Under the eyecatching headline "Sex and The City" (editorial, June 17),
you opined that San Francisco's sex clubs should be shut down rather than
allowed to continue operating under enforced safersex rules. You implied
that private bedrooms are the only acceptable sexual venue.

If only life were so simpleminded.

Sex outside the bedroom has been a San Francisco commonplace since tents
flapping around Portsmouth Square served as brothels for the original
49ers.

Today, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic; San Francisco's gay community
has successfully institutionalized recreational "safer (i.e., nonanal)
sex" in a handful of wellrun, heavily patronized sex clubs that are the
envy of the world: clean, alcohol free meeting places where men relax,
meet friends or strangers and, yes, have sexclub sex. The civilized San
Francisco sex club reflects a large segment of the gay male community:
fraternal, inclusive, affectionate and comfortably, defiantly
prosex.

If your sniffy sensitivities can't cope with the idea of men getting
together to have sex, just say so. If, on the other hand, you really
believe that prohibiting sex in all locales except the bedroom is
workable public policy, then by all means try to shut the clubs down.

I can guarantee that you will have a helluva fight on your hands; in any
case, we will never disappear into our bedrooms.

CURT SANBURN

San Francisco