Sex in the Dog Days

Oh, those sultry days of August, how they bring our thoughts to sweaty, nasty hay-rolling. Last week we talked about the excesses of some gay men who engage in the stupid activity of "bareback"?condomless?sex. Surprise, surprise: some conservative pundits jumped on that?a few of them perhaps gleeful to focus on those awful homos doing something bad, bad, bad.

Well, turnabout is only fair play, right? So now, let's talk about the excesses that some conservatives have when it comes to sex?namely, their fascistic tendencies to stop it from happening (and let's see if they praise this column as much as they praised last week's). To start, a few questions:

What kinds of things have you done in a Super 8 Motel? A Howard Johnson's? Days Inn? Ramada? If you're like me, you've slept in them?and you've also, from time to time (and when you got lucky), done other, more active, things in them that you wouldn't write your mom about on the cheesy postcards you find in the room's desk drawer. As you read this, you may even be headed on the road for that August vacation, planning to stop along the way?a sex partner (or two or three) in tow?at one of these chain motels.

Watch out: Those nosy little Christian-right biddies at Concerned Women for America want to start regulating exactly what those other things besides sleeping are that you can do in such motels and hotels. And the Cendant Corporation, which owns the aforementioned chains, appears to think it's a good idea?anything to keep the fundamentalists?fundies?from getting angry and affecting their "family-friendly" image.

It seems that CWA recently got the Southern Baptist Convention to launch a boycott against Howard Johnson's (and got a smattering of press for it), outraged because of an s&m convention held recently at a St. Louis hobo's, a conference called?what else??"Beat Me in St. Louis." Missouri is Ashcroft Country, remember, and it didn't take long for a Republican state legislator to hold a press conference in front of the hotel, calling upon the state attorney general and the health department to investigate whether such events are safe and legal. Susan Wright, of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, responds by noting that workshops at such conferences are in part for the purpose of educating s&mers about safe s&m sex practices. But I digress.

The attack by the legislator and the boycott scared the bejesus out of Cendant, which, according to the NCSF, sent around a letter to all of its chains. The letter, NCSF claims, notes that one of Cendant's "hotel brands recently suffered adverse national publicity when a franchisee decided to host a meeting of sadomasochism 'enthusiasts'" and then offered a few directives:

"?you must consider the potential negative consequences of hosting activities that your community and national interest groups find offensive."

"You cannot expect to keep controversial activities secret, especially considering the power of the Internet to disseminate information."

"Your license agreement prohibits activity that is harmful to the goodwill of the chain."

"Your franchiser will respond aggressively and immediately to any license or franchise agreement violation."

"Discretion is an important element of success in the hotel business. Please exercise discretion when you book controversial guests and groups."

Can you imagine just how the term "controversial guests" will be interpreted in, say, Alabama? Maybe it will mean anyone who looks just a bit strange, someone dressed a bit differently, someone acting a bit differently?maybe even someone with a shade darker skin. These are dangerous times we're living in indeed. If you're headed cross-country, be careful where you bring those whips and chains.

More Sex Follies

The headline of a breathless front-page story about gay male sex in the Los Angeles Times last week announced?stop the presses?"Online Access to Risky Sex."

The article also ran in the Baltimore Sun, where the subhed warned that the "Practice is hastening the spread of HIV," though the story never came remotely close to proving that claim, and certainly presented no studies showing it. The writer, Charles Ornstein, comparing the Internet to gay "bathhouses," warned that the Web "makes for speedier transmission of disease over a wider area." He then explained that "if a New Yorker plans to visit Denver next week, he can go online and make plans to meet a sex partner the evening he arrives," noting that "at a gay bar in a strange city, hookups are likely to be less certain and take more time."

While it is true that the Internet provides gay men?and straight men and women, and lesbians, and bisexuals and whoever else?another way to meet people for sex (in addition to such outlets as newspaper personals and phone sex lines), it's a stretch to compare it, epidemiologically, to a bathhouse, where people can have sex with five, 10, 15 or more people within a couple of hours.

That's not to say that some of what Ornstein presented is unimportant or shouldn't be reported. There was an outbreak of syphilis in San Francisco in 1999 that was traced back to men in one specific AOL chat room, he notes, and health officials, working with gay activists, were able to use the chat room to warn others about the outbreak. But Ornstein's report was more sensation and titillation than anything else, a nice summer sex story for page one that offered a lot of heat and little light. This was evident in Ornstein's opening sentence: "A year after testing positive for HIV, a 40-year-old entertainment publicist returns time and again to the 'bathhouse' in his back yard. Inside a cinder-block shed, with jazz blaring in the background, he taps away at a computer, trolling for sexual partners." Ornstein voyeuristically takes us through events as the man meets someone online. "Within minutes, the two have traded details of their favorite sexual exploits, swapped photographs and promised to meet later that day," he tells us, seemingly incredulous.

Ornstein then gives us what he thinks is the money shot: "Two years ago, the publicist met another guy the same way. During sex, the condom broke. That's how he says he caught the AIDS virus. 'It's like playing Russian roulette,' he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'I got the bullet.'"

Excuse me, but the guy didn't get the "bullet" online, or from meeting people online. He got it because the condom broke! And that would have happened whether he met the guy online, in a bar, on the street, in a supermarket, in an airport lounge?or even in the newsroom of the L.A. Times. Is it any wonder that some gay people get defensive and fearful, sometimes even denying the truth, when they see such shoddy reporting about their sex lives?

Still More Sex

Is it just me, or do you think that those Con Edison ads?the ones on the sides of the Con Ed trucks?showing a man's gloved, clenched fist with the thumb sticking in the air under the phrase "On It" are way homoerotic? Just asking. (And do you remember the ads they had with the salami?)