Democratic leadership in Minneapolis marked Pride Month by reviving a controversial slice of 1980s sexual culture, scrapping a decades-old prohibition on adult bathhouses and sex venues that had been shuttered at the height of the AIDS crisis.
According to the Daily Caller, Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey formally nullified the 38-year ban days after the Minneapolis City Council voted to allow venues where primarily gay adults may gather for sexual activity. The council approved the repeal in a 92 vote, and Frey quickly endorsed the move, hailing it as the best Pride weekend yet!!
Minneapolis stands with our LGBTQIA+ neighbors we always will, Frey declared in a post on X, framing the decision as a civil-rights milestone rather than a public-health risk. Thats why Im proud to have stood with members of the City Council and community advocates to sign the Bathhouse Repeal Ordinance and Pride in Policy package into law.
The original closures date back to 1988, when city officials, echoing national health concerns, shut down bathhouses and similar establishments over fears of poor sanitation and the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases, particularly AIDS. At the time, federal health authorities, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were sounding alarms about the role of anonymous, high-volume sexual encounters in accelerating the epidemic among gay men.
It was so concentrated in the gay community that I really wanted to get a feel for what was going on there that would lead to this explosion of a sexually transmitted disease, Fauci told NPR in a 2021 interview, recalling his visits to major gay enclaves during the crisis. So I did. I went to the Castro District [of San Francisco]. I went down to Greenwich Village, and I went into the bathhouses to essentially see what was going on.
And the epidemiologist in me went, Oh, my goodness, this is a perfect setup for an explosion of a sexually transmitted disease! And the same thing going to the gay bars and seeing what was going on. And it gave me a great insight into the explosiveness of the outbreak of a sexually transmitted disease.
Despite the near-unanimous council vote, not every progressive lawmaker was eager to celebrate the policy shift, with some expressing quiet unease about its necessity and wisdom. Councilwoman Elizabeth Shafer, one of the two dissenting votes, said her opposition stemmed less from moral objection than from skepticism that reopening bathhouses should be a priority for city government.
My constituent has spent decades in this fight, Shafer said of a resident who previously worked for former state Sen. Allan Spear, the first openly gay senator in Minnesota. He shared with me that many gay men in his own network either oppose the return of bathhouses or have real questions about whether this is the right path for a variety of reasons.
Councilwoman Robin Wonsley, who backed the repeal, dismissed such concerns as rooted in outdated stereotypes and moral panic rather than evidence-based policy. I think its so important to not use this trope of hypersexualizing our communities, Wonsley said, arguing that past restrictions reflected prejudice more than prudence.
That put a very repressive, ignorant, and fear-based policy in our legal code in the first place. If you can go and enjoy a drag show at Gay 90s, you should be able to stand up for the policies that make those spaces possible.
As President Trumps second administration continues to emphasize law and order and traditional public-health safeguards, Minneapolis move underscores the widening cultural divide between progressive city halls and more conservative visions of community standards. With even some gay constituents questioning whether bathhouses are a step forward or a return to the very conditions that once fueled a deadly epidemic, the citys experiment will test whether ideological symbolism is being allowed to outrun hard-earned lessons from the past.
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