If you thought gay sex in public restrooms was a thing of the past (or something that only happened in farcical Sundance shorts), think again.
In Manhattan Beach, a group of 18 men were arrested during what appears to be a series of glory-hole parties, reports CBS in Los Angeles.
“The same men were frequently using and returning to the location, and men were loitering in the area as well as inside the restroom for long periods of time,” Stephanie Martin of the Manhattan Beach Police Department said.
They even decorated the place with “graphic sexual images as well as holes that were drilled in the partitions of the bathroom stalls,” Martin continued. The proud tradition of glory holes lives on!
How about we take this to the next level?
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Bob
Talk about a butt-ugly group! No wonder they can only get sex in a men’s room!
Chris
Where’s the dungeon part? You’re promising whips and chains and delivering a bunch of guys who lack social skills.
jason
How absolutely awful. A life full of holes. Obviously there are holes in these men’s brains.
hf2hvit
And how many are married?!?!?
Gigi
There’s a larger poster online that shows all of the guys arrested. Yikes. Guess there’s a reason they had to resort to glory holes. I don’t really “get” the whole public bathroom thing. They’re dirty, they smell and…ugh. It’s just nasty. That being said I feel sorry for these guys who are (presumably) so ashamed of themselves and terrified to come out of the closet that they feel the need to resort to such things to have even a modicum of human contact.
Link: http://www.insidesocal.com/crime&courts/Marine%20Bathroom%20Arrests.pdf
streetsmart
So how many were closeted married Republicans? Voting to restrict rights for gays while sneaking around for sex in public bathrooms. As a gay father of 2 I resent the fact that I cannot safely take my children into a public bathroom without fear of them being exposed to this kind of activity. And just for the record I’m equally opposed to straight people deciding that public sex is acceptable behavior.
Spike
Bunch of married str8t guys.
Hyhybt
@Gigi: The only thing public restrooms have going for them is practicality. If you want somewhere readily available, public enough for anonymity yet private enough that you have a decent chance of not being caught, well, the list of possibilities is short.
dvlaries
@Gigi: From their birth dates, most of them of were children or not even born at the time of Stonewall. If they were older, if this incident were 20 years ago, this would be a little less dispiriting. Looks like our stuggles still have some way to go, including the internal ones that foster the grade of self-respect that would regard this activity, in this kind of setting, repellant.
Mark
Ichh! They’re ugly faggots! Good riddance!
(sarc)
If the general public read these comments they’d laugh and laugh. So that guy murdered all those people?! Was he cute???!
Brian
What? Gay men arrested over public sex? Boycott LA and all tour companies that operate in LA. We must quite sending tax payer money to that homophobic haven. All Western countries should unite to put out a trade embargo until they mend their gay hating ways – right Houston-Bill?
the other Greg
@Brian: Ha ha ha. Yeah, let’s hope the cops didn’t call them “rogues and vagabonds.” That would be really humiliating.
Kev C
The police learned of this bathroom, not based on complaints by parents or the public, or by firsthand observation, but by trolling online chat rooms and websites.
Maybe if the police hired some gays they would know where to look instead of searching online. But since they rarely hire gays, the police appear to be suspicious and antigay.
Hyhybt
@Kev C: See if I’m following you correctly: The police must not hire gay people, because if they did, they’d know where this was going on without having to use the internet (because that’s so hard to do it must be left as a last resort? Or because it’s somehow cheating? That I don’t get). Which relies on the proven fact that all gay men are into this sort of thing and just know instinctively where it’s going on.
Right.
David1950
@Spike #7-Please they are anything but straight. If they were really straight or hetero the last thing they’d be doing would be going to public bathrooms looking for sex with men.
Kev C
@Hyhybt: I’m saying they targetted gays without just cause, and not based on public complaints or on police observation of crimes. They likely targetted gays because of bias.
Bipolar Bear
Were the guys from the Atlantis cruise in there too? Just wondering.
