WEBVTT - Episode 3: The Baths 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:03.000 Hey, this is Leon Napok. I'm the host of Fiasco, 0:00:03.240 --> 0:00:05.640 but you may also know me from the podcasts Slowburn, 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:09.240 Think Twice, Michael Jackson, and Backfired the Vaping Wars. I'm 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:11.880 excited to be sharing with you the next season of Backfired, 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:15.960 titled Attention Deficit, which is now available exclusively on Audible. 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:20.320 Backfired is a podcast about the business of unintended consequences. 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:23.279 In the first season, my co host Ril Pardess and 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:25.680 I dove deep into the world of vaping and how 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:28.400 the well intentioned quest for a safer cigarette went awry. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.879 Now we're tackling ADHD and how the push to destigmatize 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:35.879 this hard to define childhood diagnosis has led to an 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.720 explosion of stimulant use in kids as well as adults. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.560 It's a story about the promise of psychiatry to fix 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.640 our brains and the power of the pharmaceutical industry to 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.600 shape how we and our doctors think about what's wrong 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.239 with us. To hear both seasons of Backfired, go to 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.600 audible dot com slash Backfired and start a free trial 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:59.800 that's audible dot com slash backfired. Fiasco is intended from 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.080 a sure audiences for a list of books, articles, and 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.120 documentaries we used in our research. Follow the link in 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:12.560 the show notes Previously on Fiasco. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:18.960 It's mysterious, it's deadly, and it's baffling medical science. Every 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.240 time you'd hear about the epidemic, it was inevitably fatal, 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.640 dread disease, no survivors, no cure, terminal illness. 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:27.920 I'm sick of everyone in this community who tells me 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:29.440 to stop creating a panic. 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:31.080 I am got scare. 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.319 If I can't join another man's body to mind, then 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.640 how am I gay? Liking Bet Midler isn't enough the 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.680 rights of people with AIDS to as full and satisfying 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:47.720 sexual and emotional lives as anyone else. As a kid, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.600 Cleave Jones routinely skipped jim class to avoid getting beaten 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.600 up by his classmates in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:59.200 Being gay made Jones stick out, even though he kept 0:01:59.200 --> 0:01:59.880 it to himself. 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.480 I understood at a very early age that I was 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.840 different from the other kids because they made it very 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.800 clear that they saw me as being different in a 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:09.840 way that was often pretty violent. 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.680 In high school, Jones grew so desperate that he stole 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:16.320 sedatives and pain pills from his parents and hid them 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:17.919 under a rug in his room. 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.320 I was very frightened because I just didn't see any 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.960 possibility of there being any joy or happiness in my life, 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:27.320 and I was getting ready to kill myself. 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.280 At one point, Jones tried to do some research on 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.400 what it meant to be gay, but all he could 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:37.079 find was scientific literature that classified homosexuality as a mental illness. 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:41.280 It was through these really outdated old psychology textbooks that 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.960 were in my father's library, which talked about prefrontal lobotomy 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:49.720 and electroconvulsive shock treatment and things like that. So it 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:53.680 was quite a revelation sitting in the high school library 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.679 one day reading magazines during gym class when I read 0:02:57.720 --> 0:02:59.440 about the gay liberation movement. 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.560 It was nineteen seventy one and Jones was in his 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.720 junior year of high school. He had faked an illness 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:09.560 and gotten a doctor's note so he could spend his 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:12.400 gym period in the library. It was there that he 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.760 came across an article and Life magazine titled Homosexuals in Revolt. 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.400 The piece was accompanied by photos of men with long 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:26.000 hair and raised fists marching through the streets of far 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:27.600 off American cities. 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.200 Mcgay liberation movement, the drive for legal and civil rights, 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.760 and for freedom of expression of the homosexual lifestyle. 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:39.440 We are just as viable a lifestyle, just as happy 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:41.640 a type human being as any other. 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:52.280 In this country. Jones stole the magazine, went home and 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.680 flushed the pills he had been hiding down the toilet. 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:58.840 After graduating from high school, he began making his way 0:03:58.960 --> 0:03:59.960 towards San Francisco. 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.400 After hundreds of years of people hating quote fags and queers, 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:10.440 a city has emerged where homosexuality is not only tolerated, 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:11.400 but thrives. 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.080 I remember coming across the Bay Bridge for the first time, 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.640 and there used to be a coffee roasting plant right 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:18.520 there at the base of Market Street, and I would 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.400 smell the coffee and the fog, and I thought it 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:22.960 was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.120 Today, fully fifteen percent of the city is estimated to 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:27.520 be gay. 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:28.920 In fact, there are. 