Well, certainly there's been spirited debate over at
JoeMyGod's blog the past few days. The topic of sex always brings out various factions from the woodwork. The neo-Puritans, the straights-would-like-us-if-only-we-didn't-do-things-like-this crowd, the finger-waggers, the clueless straight people, and of course the neo-hedonists like myself.
Of course, my views are more along the lines of ideals rather than actual practice for the past few decades, but what I think gets lost is that compared to times past people just have fewer options than they did at one time. When I came out, there were baths, dirty book stores with gloryholes, sex parties, cruisy areas outlined in Bob Damron's Address Book, and places like the Meatrack on Fire Island and the dunes in Provincetown. Other large cities have their own notorious areas where men cruise each other in the great outdoors. Most of this activity is intensely private, in the sense that people take precautions not be seen, by the cops or anyone else.
For myself, I'd be far more scandalized to be happened upon by a straight couple than a park policeman. Not all gay men (and this is an issue mostly concerning men) are cut from the same cloth. I've had friends that preferred hookups with no attachments, free of commitment, free of love or obligation. The anonymous sex that many look down upon but few have experienced.
A lot of people's judgments on these issues come draped in Judaeo-Christian ideas of sexuality being tied to notions of fidelity, romantic love and procreation. Some people fall short of that ideal.
Beyond what the law says, or what is considered right and proper, there have always been places where men meet men to do nasty things outside the province of what is considered wholesome and upright. Anyone who has been to such venues knows they're out of the way, hard to get to, and just not the kind of places inhabited by random Girl Scout troops, Mormon campers or birdwatchers from Dubuque.
Should everything be "legal?" I don't think so. Certainly, the public interest should be taken into account. On the other hand, when the hysteria is ratcheted up, and people start bringing up unrelated and downright red-scare McCarthyite charges like child abuse and sex addiction, then...that where I think our society has really gone off the deep end.
Maybe the cops should engage the community and tell guys, "Look, show a little discretion and stay away from the families" or for repeat offenders a nominal fine would be in order. But there's not a reason to accuse someone of being a "sex offender" or a "felon" for engaging in sexual activity with another person if they prefer to do so in a remote venue that happens to be outdoors.
Lately, there's the trend to say "Get a room" or some such nonsense. Some people still live with their families and that's not an option. Others don't wish to shell out $350 a night to stay at the Hilton. Others just prefer sex in the woods where mankind had done so long before log cabins and teepees were around.
The age of the "zipless fuck" (a phrase coined in the Seventies by Erica Jong) may be over. Perhaps the internet provides everything everyone wants where hookups are concerned. But I'd like to live in a society where there are options that don't involve commerce, capitalism, and staid Victorian morality coloring every aspect of being, especially where sex is concerned.
And even that modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah of New York just ain't what it
used to be.
