Reading is sexy. But it’s been getting a whole lot sexier at a Los Angeles library.
The Los Angeles Downtown News reports that LAPD officials have been investigating a “surge of illicit sexual activity” taking place in the restrooms and other public areas at the Richard M. Riordan Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.
So far nine arrests for lewd conduct have been made since authorities launched their undercover investigation in January. They say all the arrests have been for sexual encounters between men, most of which involve one man jerking off while another man watches.
Sounds kinda hot. Although we’re not sure about the whole public restroom thing. Too many germs.
How about we take this to the next level?
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LAPD Capt. Mike Oreb seems genuinely baffled by the bathroom hook-up phenomenon. “We’ve seen sexual activity in other places throughout the region, parks and public bathrooms,” he told the paper. “[We’re] not sure why anyone’s decided to focus on the bathrooms at the library.”
Dennis Romero, a writer for LA Weekly, says that the downtown library has been a popular gay cruising spot for years. It even has a page on crusingforsex.com, a NSFW website dedicated to locating and reviewing public hook-up spots. The library’s profile describes it as the “best cruising location in LA” with “restrooms on every floor.” It also notes that anyone can hook-up there, and “you don’t need a library card unless you are checking something out.”
Something other than another guy, that is.
hyhybt
So long as the police confine themselves to those actually having sex (or close enough) there, rather than including anyone who might just meet at the library and then go somewhere else.
Spike
No doubt married str8t christian republican business men looking to get off.
jimbryant
Men are horny. Without shame and morals, men would do it in the mud. Men who seek homosexual encounters double-up the horniness factor because you’ve got two high sex drives combining together. The risk-taking can be enormous.
If these men are caught in a public space having sex, they ought to be arrested and charged.
rextrek
Sure there may be -some- gay men into that type of hook up…but I have no doubt – that the majority of the hookups are so-called straight-married men….gay people dont[ need bathrooms to meet / hook up anymore….between the internet,and bars…..bathrooms are the last place id ever think about meetting someone / hook-up scenerio.
azpunky
Every college library in the country is a gay cruising spot. Check out UCLA sometime 🙂 No surprise that public libraries are too..
2eo
@Spike: Don’t be stupid, you really think a christian republican would be at a library?, those places are basically hell to them.
azpunky
@2eo: LOL! Awesome..
the other Greg
Wow… I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that Los Angeles has a library.
viveutvivas
I am quite sure these arrests are mostly via entrapment. The old LAPD up to its old homophobic and r*cist tricks again. No wonder Angeleños pretty much universally despise the LAPD.
Dakotahgeo
@2eo: christian republicans/Christian republicans are allergic to anything intellectual or educational… right you are! 😉 Dak!
PS: Actually, Christian republicans is an oxymoron, emphasis on the last 5 letters.
Fitz
Good. The libraries (what are left of them) are for everyone. I am so sick of men thinking that gay rights = the right to have sex wherever we want. I LIKE public sex, I’ve enjoyed saunas and the like when I was young.. but there is a place for these things where our horniness doesn’t step on other people’s lives. And LA has no shortage of back-room bars and hot tubs. If that’s what you want, do it there where it’s just other horny gay men.
MrEguy
So, will the cops arrest someone for LOOKing? I can’t count how many times I’ve had a peek while another guy showed off (and vice versa). Strokin it in public is an entirely different thing. Get a phone number or get a room.
Derek Williams
Just wondering how much jerking each other off publicly in a library toilet does to advance the cause of LGBT equality.
a308936
That’s kinda disgusting. Isn’t it a city public library? Children go there. Arrest them.
balehead
Just as bad as the YMCA Steam rooms these days…..
balehead
The sad part is certain people want to be caught having sex by children…..
yaletownman
I’m all about hot sex in hot places and personally, I don’t even give a sh*t if guys hook-up in libraries like this. However I do realize that not everyone is as open about sex as I am and I do completely respect the fact that children shouldn’t be put at risk of being prematurely sexualized by having to encounter adults having sex. We should never pass laws that promote shame and guilt but as a society, there is nothing wrong with having some base rules to live by. These guys should be doing this at some place that they don’t risk encountering children or offending those who aren’t into it, gay or straight.
j.martinez53
@yaletownman: I agree 100%! There’s nothing wrong with sex in hot places as long as is not being done where it can be viewed by unaccepting individuals. It especially never should be done where an innocent child could happen upon it. The LA police are probably jealous that no one is including them in it!!!
hyhybt
I don’t much like the idea (not so far stated outright in this thread, but it has been in others) that it’s only not OK if it’s *children* who might walk in on you. Adults shouldn’t have to worry about that either.