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:32.479 More homosexuals per capita in San Francisco than any other 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:33.440 city in the world. 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.600 The environment was electric. Every single day. More of us 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.279 were arriving, hundreds a day, young kids, boys and girls 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.720 from all over the country that had come to San Francisco. 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.760 Most of us, just a few years prior to that, 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.919 had really thought we were the only people on the 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.520 whole planet that felt this way. So it was just 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:58.000 this incredible excitement in this sense of anything is possible. 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.680 Now anything is possible. Look how many of us there 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:02.240 are who? 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:10.720 When Jones moved to San Francisco in nineteen seventy three, 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.520 sodomy laws that made gay sex illegal were still on 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.520 the books in California, as they were across much of 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:21.440 the country. When the state finally repealed it sodomy laws 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.840 in nineteen seventy five, a city that was already one 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.720 of the freest places on earth for gay people became 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:28.599 a little freer. 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.080 The gay subculture has come up with its own conventions, 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:35.080 and since no rules exist from the outside, there's a 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:36.680 freedom about gay bars. 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.720 As the seventies War on a world historical nightlife scene 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.800 flourished and expanded in San Francisco as gay men flooded 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:46.320 into bars and dance clubs. 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.080 When you ask why a person goes to a gay bar, 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:50.160 here's what you get. 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.760 I'm so comfortable there. I like to have my high 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.640 filled with smoke, and I like to get d drunk 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:00.000 and I like to meet pepole, which I usually don't. 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.360 My atmosphere's my life whouse. 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.320 The city also saw a proliferation of a very specific 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.080 kind of establishment, the gay bathouse. 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.520 While many gays patronized there bar as in search of 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:17.560 an all night companion, the gay baths of San Francisco 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.680 offer what should be a more certain solution to other 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:25.160 men similarly inclined, a safe and conducive atmosphere for uninhibited 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.680 sensuality and the expectation that even if your fantasy is 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:30.719 enough fulfilled, something will be. 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.400 For decades, gay men have been having sex in secret, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.400 often in public spaces like parks and restrooms, where they 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:43.120 risked arrest and assault by anti gay vigilantes. Bath Houses, 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:46.920 by comparison, were safe and private. In exchange for a 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.279 modest cover charge, gay men could walk in and do 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:55.240 whatever they wanted. By the late nineteen seventies, the bathhouses 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:59.440 dotted San Francisco's gay neighborhoods. Many of them featured live 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:04.359 DJs working in a new American art form, disco. The 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.680 music of Sylvester, the hometown hero known as the Queen 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.720 of Disco, could be heard all over town at establishments 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:17.640 like the handball Express, the cornhole, and the barracks. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.680 A lot of people have I think a very skewed 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:26.080 impression of what bathhouses were at the time. People imagine 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.880 them as being dark and scary. They were anything but 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:31.520 the bathhouse I used to go to was I think 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.720 it was three floors. There was an enormous swimming pool, 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:40.640 a huge chacuzzi. There were saunas and steam rooms, and 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:45.040 cafe sort of place, a sandwich shop, a rooftop deck. 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.040 The bathhouses hosted all kinds of events, dance parties as 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.520 you might expect, but also voter registration drives and clinics 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.600 for STD testing. Some were known for their thematic flourishes, 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.200 like the Bulldog Baths, which were designed to look like 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.000 San Quentin pre and others were known for their sheer size. 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.400 The Club Baths, which Cleve Jones liked to frequent, was 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:08.880 big enough to host eight hundred visitors at a time. 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.720 What drew me to the baths originally was, you know, 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.880 if you live in a cramped, old, drafty, cold Victorian 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:21.080 apartment with five other boys, you each get maybe, if 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:23.920 you're lucky, four minutes in this shower a day. It 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:26.320 was just so luxurious to go there and take a long, 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:29.880 hot shower, and then of course one could have a 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.520 lot of sex, and we did. 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.760 There was a brief window when bathhouses were some of 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.560 the safest places in San Francisco for gay men to 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.960 meet and have sex that was about to come to 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:49.360 an abrupt end. I'm Leon Nafok from Audible Originals and 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.520 Prologue Projects. This is fiasco. 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.239 Age continues as epidemic spread in San Francisco. 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.920 Ninety six percent that catch this thing are gonna die. 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:00.000 Prevent fallout. 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.400 You've called for the closing of bath houses. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.200 We pay the price when we violate the. 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:04.760 Laws of God. 