Public Sex: How Dutch Tolerance Contrasts with U.S. Stings
Having sanctioned gay marriage, legalized prostitution and decriminalized drugs, a new Dutch policy (set to begin this fall) will permit sex in areas of Amsterdam's Vonelpark.
The policy stands in stark contrast to American media and public's outrage over cruising, embodied in the simultaneously puritanical and sensational national obsession with stories like Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's solicitation of an undercover policeman in a Minneapolis airport restroom.
Ronald Holzhacker, a political science professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands points to the Dutch people's "long history of accepting humans as they are, and tolerating a wide range of behavior just outside the public eye."
"In the past few years," he notes, "there has been discussion in political circles and on the front page of newspapers about having official outside gay cruising areas." In sharp contrast to the United States, none of the major political parties on the right contested this premise.
"Some viewed it as a way to contain the activity, giving them greater public legitimacy to crack down in other areas," Holzhacker ads. "The main debate between the political parties was should free condoms be given out at such outside venues; with the left parties generally in favor, and the right against."
Paul van Grieken, an alderman in Amsterdam's Oud-Zuid district, has been the new policy's most vocal advocate and defender. "Why should we try to maintain something that is actually impossible to maintain, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually signifies much pleasure?" van Grieken asked the NIS, a Dutch news agency. Van Grieken stressed that this new policy comes with "strict rules attached. Thus, condoms must always be cleared away, it must never take place in the neighborhood of children's playgrounds and the sex must be restricted to the evening and nighttime."
The Dutch police's National Diversity Expertise Center has also recommended that Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht tolerate cruising. In a public letter, the police argued that, "by regulating sex in public, the safety of homosexuals from 'queer bashers' can be better guaranteed." The letter goes on to propose that officers "not disturb the activities, as long as they do not cause any actual nuisance" and recommends action be taken "only if there is a question of actual offensive behavior that is visible from the public path."
Contrast to Entrapment Here
Many of the headlines here sardonically observed that dogs must be kept leashed while gay men are allowed to roam the park free. U.S. Christian conservatives seized on this as the next step in the "Homosexual Agenda." A March 27, 2008, posting on the website Traditionalvalues.org quotes from its own recent report, "Exposed: The Next Phase Of The Homosexual Agenda," in which its executive director, Andrea Lafferty, links the Dutch policy to American "homosexual activists" seeking to "legalize public sex in restrooms and parks here in the United States."
Lafferty claims that "gay activists could care less about the 98 percent of the population who will be defiled by such behaviors in public places. They obsess about sex and want to engage in sodomy whenever and wherever they wish." Whether or not Lafferty grounds her estimate of the population "defiled" by the policy in any real data, she sees a very real "gay agenda" at work here.
Even if this weren't an election year, however, Lafferty probably would not have to worry that Dutch permissiveness will wash up on our shores any time soon. American "homosexual activists" are most likely being kept busy ensuring that gay men aren't being arrested in entrapment schemes or aggressive surveillance.
"People may find cruising to be distasteful, but straight people do it all the time and don't consider it lurid," says Sean Kosofsky, director of policy for the Michigan-based Triangle Foundation. "Police have misled the public into believing that these arrests are rooting out sex offenders."
Instead, Kosofsky maintains that 80 to 90 percent of the men caught in sting operations haven't broken any laws against public sex or even solicitation. Like other gay rights groups the Triangle Foundation is fighting police actions against those having sex in public as a community issue that the need to fight, "even if it's not the most comfortable interest to deal with. We serve our community without judgment," he adds.
Some people make bad decisions in their personal sexual lives, but "it does not mean we should turn our backs on them." As for arresting gay men who have sex in parks or restrooms, Kosofsky points out, "Police entrapment against gay men has been going on for a very, very long time; and one can argue that there is an equal protection or profiling element. There are never operations to go after heterosexual cruising behavior."
Straight cruising happens "at the supermarket, at church and at the ballgame." Gay men, on the other hand, are targets because it's gay sex.
