Police in Florida are not having it when it comes to public sex. We recently reported on a massive operation involving the arrest of some 600 men in parks around Palm Beach. Now comes word that four men in the Tampa Bay area were arrested yesterday for soliciting sex in Peace River Park.
This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the Republican National Convention will be in Tampa this summer, does it? Naaah.
If it did, it’d be pretty ironic considering some of the guys who were nabbed: Evangelical minister Matthew Preston Clark (right) and retired police officer Carl Robert Kitchen.
Why, it’s the very sort of people who enforce good wholesome traditional values!
We don’t think anyone should have the book thrown at them for a little public hanky panky, but the hypocrisy is so fresh you could smear it on a bagel.
“It never ceases to amaze me when professionals such as preachers and law enforcement officers are engaged in such outrageous behavior,” in a statement, Sheriff Grady Judd said. “That type of behavior is not going to be tolerated in our parks. We want to ensure that all of our parks are safe for children and their families to enjoy. ”
Just make sure no GOP delegates wander into the park come August, sheriff. Those people are freaks!
Photos: Polk County Police Department, Blessed Assurance Temple
Truthful
something about that photo really depresses me
John McLaren
In Pastor Matt Clark’s family picture his eye brows look as if they were plucked to within an inch of their lives. But nobody knew or suspected?
Isaac C
@John McLaren: I believe that’s considered Pastor-chic these days.
jason
Why aren’t they arresting heterosexual couples too? I want to see mug shots of the females. However, women seem to be treated like a politically protected class these days.
I say show us the faces of the females who are known to put out for men in these public places.
nimi
Peace river park is actually in bartow which is 40 miles east of tampa
Alex Egan
I don’t see why you had to post a pic of his wife and kids. They didn’t do anything wrong.
pedro
@jason: Jason those females are called prostitutes and they are constantly harassed within an inch of their lives…Most of them are drug addicts and not very pretty…They are not usually hypocrites living doubles lives, they are very, very messed up chicks whose daddies probably touched them in their naughty places when they were little. Their sense of shamed went the way of their virginity…And hetorosexual Johns do get publicly shamed and have their names and pictures published. I have no sympathy for any of these men…sorry.
B
If the sheriff actually said, “We want to ensure that all of our parks are safe for children and their families to enjoy,” then he sounds a bit delusional – families don’t show up at a park with their children at 2 AM, and I would be surprised if these guys were trolling for sex in the middle of the day.
Were they leaving condoms lying around on the ground or something? Where they having sex in the park or just meeting there and then heading to one of their homes or hotel rooms? Or did the police just round up twice the number of usual suspects and planned on letting “God” sort it out?
shannon
NOW WATCH IS SILLY DELUSIONAL WIFE BELIEVE THE LIE HE WILL TELL HER HOW HE DID OFFER THE COP A BLOW JOB…NOR XXXSPOSE HIMSELF…ETC…WOMEN ARE GULLIBLE….
kevininbuffalo
@Alex Egan: I agree. The family is going through enough pain without Queerty adding to it. Shame on Queerty for having so little compassion and no professionalism.
kevininbuffalo
On the other hand he did pluck the living crap out of his eye brows!
Chuck
Just another case of conservative GOPer projecting what they hate about themselves onto others and then condemning them for it. Why anyone listens to such crap, I have no idea.
mulletkitty
not cool, Queerty. Leave the kids pix out of it.
Why are queers slut shaming each other? You are assuming a lot about these men and their anti-gay agendas; aren’t there bigger targets out there?
Ian
Yet another vote for keeping the kids out of it. Take it down, Queerty. This isn’t the family’s fault.
jason
Keep in mind that wives are very intolerant of husbands who have a bisexual orientation and might want to dabble. On the other hand, if the wife claims she’s bisexual, both she and hubby are usually both off to a swingers’ party where the women are allowed to perform with each other for the benefit of the strictly straight men. See the double standard?
It’s bisexual double standards like this which are driving husbands to dark parks in the middle of the night. Women are heavily responsible for this paradigm. Women are the great abusers, the great homophobes when it comes to male-male sexuality. Women exploit double standards in order to get preferential treatment.
tallskin2
Wow, I cannot believe this sort of shit still happens. Only in the USA, eh?