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:08.200 Gay community leaders worry about such a dangerous legal precedent. 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.640 We're on the road to recriminalizing sodomi politically, it's like 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:13.240 a simple solution. It's a problem. 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:14.000 Close it down. 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.160 In this episode, aids threatens gay life in San Francisco 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.160 and the city's bathhouses spark a confrontation over public health 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:37.040 and civil liberties. In nineteen seventy seven, Cleave Jones started 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.360 volunteering for the campaign to elect Harvey Milk as San 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.000 Francisco's city supervisor. 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:43.480 My name is. 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.559 Harvey Milk, and I'm here Jimmy Kuciuney. 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:56.000 After Milk won and took office, Jones worked with him 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:59.640 as an intern at City Hall. Less than a year later, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.920 on November twenty seventh, nineteen seventy eight, Milk was shot 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.199 and killed by an assassin along with the city's mayor, 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.839 George Moscone immers author Harvey. 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:14.760 Milk, a city supervisor, was shot there the city Hall 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:15.400 this morning. 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:18.920 Jones had left the building to run an errand when 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.760 he got back he saw his boss's wing tip shoes 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:23.880 on the floor sticking out of his office. 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:28.559 There's his body right out the doorway. That. It was 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:30.440 pretty surreal, pretty horrible. 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.280 This is the body of Supervisor Harvey Milk because it 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:36.760 was taken from City Hall. That night, Jones took part 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.000 in a spontaneous candlelight vigil, which was attended by more 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:41.680 than twenty five thousand people. 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:44.360 They filled the place the straight and the gay of 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.360 the unknown and the well known Governor Brown was. 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.520 Here just later as Jones was there when Milk's assassin 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:54.000 was spared a murder conviction and was instead found guilty 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:57.640 of manslaughter and sentenced to just over seven years in prison. 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.880 Jones joined a crowd in the streets of San Francisco 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:09.600 to protest the verdict, but began as a peaceful demonstration 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.200 gave way to violent clashes between police and protesters. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.720 In the Castro district, a group of what some called 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:18.000 rogue cops broke into a gay bar. 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:20.960 Several people were bloodied there and on the sidewalks. 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.760 It became known as the White Knight Riot. It served 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.080 as a dramatic reminder that for all its advances, the 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.920 gay liberation movement remained under threat. 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:33.880 It's a very crazy night. And then the police attacked 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.680 Castro Street and destroyed some of the bars and beat 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:40.079 a lot of people up before they were driven out 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:40.760 of the neighborhood. 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:41.840 What do you things have gone. 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:43.440 From good to bad to very bad. 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.040 Every once in a while, demonstrator a protester will come 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.439 out of the crowd, throw a piece of burning material 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:50.000 into a police car and started on fire. 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.120 Cleave Jones continued working in politics after Harvey Milk's death. 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.000 By the nineteen eighties, his years as an activist had 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:14.560 propelled him to a job as a legislative consultant in 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:18.480 the California State Assembly. One of his responsibilities was to 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:22.520 examine bills coming out of the Assembly's Health Committee. Jones 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.400 didn't know much about public health policy, so the first 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:28.559 thing he did was subscribe to a stack of medical journals. 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.840 And among them was the MMWR, the Morbidity Immortality Weekly 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.760 Report out of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.360 This CDC report was the same one you heard about 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.560 earlier in our series, the one that put forward the 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:45.600 very first scientific findings on what would turn out to 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:46.240 be AIDS. 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:52.439 I remember quite clearly the first week of June, forty 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.920 years ago, nineteen eighty one, reading these first few paragraphs 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:02.640 describing clusters of homosexual man with capasi sarcoma and numasistus pneumonia, 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:05.480 and I clipped it out, and I put it on 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.680 my bulletin board, and I just had this very bad 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.679 feeling that this was something serious. 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.280 Not long after Cleve Jones read the CDC report, a 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.280 doctor named Marcus Conant asked to meet him for dinner. 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:23.719 Conant was a forty five year old dermatologist at the 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:28.920 University of California, San Francisco. He was originally from Jacksonville, Florida, 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.080 and like Jones, he had chosen to launch his career 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.000 in the Bay Area. In no small part because he 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:35.839 was a gay man. 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.280 Most gay men coming from Jacksonville, Florida, knew that if 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:42.480 you were going to be a gay man and not 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:44.959 live a lot, you know, get married and have kids 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.040 and snink away two or three times a year to 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.120 go pursue a gay lifestyle, that you had to live 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:52.560 in a major city, and that would probably be New 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:53.840 York or San Francisco. 