Grapevine

By PAUL GRAY/

A GREEN LIGHT FOR RED LIGHTS? When AIDS struck San Francisco, city authorities closed many of the gay bathhouses. In France, land of Descartes and Voltaire, a different logic prevails: AIDS has prompted a call to reopen the brothels, which have been banned since 1946. The idea comes from Michele Barzach, a gynecologist and feminist who gained renown in 1986 when she became Health Minister in the government of Jacques Chirac. Now a deputy mayor of Paris, Barzach has not abandoned her support for women's rights. But she argues that the only way to keep AIDS at bay is to get the streetwalkers off the trottoirs and back into maisons de tolerance, where health measures can be enforced.

With reporting by DAVID ELLIS