DShucking
If we know that having sex in a public bathroom is against the law why is it so difficult to stop having sex in the bathroom?
Drsachse
If it were men f’ing women I doubt there would be any actual arrests nor would money be spent on a sting for victimless crime.
Kieran
Nothing says “romance” like a smelly, filthy restroom. LOL
jockjack5
Without exception, all college libraries have gay boys cruising all the time. Old habits die hard perhaps.
Merv
As long as it’s done discreetly, I don’t have a problem with it. Ideally, bathrooms would have a private hook up room where people could relieve themselves, solo or with a partner. It’s just another bodily function. I don’t see why it’s treated so differently than pissing or shitting.
jockjack5
@azpunky:
Very true about college libraries… spent many enjoyable afternoons hooking up with both nerds and jocks, sometimes at the same time!
DarthKitsune
I keep my gloryhole schedule in the Henry David Thoreau’s. Stop on by and come see me.
DShucking
@Drsachse: Newsflash: straight people do get arrested for having sex in public. The ratio of men to men in the men’s bathroom and the obvious affinity many gay men have for public sex makes them a target. It’s not some homophobic attack. Straight men and women who are strangers to one another are not pulling over on the side of the highway and crawling into the woods to have sex with one another unless one is a prostitute. Maybe fewer gay men would be apt to do such a thing if we didn’t treat bathroom sex like a civil right.
hyhybt
@jockjack5: I used library restrooms many times while in college. Rarely was anyone else there at all, and when there was, he was inevitably using it for its intended purpose.
@Merv: Because, very much unlike pissing and shitting, it’s an entirely voluntary action which always can wait until you’re somewhere else.
Metro135
@Spike:
LOL! You’re absolutely right!
stranded
@azpunky: OMG are you a fellow bruin? The college library right? Downstairs men’s bathroom? Well no, that was too busy. Downstairs library room all the way in the back on the right hand side at the end of the line of desks. Or the basement mens bathroom in Humanities and it was either Royce or Campbell hall that had maze like hallway with that bathroom nobody went to. Umm, yeah miss college sometimes.
jimbryant
Restroom sex is not reserved solely for gay men. Men of all inclinations go there for masturbatory relief. Masturbatory relief does not respect sexual WwwWwwboundaries.
phishy2
Public restrooms are just not my place for sex or j/o. Usually too dirty and stinky. But, well we all do watch the scenery. More private bathrooms are just fine. And why can’t the cops just leave the more
slightly pervy of us alone. If you must guys, make sure you don’t ire the str8s, homophobes and right wing nuts. And keep our kids safe, too
jwtraveler
Why do so many people care what other people do in bathrooms? And everyone is so worried about “the children”. The most dangerous places for most children are their own homes, and the people most likely to hurt and molest them are their own family members.
Derek Williams
@jwtraveler: I don’t see any future in arguing that men should be freely and publicly masturbating themselves and each other while children look on. Children going into a public restroom are not expecting to see this, nor should they be exposed to it. Actually the vast majority of adults going into public restrooms are not expecting to see gays wanking each other off either.
If you’re going down that path, then kiss equality goodbye. There’s no way you’ll get support for this. Not ever.
DShucking
@jwtraveler: Wow. Just wow.
BlogShag
What is this, 1972? Disgusting skanks. There are plenty of ways that facilitate meeting for sex in safer places without offending others. Some people just like filth
BlogShag
@jwtraveler: , Your advocacy is phony, low class, silly, and immature.
1. You’re the same kind of person that thinks it’s bad manners to fart at the dinner table or at a restaurant, in church, while giving a speech, etc.., yet you think it should be ok for people to act lewd in public rest rooms
2. Why not just let people pick their loose runny snot strings from their nose and eat it at board meetings too? Do you have a problem with that, oh you do? Why?
3. Would you be okay with people having sex in church on the pews and on stage? Why not?
Degas
@jwtraveler: Nobody cares what you do in your OWN bathroom. There are a plethora of venues for gay men to meet for private sexual activity today. Surely, they can find one.
viveutvivas
Everybody seems to be just assuming these people were exposing themselves to all and sundry, when it was most likely not the case. Most arrests of this type are from police entrapment behind a closed stall door. I can’t believe there are so many apologists here for that kind of police misconduct. Hello! This is the LAPD, with an awful history of r*cism and homophobia.
Kangol
Why are the LAPD wasting time and resources harassing men having sex in the LA Public Library? Every minute they waste on this could better be spent preventing far more serious violent and financial crimes across that gigantic city. And LA is hardly crime-free.
Derek Williams
@Kangol: Men having sex publicly in front of children is a criminal matter.
