS epidemic. The action came after a bruising debate pitting club supporters, including many gay political leaders, against other prominent gay men, such as "And the Band Played On" author and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts. In the mid-1980s, New York, San Francisco and other cities closed bathhouses and other clubs where oral and anal intercourse without condoms had been common long before AIDS.