The Coalition for Healthy Sex announced its annual Awards of Excellence to seven sexclubs this week. Receiving the awards were Eros, Blow Buddies, the 1808 Club, SE Jacks, Handball Express, Ecstasy, and Mother Goose. Seven clubs ... did not meet the group's standards for adequate lighting: The Church of the Secret Gospel, Night Gallery, Macks, 15, Bearhug, the Uncut Club, and Leathernecks." -Dennis Conklin, Bay Area Reporter, 7/1/93

Your editor finds this news report a bit distasteful. Perhaps you're aware of the old picture of a crowded sleigh, pursued by wolves, with one person being thrown out to keep the wolves busy while everyone else makes good their escape. That's what I'm reminded of: Hey, guys, if we send the Health Department after those terrible clubs that don't have lights, maybe they'll leave us alone! In the same vein, a columnist in the San Francisco Chronicle declared her opposition to all sexclubs, calling them purveyors of disease and death-while maintaining that she was a friend of the gay community, but it was those nasty people who were having sex in public that were causing the problem. Then again, I recently got a copy of a newspaper article from Pittsburgh, where Unitarian Universalist minister George Exoo has been conducting a campaign to close down the Garden Theatre because of the sex that goes on there. Mr. Exoo maintains that he is a 'sex-positive' person; he even submitted an article to STEAM on the joys of Tantric Sex. But somehow, when the sex isn't 'his' sort, it becomes dirty, dangerous, and needs to be controlled.

Can we just stop casting blame around like this, please? Personally, I prefer sex in the light-in fact, I'm strongly partial to full sunlight-and I've found of late that I'm not nearly as promiscuous as I used to be-but that doesn't mean I go around casting stones at others who like darkness and multiple, anonymous encounters. Au contraire, I laud them: they are the ones on the edge now, the ones being subjected to public censure, and therefore they have my unconditional endorsement. Sex Is Good-yes, I've said that in previous editorials, and I'm likely to repeat it in future ones, too-and it's not only Good when it takes place in bright, clean, freshly scrubbed rooms. It's Good when it takes place in darkened parking lots behind the dumpster; it's Good when it takes place in sleazy darkrooms that are so crowded you can't possibly tell whose cock it is you're sucking; and it's Good when you're lying on a deserted tropical beach with a stranger who just wandered out of the bushes. (Yes, these are all especially memorable episodes from my own experience.) It was Good when I was 15, having sex with a 28-year-old man (who was clearly a bit freaked out by my aggressiveness); it was Good when I was in Georgia, sodomy law notwithstanding; it's been outstanding on-stage and on-camera; and it's been Good, if a bit amusing, in the toilet of a 747, somewhere over Missouri. Are there cases when sex is no longer 'Good'? Of course. Anytime sex involves coercion, I condemn it. That's about the extent of it. It's tempting to start cutting out those instances where sex is 'unsafe,' and classify them as 'Bad'; but I won't do it. 'Unsafe' is a temporary definition; 'Good' is permanent. We'll still be having sex, and loving it, and hopefully loving ourselves, long after AIDS is just a horrible memory. Let's try not to get 'safe' confused with 'good,' shall we? They intersect, but they're not synonymous-and I'm leery of any Awards of Excellence' that treat sex as a bargaining chip. Passing around information about clubs is one thing. I approve of making information available. Passing judgment on which clubs are 'better' than others can only be a personal opinion, and I fear the consequences of using this information in concert with State authorities to regulate consensual sex. I'm sure many of the clubs they endorse are fine places, offering good sleazy times; but I've also had wonderful (safe!) times at most of the other clubs that they decline to endorse. And extrapolating from the clubs that I know on both lists, I suspect I would feel more at home in the clubs on the 'bad boys' list.

To quote a Libertarian principle: "If you don't have the freedom to be wrong, you don't have any freedom at all." I believe that people should be practicing safer sex. Telling them they must do so, or, alternatively, shutting down the venues that refuse to tell them they must, is not going to change behavior; it will just destroy everyone's freedom.