RomanHans
WTF is wrong with you people? Buy a freakin’ brain cell or two. Did you miss the part that said the usual scenario was one man masturbating and another man WATCHING? As in, no physical contact? So, one man is arrested for masturbating in a public restroom — which, you know, can actually just look like a dude with an erection. And another man can be arrested for BEING IN A RESTROOM WITH A DUDE WITH AN ERECTION.
Can’t wait to hear the court transcripts on this one. On the bright side, though, at least the cops aren’t shooting at these dudes like they do in New Jersey.
DShucking
@RomanHans: Masturbating in public is still against the law, isn’t it?
viveutvivas
@Derek Williams, where is it stated that people were having sex in front of children?
Derek Williams
@viveutvivas: Where does it state that children do not enter public restrooms?
DShucking
@viveutvivas: His point is that a child could walk in at anytime because it is public restroom. The men having sex in these bathroom knows this.
Fitz
You’re eventually going to have to choose between being part of society and considered equal, or resigning yourself to accept the projective identification as the perv in the trench coat.
jeff4justice
While I have no interest in restroom sex, this is another classic example of what losers LAPD are. Unless children are being victimized and targeted, this is a victimless crime.
viveutvivas
@Derek Williams and @DShucking, where does it state that they were in the open? These arrests are invariably police entrapment in a closed stall. The closeted people in these situations do not risk having sex where people can walk in on them; they seek privacy in a stall. “Think of the children” has been used by the Right to oppress gay people throughout the decades. Let’s not turn ourselves into little Anita Bryants, please.
Also, are people now to be arrested based on the speculative future crime of exposure to a minor? That reminds me of a Sci-Fi movie you might remember with Tom Cruise, The Minority Report.
DShucking
@viveutvivas: Drama queen, closet cases are not the only one’s who do it and they don’t only do it in the stall. They also do it standing next to one another at the urinal. Just because the right says something sensible doesn’t mean you have to reject it. You have to be a stronger individual than that. It’s called integrity.
Derek Williams
@viveutvivas: You are delusional if you think the police will sit around and watch you publicly masturbating off another dude, waiting till a kid shows up, make sure the kid actually sees the pair of you going at it, and then slaps you in irons.
Public restroom in a library are places where anyone can walk in, and in a library it is highly likely a kid would enter the place. Why should straight users, who number 90% of the usage anyway, have to watch gay men going at it?
There is no way you can make this virtuous. It is not public sex versus the heterosexuals here. You are guilty of the logical fallacy of False Equivalence.
Merv
Public sexual activity is not illegal in California. It becomes “lewd conduct” if it is reasonably believed that there is someone present who would be offended. But, enforcement often involves an undercover cop aggressively enticing someone into playing with himself in a location where they are the only two people present. In other words, the cop is signalling that the behavior is not only not offensive, but welcome, so the person being arresting is often not even guilty of the crime he is arrested for. The police and prosecutors rely on intimidating them into pleading guilty, for example by threatening to upgrade the charge to indecent exposure, which requires lifetime sex offender registration.
There is a history going back decades of police targeting and arresting gay people for an offense that they would never target straight people for. Can you imagine them sending a sexy female cop into a park to start flirting with straight guys and try to get them to go to a secluded spot and whip it out? There would be outrage. But since it’s gay people, entrapment is tolerated.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.)
Derek Williams
@Merv: That’s all well and good, and sure, straights have always had lovers’ lanes and their ilk, and agreed, there has been police entrapment but this story is about a library, not some remote beat in the bushes, so not the best example.
DShucking
@Merv: No one forced Marion Berry to smoke crack or Delorean to accept cocaine monies. If the perpetrator starts masturbating then someone else could still walk in and that’s not fair to others. It’s called personal responsibility. The more equality we gain the less reason we have to continue to act like outsiders as opposed to a unique community within this society we put so much stock in. Your message of gays being targeted ignores the dynamic of the male only environment and your comment about these arrests going on for decades ignores the fact that this world has changed dramatically in the past 5 years alone. I’m suspicious of anyone who judges our society in relation to gays today to how it was 30-40-50 years ago.
Derek Williams
@DShucking: That’s a good point. In fact, when I was a 15yo kid, I discovered beats by accident, and frequented them as far as was possible. In those days ALL gay sex was illegal, so I felt like an outlaw the whole time anyway. There was no other way to associate with other gay people but at public toilets. It was almost like that was how society thought of us, and had banished us to such rutting places, devoid of romance in love making.
Now, we are approaching full equality, and can openly associate with our LGBT peers without fear of arrest, the allure of the beat has entirely vanished for me.
Fucking in public toilets is not a civil right I even remotely feel like pursuing, although I do agree that whatever treatment is given to straights, the same should be given to us.
