Mandelman's office initially had told the B.A.R. There was also less public comment than expected as the committee moved through its agenda with lightning speed and finished before the time many people had been told to tune in for the adult sex venues item.
No one from the health department spoke during the hearing, nor did the other two supervisors who are members of the committee, Catherine Stefani and Shamann Walton. "It syncs with where we are at culturally in San Francisco and being on the correct side of economic justice and public health," said Bannon. Doing so not only will provide people a safer space to meet their sexual partners, argued Bannon, it also honors their right to have intimacy. Race Bannon, the Bay Area Reporter's former leather columnist and a longtime LGBTQ advocate, said there is no longer any valid reason to deny adult sex venue patrons private spaces within such establishments. "Initially, the decision to close the bathhouses was based on shame, fear, stigma, and homophobia," said Aguilar.ĭue to numerous advancements in HIV prevention and AIDS care, the city has seen new HIV cases drop precipitously in recent years and is nearing its goal of reducing transmission of the disease to only a handful of cases per year. He called the city's current policy "outdated" and unreflective of current times. Aguilar, a member of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's HIV Advocacy Network. Speaking in support of the proposal was Paul A. Having had to delay the hearing for three months due to the coronavirus pandemic, Mandelman timed bringing it forward to coincide with the International AIDS Conference being co-hosted virtually this week by San Francisco and Oakland. The supervisors' Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, which Mandelman chairs, unanimously voted for the ordinance 3-0. What it does do, explained Mandelman, "is allow for adult sex venues to be part of our economic and cultural recovery when it is safe to do so." "To be clear, this ordinance does not and will not require or allow the reopening of adult sex venues in San Francisco before it is safe to do so as part of our COVID-19 reopening," stressed gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the sponsor of the ordinance. Since the novel coronavirus outbreak in March, such businesses have been forced to close and are waiting to hear from health officials when they will be allowed to reopen.
Various adult sex venues have continued to operate in the city over the last 30 years, but they have done so without providing private spaces behind a locked door.
#OPEN EARLY GAY BARS SAN FRANCISCO FULL#
The full board is expected to approve the policy change when it meets Tuesday, July 21, and the city's Department of Public Health will have until Januto adopt the changes called for in the ordinance. San Francisco is poised to allow gay bathhouses to return after the businesses closed more than three decades ago during the height of the AIDS epidemic.Ī proposal to remove restrictions that the city placed on the establishments in the mid-1980s, such as no locked doors and monitoring the sex of patrons, sailed through a Board of Supervisors hearing Thursday.