Now that I've got politics out of my system....

I think there is a simpler explanation for the sex panic that's gripped Atlanta and many other cities. You might want to check out this site of a 1997 conference:
http://www.managingdesire.org/sexpan...ssrelease.html

I believe I met the webmaster, Keith, at that conference.

A hint: Are you aware that a few years ago the city that reported the greatest number of arrests for sex in public bathrooms was West Hollywood, the only gay-run city in America? Much larger cities didn't even come close. (That's from Michael Warner's "The Trouble with Normal," which also addresses this issue brilliantly.)

The point is that the shift to a conservative ideology, as was observed at this conf. in 1997, isn't just in the dominant culture. It's also true among gay men, arguably to an even greater extent among us. (And god knows you can see it in a broad way in this very thread, even if it isn't uniformly extended to sexual behavior.)

As gay men try to become assimilated, they adopt more of the dominant culture's views about sex, marriage, love, etc. I'm willing to bet that most of the complaints police hear about public sex, sex clubs, bookstores, etc, come from other gay men, not from heterosexuals. (In fact, police reports corroborate this.)Some of you may remember that it was gay men who blocked the opening of a bath house on Amsterdam Ave. some years ago. This was also the case when the Eagle had a very, um, vibrant sex night a few years --much more active than the current Thurs night one.

I'm not saying the religious right, Shirley's constituency, isn't part of this, but I think many mainstream-minded gay men are playing right along because it doesn't look good for us to be sexual beasts when marriage has become our main agenda.

And I do think it's also about a change of values. I'm betting the average age of the person who feels like his sexual liberties have been severely limited here is over 40 or close thereto. People of that age -- my age -- typically depended on public sex venues like the parks and semi-public ones like bath houses not only to have regular sex when they first came out but to actually learn how to have gay sex. That's not the case much any more, especially not with park and bathroom sex.

Also, I think an effect of this agenda of mainstreaming ourselves has created a new kind of closet. Gay men who go to sex clubs aren't as open about it even among themselves as we were 20 years ago. Because we're all supposed to get married and live behind picket fences, it's considered skanky to defend recreational sex because it presents an unflattering PR picture to the culture that controls our civil rights.