DShucking
@Derek Williams: Yeah, I never did the public thing but it does feel like a hold over from when we had no choice because we were so isolated and invisible that we accepted all sorts of dim views about ourselves, like allowing NAMBLA to march in our gay pride parades as recently as the early 90’s that I remember. Change is good but can also be difficult when you’ve become accustomed to thinking there would never be any other way to live. We all wake up one day and find that the world has changed around us. We can decide to hold on or to grow. I hope some of these Queerty people will reach that day sooner rather than later.
PARKAVMAN
‘Library Tower’ is a huge phallic symbol seen from most of the city. Maybe it attracts trolls.
Merv
@Derek Williams: @DShucking: I agree that such behavior is embarrassing to the gay community, but that doesn’t mean we should allow people to be subject to abuse by the legal system. If people truly aren’t breaking the law, they shouldn’t be targeted. If they’re openly rutting like pigs when people are trying to use the bathroom, then charge them. If they’re loitering, taking up space while people are trying to use the bathroom, then warn them, and charge them if they don’t leave. It’s not necessary to use a sledge hammer to swat a fly.
DShucking
@Merv: They’re trying to discourage these crimes from happening. The man who is cruising a public restroom for sex has put himself in a position to get arrested. Plain and simple. Forget that I am gay and I feel it’s a personal violation for someone to peep into my stall when I’m trying to take a cr*p.
Derek Williams
@Merv: I agree that what’s good for the straight gander is also good for the gay gander. Equal protection before the law, and equal treatment before the law.
Merv
@DShucking: Trying to discourage crimes is great. That’s what loitering laws are for. Peeking in your stall is voyeurism, and police could easily arrest someone for doing that. But call me crazy if I’m not OK with cops using entrapment to manufacture non-existent crimes when they already have sufficient tools to deal with the problem.
DShucking
Non-existent crimes? Like Bait Car?
Merv
@DShucking: Bait Car isn’t real?!
Merv
@DShucking: Are you trying to tell me that bait car isn’t real?
Merv
Shoot, ignore the second post. It was auto-flagged for some reason, so I reposted it.
BrandoPolo
@Merv: The lewd behavior at LAPL is not “non-existent” it’s been well known from long ago to those of us who live in L.A. I hooked up there as a college freshman (Bill Clinton was President).
The problem is guys have become less and less discreet about public sex, to the point where library patrons and workers finally had to complain. You’re just assuming it was entrapment. If it wasn’t — then what?
Public sex comes with a risk — that’s part of the thrill. If you get caught and charged, man up and take responsibility for your choices.
DShucking
@Merv: Yes it is real. Point being, leave a car to be stolen and only the criminals will steal it. No entrapment. Pull your penis out at a urinal and only a gay man will want to play. No entrapment. Stop defending criminal behavior.
queerty1958
I like the article headline:
LAPD Cracks Down On Gay Hook-Ups.
Does that mean they’re putting their cracks down on gays as they hook-up with them?
Clark35
@BlogShag: Exactly. The idea that bi or gay men are simply going to just jerk off in a men’s room that’s used for hook ups/public sex is laughable.
If you meet a man and want to hook up don’t go to a men’s room just go to your place or his place.
dannysax
I am so sick of all this “if we wanna be respected as equal to straights, then we should never have public sex, blah, blah, blah…..” Someone once said str8s don’t have sex in public restrooms or saunas. Well, duh, the facilities are gender-separated, and yes, it has happened anyway some. How about women doing the nasty in women-only restrooms or saunas? Maybe not as much but I bet it does occur. Men are as a rule more promiscuous then women, str8 or gay. So even so-called “Str8” men sometimes get head from a man in a bathroom or sauna. It’s also a lot of married guys who don’t get good head at home. etc. As long as guys use their common sense, and this is the key point, no one who is not involved in the fun will see the fun. So be aware of surroundings and who is in there. It’s certainly not a harmful crime if it’s consenting adults. AND it has been ongoing for hundreds of years, ever since there was civilization and cities. They have found gay graffiti about public sex in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and Greece, especially Pompeii. “LAPD Capt. Mike Oreb seems genuinely baffled by the bathroom hook-up phenomenon.” Is he really that clueless? LOL.
dannysax
I love Merv’s comment “Ideally, bathrooms would have a private hook up room where people could relieve themselves, solo or with a partner. It’s just another bodily function. I don’t see why it’s treated so differently than pissing or shitting..” That is very cool but in fantasy land. Now, some outdoor cruising spots are handled in a way that the cops don’t interfere as long as the cruisers stay in one place, like the Hamptons, where the beach is sorta protected late night, and the Hampstead Heath, which I think is the premier cruising park in all of England.