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Now that the Stonewall Riots have ushered in a Rainbow® of respectable venues in which gay men can sexually network, what sort of degenerates would still cruise toilets and bushes?

Bay Windows (Boston) editor Jeff Epperly knows they are diseased: toilet cruisers are "bathroom sex fiends" eager "to slide around urine-stained floors while they collect staphylococcus on their knees." They are also, according to Epperly, immature and selfish, ". . .guy[s] who can't relate to other human beings on a mature level, and who can't muster the maturity to act civilly for a greater cause."

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The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's Karen Boothe knows they are fearful, closeted, and not gay-identified: "Males who engage in this practice with other males [i.e., not gay] are usually those whose fear of societal condemnation makes them afraid to frequent clubs and bars where they risk being identified."

Southern Florida's Scoop publisher Brad Casey knows that they are outcasts and not representatives of the gay community: t-room aficionados are "as low as you can get. These people need counseling. . . . [Bathroom sex] is a disgrace, but by no means reflects on the whole community."

And MCC pastor Don Reusch of Sioux Falls knows they are unself-aware, pathological cravers of danger, "driven by alienation, frustration, and fascination to engage in clandestine sexual encounters with strangers in public places, even if [they] don't understand it."

And virtually all lesbigay political and legal groups echo these sentiments: public sex practitioners are closeted, ignorant of disease risks, and lack any sense of community or social responsibility. As embarrassments to respectable cocksuckers, they merit no sympathy when arrested, and deserve a stern clucking should they suffer a bashing they so clearly invited.

So what to do with research from England that suggests men who frequent "public sex environments" ("PSEs" to the hip) are, in fact, quite gay-identified, no more beset by pathologies than others, very knowledgeable about HIV transmission risks, and creators of a sense of "PSE" community?

The remarkable work (in two parts) Cottaging and Cruising in Barrnet, Brent and Harrow (a British "cottage" is an American "t-room") and Blind Spots is the product of a $200,000 grant by local communities north of London to study how best to provide HIV-prevention programs.

Researchers acknowledged surprise at their results suggesting that the vast majority of PSE-goers are gay identified (and most of the rest are comfortable being labeled "bisexual"), have a community ethic that makes them relatively easy to reach with education, and engage in fewer unsafe sex practices than men having sex elsewhere.

"Gay and AIDS groups need to study this research to learn how to better reach a population that has thus far been subjected to a 'shaming campaign' and a witchhunt by police and media around the nation," says Keith Griffith, webmaster at Cruisingforsex.com, a web site that features a compendium of PSEs (along with reviews and notes from users). Griffith has promoted dissemination of the British study, in part out of anger at those who "talk about those of us who like our cock in a bush or toilet stall as if we are pathological basket cases."

Of course, not all lesbigay folks attribute the sexual attraction of communal toilets to pathology. Camille Paglia speculates that pheromones released in urine guarantee that men's rooms will always be havens for horniness. Sage Boyd McDonald has noted that Madison Avenue has yet to top the succinct slogan "M-E-N" (and condemns those who interrupt t-room sex to "stink up the joint by taking a shit"). And everyday, thousands more men find their gay needs better met in a PSE than they do at an MCC, NGLTF, or HRC.

Maybe the latest research from Britain will help sidetracked approval-chasers get back to gay-lib basics. Or maybe, as a disconcerting bit of truth, it will be flushed as LambdaScent® air-fresheners and RainbowBrite curtains are peddled to give even gay toilets a semen-scent-free air of respectability. **

Editor's Note: from The Guide, November 1998