Bathhouses are getting a little less side-eye in San Diego. The San Diego City Council voted Tuesday to repeal an outdated section of municipal code restricting bathhouses, closing the book on a piece of legislation written during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
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And while “bathhouse regulations” might not sound like the most thrilling municipal-code makeover, this one actually matters. The provision was established in April 1988 and last updated in 1991, with language concerning bathhouses that “encourage, facilitate and/or knowingly allow their patrons to engage in sexual practices that pose a significant risk for the transmission of HIV.”
That language belonged to a very different era. San Diego has now decided it doesn’t need to keep carrying it around.
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The old bathhouse rule had officially overstayed its welcome
Council President Joe LaCava has made cleaning up or eliminating outdated and redundant language in the city code a priority. A staff member eventually discovered the bathhouse provision and brought it to his attention.
LaCava’s response was essentially: Why is this still here?
“This language does not reflect who we are as a city,” LaCava said. “It is outdated and offensive perspective and I do not support this kind of language.”
The San Diego Police Department and/or the city’s Development Services Department no longer enforce the ordinance. But LaCava said that wasn’t a reason to leave it sitting on the books.
“Repealing it is a smart signal of how far we have come as a society,” LaCava said.
And he’s right. An unenforced law can still tell a story about the attitudes that shaped it. Sometimes progress is a sweeping new policy. Sometimes it’s deleting a sentence that should have been deleted several decades ago. Either way, a little municipal housekeeping never hurt anyone.
This was written when the AIDS crisis was at its most devastating
It’s impossible to understand the old bathhouse code without looking at when it was created.
In 1988, more than 700 San Diegans had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, and half of those people had died. Gay and bisexual men were facing a devastating health crisis while also being blamed and stigmatized for it.
The bathhouse provision reflected that atmosphere. Its language described bathhouses as places that not only allowed risky sexual encounters but fostered them, a characterization officials now view as reflecting a homophobic stereotype.
Oxean “Eddie” Rey, publisher of LGBTQ San Diego News, put that history into perspective.
“Gay and bisexual men were dying and being blamed for dying,” said Oxean “Eddie” Rey, the publisher of the LGBTQ San Diego News. “When this was added to the code, these facilities were comparable to a luxury spa, not a shady, dangerous stereotype.”
That distinction matters. According to LaCava’s office, bathhouses have also provided LGBTQIA+ people with places to gather, particularly at times when being openly queer in public wasn’t safe.
The irony is hard to miss: during an era when queer people were already being pushed out of public life, spaces where they could find one another were also being treated with suspicion.
San Diego’s gay councilman had a little something to say
Councilman Stephen Whitburn, a gay man, thanked LaCava, a straight man, for bringing the repeal forward.
“We have strong allies on the City Council,” Whitburn said.
Which is a lovely reminder that sometimes the person helping clean up the mess isn’t the person who made it.
Councilman Raul Campillo also brought a deeply personal connection to the issue. His uncle Francisco died of HIV/AIDS in 1992, and Campillo thanked LaCava for updating the city code.
There is something poignant about that timing. A law created during the AIDS crisis is being removed more than three decades later, after society’s understanding of HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ+ rights has changed dramatically.
No, San Diego isn’t throwing health regulations out the window
Before anyone imagines city officials dramatically tossing the municipal rulebook into the Pacific Ocean, there’s an important detail: the repeal doesn’t eliminate the health regulations that apply to these businesses.
LaCava’s office explained the reasoning behind the repeal.
“For decades, bathhouses have provided a safe haven for members of the LGBTQIA+ community to gather, especially when it was not safe for them to do so publicly,” it read. “All regulations required for such businesses are overseen by the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency, rendering this policy and code section unnecessary. Given that repealing this section will not have any permitting or enforcement impacts, there is no operational or practical use for this section.”
In other words, San Diego isn’t saying regulations don’t matter. It’s saying this particular section no longer serves a practical purpose.
The city says the provision was unnecessary, while the relevant health regulations are already overseen by the county’s Health & Human Services Agency. The repeal therefore removes an outdated section without changing the permitting or enforcement landscape.
Which is considerably less dramatic than throwing the rulebook into the Pacific, but probably much better for everyone involved.
San Diego is finally leaving this piece of the 1980s behind
According to the city of San Diego, at least 10,000 residents have died from complications related to HIV/AIDS since the virus arrived locally. That makes this repeal about considerably more than bathhouses.
It is about how public policy can preserve the attitudes of a particular moment long after that moment has passed. The HIV/AIDS crisis was real. The grief was real. The need for effective public-health measures was real. But so was the stigma.
San Diego’s decision doesn’t erase that history. Instead, it removes a piece of city code that leaders now say no longer reflects the city or serves a practical purpose. So congratulations to San Diego for finally cleaning up its municipal-code junk drawer.
The old bathhouse provision has been shown the door. Health oversight remains in place. And a piece of language born during one of the darkest periods in LGBTQ+ history has finally been retired.
Honestly, it’s the kind of bathhouse makeover we can all get behind. No steam room required.
Source: CBS8