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By Jesse Monteagudo
They are repeatedly sensationalized by the print and broadcast media - which exaggerate the frequency of unsafe sex in such venues - and glamorized by TV's ^Queer As Folk. ~And back room sex is also against the law, even though it happens between consenting adults in out of the way places. Backroom bars are especially vulnerable to police action because they have liquor licenses, a government-sanctioned privilege that comes with many strings attached. Local governments used to enact laws that tried to keep homosexuals from congregating or working in places that served liquor.
Chaps, a Fort Lauderdale gay bar, was the latest victim of the law's selective enforcement of the local vice laws. A Levi-leather bar open to all types of gay or bisexual men, Chaps was not the only local club to have a back room; nor was backroom sex the only thing going on in this popular club. Folks are still debating why the Fort Lauderdale Police Department decided to raid Chaps on January 15. The FLPD claimed they raided Chaps after receiving "several complaints", but they never said who complained. All that we know is that Chaps owner Steve Holt, two employees and eight patrons were arrested by undercover cops and state beverage agents. Holt was charged with blocking three emergency exits - a felony - while the rest were charged with violating city ordinances that ban nudity and sexual activity in places that serve liquor. Seven of the arrested patrons were allowed some measure of anonymity. The eighth patron, school teacher Mark Raskind, became the victim of a media circus that exploited the raid. Raskind's arrest revived an ongoing debate about the morals of school teachers, and whether their private behavior should have any bearing on their profession. As a civil libertarian, I believe that consenting adults should have the right to have sex with one another in private or semi-private places, including back room bars. Police officers have better things to do with their time than raid a bar and arrest men who are hurting no one (except, perhaps, themselves), outing them against their will and possibly destroying their careers and their marriages. But we live in a state that frowns upon the naked human body; that criminalizes all types of sex outside of the heterosexual marriage bed; and that teaches our children that the only kind of sex they should indulge in before marriage is no sex at all.
And we live in a society where homosexuality is still held in low esteem; and where the print and electronic media continue to exploit the public's dislike of male sex in order to achieve higher ratings. As long as those laws - and those attitudes - continue to exist, gay and bisexual men will continue to be the victims of the selective enforcement of the laws. |
The boys from Queer as Folk have been active in the backroom. Is that giving the gay community a bad name? 
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