Ann Coulter raised an excellent issue on Geraldo at Large when, in a debate with a liberal supporter of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's self-declared war on personal bad health habits, she asked in so many words, "Why doesn't he close down the gay bathhouses?"

For those of you out here in flyover country who may be unfamiliar with bi-coastal sexual practices, gay bathhouses are gathering places for men who are seeking anonymous, promiscuous, and frequently public sex with like-minded men.  Such facilities first became more widely known to unsophisticated provincials back in the eighties with the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  As it turned out, these bathhouses were the primary incubators for HIV.  Following that discovery, many of them closed down when fearful gays quit patronizing them and government health departments increased their oversight.  Within the gay community there was even a term for the relationship between bathhouses and AIDS: the Bathhouse Phenomenon.

Apparently, as treatment regimens for HIV infection became more efficacious, and a diagnosis of being HIV-positive was no longer a sentence of certain death, gay men began reverting to old habits, and the bathhouses returned in even greater numbers.  A quick Google search shows fourteen operating in New York City, and that's only the ones willing to be advertised on that particular gay website.

So, to get back to Ann's question, just why is Mayor Bloomberg so hell-bent on protecting his constituents from their bad sugar consumption habits and potential obesity and diabetes, while apparently allowing these bathhouses to operate openly?  Why, indeed, when they are known to be incubators of the deadly HIV and many of their patrons to be carriers of not just that virus, but also many other sexually transmitted diseases that are of significant public concern?  Just this past week, the NYC Health Department issued a warning about a potential meningitis epidemic where gay men and promiscuous sexual activities appear to be the vectors.

So Ann's question is legitimate to ask of Bloomberg.  It is neither anti-gay nor unfair.  It is recognition of a simple truth: liberalism tends to target disfavored practices while ignoring others possibly more injurious, even though those ignored may result in grievous illness and even death for their favored liberal adherents.  Mayor Bloomberg is a glaring example of such biased selection even at a critical time when the rate of infection of the dreaded HIV virus appears to be on the rise among gay men.  Where is Nanny Bloomberg's stern admonition to those gay men whose behaviors spread deadly disease?  Where's the ban on the bathhouses where such behaviors take place?  Where's his concern for the costs of their very expensive, possibly lifelong treatments to the rest of us?

An epidemic to concern us all is the growing rate of delusional hypocrisy among liberals.