While visiting relatives I read about a sting operation in a local park that’s apparently been known for quite a while as a popular location for gay hookups. The police arrested a couple dozen men for “indecent exposure” after they approached undercover officers, looking for male sex partners (and apparently displaying their goods).
It’s a fairly small town, and I’m not sure whether the locals objected to them being in the park, or to the presence of homosexuals in the community.
Is this happening everywhere? Is this a typical feature of gay culture?
The article didn’t mention any kind of crime involved with their activities - no prostitution or robbery. Nor was anyone underage.
As far as I can tell, the primary victims here are the picnic tables.
There are a couple of parks in my town that are well-known as gay meetingplaces. We live near one of the parks. There have been several arrests for public weenie-wagging, and at least one arrest when a 14-year-old boy was approached by an older man in a restroom, but mostly the cops seem to look the other way unless a formal complaint is filed.
There’s a place where that sort of thing (ahem) goes down. There are park restrooms about a block from my house that supposedly are the hub of gay sex for quite a while.
Nothing like seeing the lights on in the middle of the night and a half dozen cars parked in the dirt parking lot.
There was a place near where I went to college where men were known to meet and exchange sex. One of the guys in my dorm used to go down there almost every weekend for oral sex.
In fact most of the guys arrested in the particular area in my town seem to be married and straight. Go figure. “Sorry officer I just stopped to take a piss in the woods. I guess the three other guys in the circle holding their dicks were pissing too.”
There’s a website where (I know Australian, but possibly global) meeting places (or “beats”) are discussed, shared, and even given ratings. This made the news in Sydney last month when one of the city’s biggest department stores had to close their toilets to the public.
There’s a park near the Livingston campus of Rutgers that has a lot of this activity. There are also mountain biking trails, so I’ve heard many stories of bikers coming across male couples in compromising positions. When I first moved into the area, I was advised against riding in that park alone–not that anyone would bug me, just that it was kind of creepy.
I’ve only been there once. My now husband and I were going to take a ride. We were in the parking area when we discovered that he had forgotten his helmet. I was very relieved, because there were guys there who were actively cruising, and I definitely felt uncomfortable.
The OP asked if people might object because they didn’t like “homosexuals in the community.” I don’t know about that. I certainly don’t mind homosexuals in the community, and I don’t care if they want to have anonymous sex. I do object to them having anonymous sex on good mountain biking trails!
If the gay cruising is interfering with other people’s use of the park, then it should be stopped. The picnic tables are not the only victims. The other “victims” are the taxpayers who can’t safely and/or comfortably use their park.
There is a park here, near the Pentagon believe it or not, where it’s quite common. I used to bike through and often stop to rest before finishing the last few miles of my ride. On one occasion, just after dusk, cops rode in on motorcycles and chased out all the men who appear to be just hanging around. Mixed sex couples were allowed to remain.
A few friends who admit to crusing in that park tell me that sometimes police helecopters hover overhead and light up the back woods areas with their search lights. You’d think a major drug deal was going down or something.
I agree. While I don’t think I have the right to dictate who has sex with whom or how, if the “where” is a public park supported by my tax dollars, that is something that does affect me. For a while, the wooded area beside a bike path right across the street from my home was being used for public sex. Discarded condoms were all over the place. People no longer felt that they could take their kids for a nice bike ride, because the scenery might include views of partially clothed people doing various things to each other. The situation changed dramatically after a police officer on a bicycle began to patrol the path. There were a couple of complaints to the City Council that the increased police activity was homophobic. Piffle. This wasn’t an anti-gay thing. It was an anti-public-sex thing.
I don’t want to see people getting their kink on, either, although I’d assume they were at least trying to be discreet. Chasing them out, or installing better lighting, seems appropriate.
In this instance I thought the response was a bit outlandish - the published the offenders’ names and cities and listed the criminal charges on the front page of the local paper.
I don’t know whether publishing the names and addresses was anti-gay or not, but it’s a possibility. I’d like to know if they’ve published the names of people guilty of other types of “sex crimes,” like prostitution.
Is this really something that is common in the gay male community, or do straight folks do it to and it just doesn’t get publicized/eradicated?
It just doesn’t seem right that gay males would be more inclined to go find anonymous sex than straight males would, and that the best place they can think to go is a public park. Is it perhaps that the straight females wouldn’t go along with it (seriously)?