What harm are the participants doing to be out amongst other consenting adults at 2am??
The USA is such an anally retentive country
Kev C
The real shame is that the police are destroying their own community with these types of arrests.
Robert in NYC
Does make me wonder if all of these homophobic asshat clowns of the Santorum variety constantly obsessing about gays have something to hide. Why is it fewer democrats are doing this and the majority of them are republicans, Stockholm syndrome aside?
KDW
The photo makes me think, ‘What would a love child between Richard Kuklinski and John Wayne Gacy look like?’.
Cam
@Alex Egan: said…
“I don’t see why you had to post a pic of his wife and kids. They didn’t do anything wrong.”
________________
1. Their faces were blurred.
?
2. What better way to demonstrate the hypocrisy of these evil closet cases?
Alex Egan
@Cam – they blurred pic after several of us objected. Thank you Qweerty for doing the right thing.
Truthful
@Cam:
their faces weren’t blurred originally
george
well no wonder he’s out cruising, he looks bored-to-death in that photo (i would be too come to think of it).
Mark
These raids need to stop. My father was imprisoned because of this type of targeting of gay men. It’s immoral, wrong and destroys families and lives.
Shannon1981
If its anti- gay preachers, cops, politicians, et al…BRING IT ON!!!
But if it’s just people shamed into living double lives, leave them alone…they aren’t hurting anyone.
On a side note- cruising is a part of gay culture. I say let people get their jollies any way they like. Though, here in the age of technology, all of this could be avoided by a trip to cruisinggays.com to set up the date beforehand instead of soliciting sex in public areas.
Allen D.
@tallskin2: Agreed. It’s not like there are kids running around the parks at 2 a.m. Although, with the internet, I’m surprised this type of things still goes on.
B
No. 24 · Mark wrote, “These raids need to stop. My father was imprisoned because of this type of targeting of gay men. It’s immoral, wrong and destroys families and lives.”
Sometimes the police lose:
http://blog.sfgate.com/crime/2012/01/10/cal-lecturer-sues-over-stall-sex-arrest/
Unfortunately, it is an “only in Berkeley” type of story – what would in most of the U.S. be a hapless, embarrassed victim simply stated in court that of course he was soliciting sex but was not soliciting sex that would occur in public. The judge threw out the case on that technicality and then the victim filed a federal class-action suit for discrimination (the police weren’t making similar efforts to catch women).
Hint to the police: if you are going to try to charge some guy with “loitering around a toilet intending to engage in or solicit a lewd act in public,” make sure the person was trying to solicit “a lewd act in public” as opposed to trying to solicit “a lewd act at your place or mine”. If the later were illegal, all the “singles” bars would go out of business.
TASTEY GOODIES
@jason: I am a PROUD girlfag and I love guy-on-guy action so I am NOT threatened by male2male sexuality. I think you may feel threatened by fem2fem action and your comments are clearly misogynistic. PLEASE stop your hateful rhetoric. THNX.
Jakey
@jason: You’ve got issues with women, mate, and the issues are YOURS, not women’s. Know this.
Mike UK
@Jakey: he has issues with everything and everyone! most of the time he talks out of his arse, the rest of the time he talks total bollocks!
Shannon1981
@TASTEY GOODIES: @Jakey: Jason is our resident misogynist.
@TASTEY GOODIES: There is a reason you and I are the only two regular female bodied posters on here.
Oh, and you might want to let the writers here know you’re a girl. When they posted your comment in the week in comments, they used a male pronoun.
Mike King
What a waste of police time and money. Homophobic turds running the departments.
TASTEY GOODIES
@Shannon1981: GIRL, I am 1 step ahead of you. I posted a comment in the week in comments stating my female gender to correct the author and other readers. Thnx tho.
Shannon1981
@TASTEY GOODIES: Awesome.
Shannon1981
@mulletkitty: The dude is an evangelical preacher. Pretty safe to say he’s a homophobe.