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:00.360 In nineteen eighty one, Conan began seeing cases of rare 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:05.360 skin cancer in his patients. Capus's sarcoma or CHAS for short. 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.920 Now it was and still is, an extremely rare disease. 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.880 The average dermatologist in a lifetime could be expected to 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:13.760 see one case. 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:18.800 Soon, Conant opened a clinic devoted to capusi's sarcoma and 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:22.800 quickly became the city's go to doctor for CHAS patients. 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:25.760 Conant was on the front lines of what he believed 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.440 was an unfolding epidemic, but hardly anyone seemed to be 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:40.840 paying attention. It was out of frustration with this state 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:44.720 of affairs that Conant sought out Cleave Jones, with his 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.440 political connections and his work with the Health Committee. Maybe 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:52.280 Jones could help Conant get funding for research, and just 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:55.240 as urgently, maybe he could help raise awareness in the 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:59.280 gay community of what was going on. Before dinner, Conant 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.680 took Jones to dead see one of his chaos patients 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:05.200 in person. The young man showed Jones a photo of 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.600 what he had looked like before he got sick, handsome, 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:14.240 smooth skinned, and muscular. Now his emaciated body was covered 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:15.280 in purple lesions. 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:19.760 He had multiple lesions of CAPSI sarcoma, but then had 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:26.080 a terrible, terrible infectious disease causing intractable diarrhea with you know, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.200 twenty or thirty bowel movements a day, and he deteriorated 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:30.400 very rapidly. 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:36.000 Cleave. Jones was terrified by what he saw. Afterwards, he 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:38.960 and Conant left the hospital and went to the Zuni Cafe, 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:44.200 a restaurant not far from City Hall. There, Conan explained 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:45.360 his theory of the case. 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:47.920 He told me that he thought it was a new 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:54.600 or previously unrecognized virus and that did something that crippled 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.440 the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to a whole 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:00.960 range of opportunists confections. 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.360 At this early point, there was no consensus among doctors 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.040 as to what exactly was causing people to get sick, 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.680 But Conan told Jones what he believed, that the disease 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:16.840 was primarily sexually transmitted, and that gay men were at 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:17.560 special risk. 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:21.920 There was no drama, there was no theatrics about He's 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.320 got a slight Southern cadence to his voice, and he 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.480 just kind of laid it out to me over dinner, 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:29.400 and I thought, well, my goodness, were all dead. 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.720 After the dinner, Jones was convinced that the gay community 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.680 was in trouble, and he agreed to help Conant start 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:41.120 a foundation that would raise money for research. Soon, the 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.320 two men were both working towards another more controversial goal 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:48.280 as well, convincing their fellow gay men to change how 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:49.040 they had sex. 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:00.440 I was worried today that a new and frightening disease, 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:04.240 a quiet immune deficiency syndrome, destroys the body's ability to 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:05.399 fight certain illnesses. 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.200 By the summer of nineteen eighty two, the mysterious disease 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:14.240 causing KS and various opportunistic infections had become known as AIDS. 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:19.680 The number of diagnosed AIDS patients was doubling every five months. 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.680 There is no known cause, no known cure, and more 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:24.720 than forty percent of the victims have died. 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.239 As the numbers swored, Marcus Conant grew increasingly frustrated that 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.520 the gay community was not taking the crisis more seriously. 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.879 She was especially worried about the city's booming circuit of 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:37.680 bath houses. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.800 What was going on in the community was denial. I 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:43.280 had people telling me that, oh, it's okay to go 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:45.159 to the bath houses as long as you take a 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.320 shower after you have sex. I had one guy claim 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:50.600 that he just changed the sheets on the bed in 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:54.359 his stall at the bath house every time he had sex. 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:56.760 So just change the sheets and you'll be fine. Now, 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:59.280 as long as you have a belief, something that you 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:02.959 can hold on to, whether it's scientifically valid or not, 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:08.400 is often more valid for people than scientific evidence. 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.080 It wasn't just that seemingly healthy men were putting themselves 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:16.360 at risk. Conan was also seeing patients with visible symptoms 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.040 of AIDS who were still flatly refusing to modify their 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:21.119 sexual routines. 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:23.880 I had a patient he had a couple of pleasions 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:27.520 of capsis sarcoma, and he said, in the course of 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:29.760 the interview, he said, hurry up, doctor, you know I 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:32.399 want to go to the baths tonight. And I said, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.680 you're still going to the bass And he said, sure, 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.440 I'm going to the bass. And I said, but you've 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:43.040 got CAPSI sarcoma, and you know everyone thinks that it's transmissible. 