The Triangle Foundation has became nationally known as being in the forefront of the battle against intrusive police entrapment, misconduct and abuse after winning a landmark lawsuit against the City of Detroit in 2001 for what it showed was a virtual extortion operation. Kosofsky cites the fact that there hasn't been an arrest since in the Motor City. As part of its plea agreement, the city repealed a local ordinance called Annoying Persons.
As for Minnesota's most famous bathroom-entrapment victim, Kosofsky believes that Craig became an unwitting poster boy in re-igniting the issue and putting it right in the middle of the public eye. He hastens to add, however, that the Craig case was a matter of "lewd and lascivious conduct, which had to do with however a cop wants to define it."
This became a major point of contention in the Craig brouhaha. Many questioned how far a foot had to come out of a stall to be soliciting, and what exactly constituted toe tapping that meant "I want you" from toe tapping that meant "I dig this song on my iPod."
That broad ability to define, interpret and identify the nature of one's public conduct is part of what led the ACLU to file briefs on behalf of Craig. The ACLU argued that actions taken by the police in Craig's case--which is specific to Minnesota law--was likely unconstitutional because the method used to arrest him was improper, argued Paul Cates, director of Public Education for the ACLU's LGBT Project. He was "charged under a statute which could punish perfectly legal speech," Cates said. "He was charged for the act of solicitation, which could be private solicitation, which would not be a crime. If it was for sex in public, they might be able to make a case."
Apart from the murky issue of what constitutes solicitation or lewd behavior, Kosofsky notes how those who are targeted often becoming unwilling accomplices to the arrest of others in such a sting operation: "These people are so humiliated, they will plead anything. They plead to make it go away, and they plead to things they did not do."
Balancing Public/Private Matters
Cates, while acknowledging that "nobody wants their three-year old to stumble upon gay men having sex in the park," stresses the importance of reconciling decorum with the police's "obligation to try to work with everyone and make them comfortable and happy."
"There needs to be a balance between singling out gay people and also making sure public spaces are places everyone can enjoy themselves," Cates says. The U.S. Department of Justice recommends cutting down on sex in bathrooms by putting up a sign such as, "These Premises are Monitored by Police Officers." Cates believes that can be effective.
As for what doesn't work, Cates emphasizes that many police departments given to aggressive preventative efforts "have realized that sting operations aren't designed to prevent; they're designed to arrest as many people as possible."
That so much money, time and effort is being employed to keep men from meeting each other seems at odds with the mission of public servants for Kosofsky. The police are there to "serve and protect gay people and not to harm us," he argues.
In many cases, the damage to the lives and reputations of those arrested far outweighs any "public safety" factor, he adds. An arrest record and, more, the possibility of public embarrassment hangs heavy over those arrested. "Police shouldn't be targeting gay men, arresting them, putting their names in newspapers and destroying their lives," says Cates. In Tennessee, police arrested people in a public park. The local paper published the names and one man ended up killing himself. Something similar happened to a Massachusetts man arrested in Connecticut.
Kosofky sympathizes with the quality-of-life aspect of men having sex in public parks. But he believes that is outweighed by the fact that most gay cruising stings are thinly masked homophobic pogroms cloaked in the guise of maintaining public respectability. That said, he puts some responsibility at the foot of the LGBT community.
"The gay and lesbian movement began with resisting police misconduct and harassment," he says. "Any move to reduce the panic and zeal of police enforcement on victimless crime is a welcome move. We are not in support of public sex, but we think law enforcement has far better things to do than focus on cruising areas where there have been no victims and usually no public complaints."
Beyond litigation, Triangle has opened up a dialogue with local police departments. As a result, some law-enforcement agencies now recognize that such sting operations are expensive, don't result in crime reduction and open them to the possibility of lawsuits--as well as being homophobic. Kosofsky believes that the gay community needs to stand united against the criminalization of sexual behavior.
In the meantime, a beautiful park in the heart of the city of Amsterdam will be the scene of men who can approach other men without fear of being arrested and having their reputations destroyed.