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Cruising 2: The Home Depot Invasion If there is any upside to the whole Larry Craig situation, it's that the media fallout has provided some reports whose bizarro factor is off the charts. Rather than go for the truly interesting issues at hand (like, why does the GOP have so many deeply closeted members?), outlets like CNN and ABC News have opted for the far more accessible/sensational "gays are screwing in a public bathroom near you!" angle. The reports are pretty amazing. In this CNN video, featuring the most inspired B-roll I've ever seen ("I need three minutes of toilet close-ups!"), the reporter uncovers the "surprising" fact that many men who look for anonymous sex in public bathrooms are engaged in long-term heterosexual relationships. I wouldn't say this is surprising, but at least he sort of made the point that not all men who engage in this activity are running back to practice their cabaret shows and fluff pillows like the public apparently expects. This ABC News report is much more direct. "Secret Signals: How Gay Men Cruise for Sex" is the title, and it gets right down to business in laying out exactly how to find a bathroom catering to your specific anonymous sex needs and what to do when you get there (two words: toe tap).
At the very end, it does throw a bone to run-of-the-mill gays who prefer to have their anonymous encounters over the Internet like decent people by noting that "public cruising is practiced mainly by deeply closeted men" and providing this closing quote:
Way to bury the real issue at the bottom of the last page, after planting the seed of paranoia that every public bathroom in the country is a hotbed of gay sex. Why is it that this is being made into such a big deal? After all, when Senator Vitter of Louisiana was named in the DC madam case earlier this year, we didn't see a bunch of stories about how straight men frequent prostitutes. It's actually kind of odd to see the word "cruising" pop up so much, and if I didn't know better, I'd think that Warner Brothers was behind all this in some elaborate viral marketing scheme leading up to the DVD release of the 1980 Al Pacino film. *Sigh*. How far things have come in 27 years... Check out the video of a CNN follow-up report after the jump. Submitted by on Wed, 2007-08-29 10:55. |
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Some gay men DO cruise in public places
I'm disgusted by the salacious nature of the reports about public cruising in response to the whole Craig thing. Once again, gays are being reduced to sexual deviants, and I shudder at the thought of how many of the un- or under-educated are reacting to all this.
We have a right to be pissed off! But there is no way - as many gay blogs are saying today - that we can say that only men who are deeply in the closet cruise public areas. I've cruised my share of public places as an out gay man. Many openly gay men cruise as well, and we know it. And if there were public settings in which straight women routinely provided straight men the chance to have sex, many straight men would cruise those places, too. Many men will look for opportunities to have sex when and where they probably shouldn't - and hope they don't get caught.
Yes, many deeply closeted men cruise public spaces and have for years. But so do some openly gay men. Sometimes because they don't feel comfortable doing it in bars, sometimes because they're lonely, sometimes because they're looking for something new - a sense of adventure, sometimes because they're not sexually satisfied by their boyfriends/husbands. There are just as many reasons why men who have sex with men cruise in public places as there are why straight men hire prostitutes. In our responses to the circus the mainstream media are creating around cruisin, let's at least be honest about that.
What no one seems to be saying is - if you haven't noticed men cruising in these areas by now, it's probably safe to say that they're very descreet about it. Had the police officer who arrested Craig not tapped his foot, Craig would have left him alone. So men don't go to these places looking to thrust themselves upon unsuspecting victims. They go in search of someone who's looking for the same thing. They don't have sex in the presence of children. They don't get it on in the presence of men who just came in to "use the facilities." Most of the action goes undetected. These targeted stings are a waste of public funds.
Where's the
Sorry about that.
Anti-Gay Media
People like Mike Rogers and Michael Signorile have given the media a pass to gay-bash because they want to see Larry Craig humiliated. I know there are a lot of gay people that want this as well. They never get to why this stuff happens - prejudice against gay people. If there wasn't prejudice then Larry Craig would have been open as soon as he knew he was gay. Instead you have gay people like Rogers and Signorile who are content to clean up the mess of closeted gay people caused by anti-gay prejudice.
This whole situation is very frustrating. Within three days this story has created just as much headlines as the Michael Vick case which has been going on for weeks and with several defendants. It shows you how straight society pounces on any chance to beat down gay people.
There are two reasons this case has been exploited