I think having sex in public is kinda gross, be it in a bathroom stall, the alley behind the bar, or Edinburgh Gardens, but the circumstances under which it’s enforced are unequal. For straights, it seems to be condoned as ’something risque’ whereas gay public sex is considered harmful to the public good.

It’s from here that I draw the analogy: there’s a correlation between the reason why I can be grabbed in public and the fact that the ‘gay panic’ defense can lower prison sentences.

If Larry Craig had been a smart hypocrite, he would have said, ‘Well, I intended to pick up in the bathroom and then take him home.’ It wouldn’t have been true, but neither were his other blundering assertions. But that still wouldn’t have saved him - because the crime he committed was sending those subtle signals that, as you point out, a straight man wouldn’t likely have picked up on.

I think a great deal of the furor surrounding the case doesn’t come so much from the ‘Oh god, sex in public!’ argument as the fact that he turned the area into a place where men might be exposed to solicitation by ‘the gays’.

Finally, you totally grabbed my ass in the subway last year. I’ll have a punch waiting for you in December. Thanks for the support.

i have read somewhere about the extent to which one could argue that sex in a bathroom stall is public or not, especially in countries such as Britain where you have to pay to use the stall, anyway. It could be argued that it’s a private rental unit.

in response to neil above, craig wasn’t arrested for engaging in public sex. he wasn’t caught engaging in public sex. there is a genuine concern to be had that he was arrested for expressing interest and seeking consent from another interested party. i say, until the cop is willing to put himself in such a compromising situation as to be in the same stall as craig with his pants down, then no one has yet committed a crime.

And I haven’t picked up this vibe of that the bad part of gay cruising in public spaces is that straight guys might get cruised. For one thing, a straight man in the stall next to Craig wouldn’t have known he was being propositioned - the deal with the foot tapping is that it’s subtle signal that straight men don’t know. Secondly, the reason police are interested in guys tapping their feet is that it’s a lead in to public sex, which is gross and unsafe. If foot tapping was a lead in to sex in a nearby hotel room, there would be no police in that washroom.

I agree that overly sexually agressive guys suck. You *should* punch them in the face. Tell them I said it was ok.