Bash the cops, not the gays
@Kev C: Thank you, Kev. At least some one on this site is using his brain.
We have example after example of police in Florida, New Jersey, New York City, and elsewhere inducing gay men into agreeing to sex then busting them. Sometimes police use young undercover officers to attract older gay men. We also know that officers have been willing to lie in reports about what transpired in these exchanges. But the default position of too many gay people is that the men who are arrested in these operations aren’t gay, are mentally ill, or are old and ugly are so they are driven to these actions. When confronted with these types of reports, the place to begin is by asking if the police are telling the truth.
evanb
It’s all very easy to dismiss these guys as “ugly” or to avoid the issue of men having sex in public places by shifting the focus to assumptions of police harassment. If we look closely, we will likely find that most of the arrested men are married, not desparate out gay guys who are so unattractive that they can do no better (been on Grindr lately, anyone? Not everyone on there’s an A&F model). It’s sad that closeted married men have no other outlet for their sexual feelings than to lurk in public restrooms. At the same time, the police are absolutely within their rights and duty to arrest people who have sex in public. Whatever the excuse–ugliness, marriage, a preference for the scent of pee–public sex acts are illegal, and those who engage in them assume a certain risk. Sure there are examples of police targeting gay men for harassment, but targeting gay men who are brazenly breaking the law isn’t that. I have no problem with arresting these guys, and support publishing their photos: the married ones in particular are exposing their spouses to all manner of risk with their sneaky, illegal, and unsanitary habits, and should be outed for their own, and others’, good.
FunMe
Don’t they know Grinder, Adam4Adam, Manhunt or gay.com? I think bathhouses are still around if that’s their thing. What’s the attraction to sex in a bathroom? Ewwwwwwwwww!
MEJ
Why is it necessary to post the names, and faces of these men in a public paper?
FunMe
@Brian: Actually it’s boycott Redondo Beach … not really LA.
And yes, I know you were kidding!
ggreen
I lived in a beach town in the 1970’s and the beach men’s room always had glory holes. The park folks put up 2-inch thick plywood panels between the stalls it was cut through. Then they used heavy aluminum/steel panels it was cut through. Finally they used scrap iron manhole covers and after 3 months one of them had been cut through.. I would have loved seeing some crazed queen wielding an oxyacetylene torch doing that at 3AM.
Hyhybt
@ggreen: The solution to that is simple: build actual walls to divide the stalls. Say, concrete block ones. Then, even if someone does cut a hole, it would be (unless I’ve greatly misunderstood something here) too far across to be much use.
Bailey
@David1950:
They are too cheap to pay but not cheap enough to shun semi-public random sex.
Stache99
You guys don’t understand that some guys just get off on the danger element like the thrill of possibly getting caught doing it. I remember a guy I got together with who wanted to do it in the JC penny restroom. He had a trick of using a shopping bag so people would think only one was in there. Next time he wanted to get together i recommended my place which was closer. Well, he was no longer interested at all. He just couldn’t function without that extra thrill.
Frederick
Holy Moly!
Kenover
Do the police have no real crime left to fight? Has actual violent crime that harms people ceased to exist in LA, freeing the cops to focus all their resources on actively (some might say with almost suspicious zeal) setting up elaborate “sting” operations to entrap citizens for consensual acts between consenting adults? Because the last time I checked there were plenty of burglaries, gang activities, assaults, carjackings, rapes and murders in LA to keep the police fully occupied. Or does the fact that targeting these victimless “crimes” involves very little risk to the police and generates lots of emotional coverage from unscrupulous news organizations like CBS have something to do with it? Taxpayers should be outraged that their tax dollars are squandered on homophobic witch hunts like this while real criminals run rampant. And CBS should be ashamed to stoop to this level of muck-raking sensationalism — publishing the names and photos of private citizens who haven’t been convicted of any crime. TMZ has higher journalistic standards. And it’s especially disheartening to see a bunch of sanctimonious, holier-than-thou homos joining the chorus of shame and outrage when their sexual activities and their very existence is still a “crime” in many states and countries around the world. Are you all gay Republicans too? Shame on you!