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:45.800 Let's get going from one person or another. And he said, 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:47.840 you know everybody knows that, so they can take their 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:49.520 risk too, But I'm going to the bass. 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.080 For years, Conan had enjoyed going to the baths himself, 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.600 but after encounters like that, he not only stopped going, 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:07.600 he stopped having sex all together. One weekend in nineteen 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.520 eighty three, Conant and his boyfriend took a trip to 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.439 Santa Cruz, where they wandered around an amusement park on 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:14.119 the boardwalk. 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:16.159 We walked up and down the boardwalk and did all 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:18.440 those sorts of things, and we finally got to the 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.879 roller coaster. And there's this old rickety roller coaster at 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.359 the end. It's a nightmare because it's still a wooden structure. 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.159 It rattles, it sounds like it's coming apart when the 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:28.880 cars go by. 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:31.840 It was while Conant was on the roller coaster that 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:33.719 he had an epiphany about the baths. 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:36.760 So we get on this thing, and you know, typical 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:41.359 roller coaster. We're slowly climbing up to the peak of 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.240 the high point. You can see out over the Pacific Ocean. 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.679 It's just great. And then suddenly, you know, the bottom 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.240 drops out from under you and the car goes greening down. 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.720 And my only thought at that point is the things 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:55.960 was rattling and sounded like it was going to come apartments. 0:19:56.320 --> 0:20:01.560 If this thing weren't safe, they meaning the authorities, will 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.520 close it down. It must be safe, because otherwise they 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.080 just wouldn't let this thing happen. And as we reached 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:13.560 the bottom of the loop, I realized, wait a minute, 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:15.320 that's true of the bathhouses. 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.400 Conant realized that people were going to the bathhouses because 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:23.040 the bathhouses were open. If the bath houses weren't safe, 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.440 these people figured someone would have surely closed them down. 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:28.719 And of course that's when I realized I've got to 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.960 get out of my ivory tower, quit plupling the doctor 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:34.480 and the white coat, and get out there and start 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.359 saying no, no, We've got to go public and say 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:40.960 those of us at the university who are seeing these patients, 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:42.960 who are looking at this thing every day, who know 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:46.200 something about this disease, feel like you need to close 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:47.200 down the bathhouses. 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.680 Of course, Marcus Koenant was just a doctor. He didn't 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.280 have the power to shut down the bathhouses. That would 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.560 be up to the city government, specifically the director of 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:05.320 public Health. 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:09.240 I'm Mervyn Silverman, former director of Health in the City 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:13.119 and County of San Francisco from nineteen seventy seven to 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:15.080 nineteen eighty five. 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:18.320 Working for the San Francisco Health Department was a dream 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:21.439 come true for doctor Mervyn Silverman, who moved to the 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.160 city after years of holding a similar position in which 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:28.200 a tak Kansas. In San Francisco, Silverman found a health 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:31.720 department that was well funded, well respected, and free to 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.199 implement progressive new programs other cities might have discouraged. 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.800 I had about I think five thousand employees and a 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.680 huge budget, so we did everything from a brain surgery 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:44.240 to bath house inspection. 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.640 The bathhouse inspections were basically like hotel or restaurant inspections. 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:51.520 They were mostly about making sure that rooms and other 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:55.960 facilities were clean before aids. Looking after the bathhouses was 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:58.080 not exactly Silverman's top priority. 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:01.280 Honestly didn't just I didn't pay that much attention to it. 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.840 I think they were regularly attended by probably five or 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.600 ten percent of the whole gay community. So it wasn't 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:12.000 a major thing, but it was something that was symbolic. 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:15.320 It's hard to find reliable numbers on how many people 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:20.120 were actually visiting San Francisco's bathhouses. One informal survey taken 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:22.800 in nineteen eighty three indicates that it was more than 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:25.960 Silverman thought that one in four gay men went to 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.720 the baths once a week, while one in five went 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.199 once a month. In any event, as aids began to 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:35.800 spread in San Francisco, Silverman was reluctant to do anything 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:39.800 that might make gay people feel unfairly targeted or encourage 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:42.560 members of the general public to treat them like pariah's. 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.560 In nineteen eighty three, when Marcus Conan and others began 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:49.920 pressuring the city's health department to take action against the bathhouses, 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:54.880