Minneapolis Repeals Gay Bathhouse Ban
The City Council voted to repeal the nearly four-decade ban following years of advocacy from LGBTQ and HIV prevention groups.
Minneapolis has repealed its nearly four-decade ban on gay bathhouses after the City Council voted 9-2 to approve two technical amendments to the city code effectively repealing the prohibition on bathhouses and adult sex venues.
The original ban was imposed in 1988 as part of an effort to curb the spread of HIV and reduce the number of AIDS cases, which had surged among men who have sex with men.
But in recent years, advocates have urged city leaders to repeal the 1988 ordinance, arguing that advances in HIV prevention have made it easier to protect people from contracting the virus.
Supporters of the repeal, including City Council President Elliot Payne and Council Members Jason Chavez and Soren Stevenson, said the goal is to regulate bathhouses similarly to San Francisco, with requirements for condoms, patron monitoring, staff training, lighting, and wash-up and waste disposal facilities.
They also contend that bathhouses serve as community gathering spaces for LGBTQ people and would provide safer, more hygienic, and better-regulated environments than the underground parties and illegal adult sex venues already operating in the city.
“Research has shown pushing people into less visible spaces does not eliminate the risk — it makes outreach and education more difficult,” Jay Orne, a research scientist who leads the Aliveness Project’s HIV prevention program, told the council during a June 17 public hearing in support of repealing the bathhouse ban.
About 30 people testified in favor of repeal, including Reece Gray, a queer trans man who said that, as a younger man, he spent years taking unnecessary risks in private, underground sex spaces, where he encountered dangerous misinformation, harm, and “outright violation and abuse” — risks he believes could have been avoided had public venues been available.
“I grinned and beared it through abusive relationships and egregious consent violations because, in underground spaces, whoever has the house or the connection or the clout has the power,” Gray said. “It should not have been like that.”
Lee Samuelson told the council that, as a queer person on the autism spectrum, it’s difficult to navigate spaces with “hidden rules that everyone is expected to grasp,” such as dating apps and gay bars. Bathhouses, Samuelson argued, would involve less sensory overload while providing clear, straightforward rules of conduct.
Dylan Boyer, a Minneapolis resident who is part of the Aliveness Project, testified that the first time he went to a bathhouse, it was to get tested for HIV, not have sex, because it was a place he felt safe, with testing, education and condoms.
Chavez noted that while the council’s first openly gay member, Brian Coyle, spearheaded the bathhouse ban, he was “making decisions in the middle of a crisis” and lacked today’s understanding of how HIV is transmitted and prevented. Chavez said he believes that if Coyle were still alive, “he’d be standing with us.”
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