Rob
I agree with Stache99, I met up for coffee once with a guy who I’d met online and when we met in person he told me how he wanted to have sex right there in the public bathroom of the Starbucks we were in. I said no thanks and never met up with him again.
ct
At this link you can read pornstar and writer Conner Habib’s wonderful piece about people looking for sex in restrooms etc.
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/29/rest_stop_confidential/singleton/
Perhaps if some of you stop being judgemental for just a couple of seconds, you will realise that this kind of consensual activity is perfectly harmless and that it is an absolute travesty and a disgrace for the police to spend taxpayers’ money in order to organise elaborate sting operations just to snare and shame a few homosexual men – whether they’re “gay” or closeted is absolutely irrelevant. This is homophobic persecution at its purest, most simple form.
I hope some men who pride themselves as being “out” or young (for the time being) and perhaps “handsome”, realise that looking for sex in a public restroom, a park, or a beach is infinitely less sad than hooking up with a different man online every night, taking steroids, going to circuit parties, doing crystall meth and ending up in a bareback orgy.
As for the guy who has kids and is afraid they will be “adversely infuenced”, I say wow! Talking about some precious self-rightouesness. I am all for your right to raise children. But if you think that this kind of prudish, pharisaical homo-baiting will legitimise your being a parent, then you are infinetely much sadder than these men whose rights have been violated in such a spectacular and unnecessary fashion.
pedro
@ct: I’m sorry but there is nothing sadder, than middle-aged men having sex in nasty public bathrooms. Get a freaking room already! These men are sick in the head…I do have concerns however, over their pictures being published before they’re actually convicted of the crimes of which they are accused.
Joe
In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men having sex in a public restroom under the main square of the city. A cameraman hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. He filmed over a three week period, and the resulting movie was used to obtain the convictions of over 30 local men on charges of sodomy. With some of this footage the Mansfield Police later produced Camera Surveillance, an instructional film circulated in law enforcement circles. It showed how to set up a sting operation to film and arrest “sex deviants.” William E. Jones found a degraded version of the film on the internet, then reedited the footage to make Mansfield 1962, a haunting, silent condensation of the original.
It’s Mansfield 1962 all over again…or still.
Hyhybt
@ct: Disapproval of public sex is not homophobic. *Meet* people anywhere you like, bathrooms, beaches, whatever, but take them somewhere private to have sex.
SandraDee
Is it still public sex if it’s in the privacy of a bathroom stall? I feel there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy there. After all taking a crap in a public restroom isn’t considered a ‘lewd act in public.’ Also, to the ‘father of two,’ maybe if you’re terrified of your kids being exposed to sex you shouldn’t be taking them into seedy beach bathrooms at 2 AM.
Joseph Samuel
There was a time rather than meet in a Gay bar, men would meet in public rest rooms or parks. Now with the advent of online dating and websites like craigslist that has changed.
Therefore abolishing the need for public sex.
Greg Samson
I have only one thing to say: is this all the police have to worry about as far as big city crime is concerned? If there was no complaint by a citizen this is just a modernized version of entrapment. And as far as the moral outrage expressed above, I can’t help but feel that many of you are hypocrites, much like the married lying Repulican “good Christian” saints who frequent such places. No one else has ever taken a chance to have sex? Really? In the overall scheme of man inhumanities to man, please drop the holier than thou attitudes. Remember glass houses people? We all live in them.
Maude
Rockefeller Center Underground pathway beneath Radio City use to be a clean upper class
pick-up place where you could meet, greet and eat…because the men’s room attendants were gay, and broke….they looked the other way.
I haven’t been back to NY in a while, but maybe next summer.
I never used a glory hole, afraid someone might want to take my whatchamacallit home with him.