(FORTUNE Magazine) – The Ultimate Crime in Gotham Amazing city, New York. Fantastic sophistication. Incredible aplomb about every crisis. Well, almost every crisis. Our latest political entertainment here in the Big Apple has to do with sex and depravity. We have this AIDS problem, with maybe 35% of the country's cases right here in town. So it suddenly began to seem reasonable to close down certain gay bars and bathhouses that tolerate or maybe even encourage ''high-risk sex,'' which we propose not to define. New Yorkers, being exquisitely sophisticated, had no prior objection to the existence of these joints. Being concerned about AIDS, they at first had no objection to the shutdowns, which began in November. However, the aplomb has been looking a bit frayed lately. The shutdowns have, in fact, begun to look controversial: they have begun to look like discrimination, and that is a non-aplombable subject. We now have the New York Civil Liberties Union, gay rights groups, and assorted clergymen asserting that the shutdowns represent discrimination against gays. So how have the pols responded? In character, all the way. First they evolved the fascinating hypothesis that a certain well-known heterosexual orgy parlor, which until then had been deemed unobjectionable, might also be promoting high-risk sex. When that didn't fly, they attempted to shut the place down for prostitution. As of the present writing, Plato's Retreat has got the required court order and is open again. However, the pols have made their point: in the Big Apple absolutely anything goes except d------------n.