Hopefully, guys are still checking in here and, wichitacumlover, sorry about the looong delay in replying. I hope you have had good and safe times in whichever (or both) of these two venues --baths and bookstores.

The main distinction in law enforcement between baths and bookstores centers on the private club nature of bathhouses while bookstores are open to the general public. An undercover cop can play the role of hapless offended member of the general porn-loving public in a bookstore. It's much more difficult to adopt that pose once he's paid a membership fee and signed a disclaimer to gain entrence to a private club which overtly caters to male sexual encounters.

In California, Penal Code 647(a), "Lewd Conduct" requires, as an element of the crime, that the conduct be in a public place or place open to the public. No public place, no crime. That's why there's no lewd conduct in private homes, unless the conduct is viewable by the public. Stay away from those plate glass windows.

Sex clubs, which don't provide the wet areas and other features of a bathhouse, illustate the point. Private membership clubs like Blow Buddies or Basic Plumbing afford their patrons that additional protection. The general public is precluded from casual entry. General public access is a hallmark, both an allure and danger, of bookstore cruising.

That's the general rule. As usual, there are some (luckily, few) exceptions. The Chute in Phoenix was raided a few years ago, pursuant to a City Ordinance which essentially banned private club nudity and sex. In that case, no patrons were arrested.

Other public places, such as parks, are generally riskier than adult bookstores, which definitionally limit patronage to adults. In some park tearoom cases, the prosecution will seek to introduce evidence that children were, or sometimes are, in the park. This gives law enforcement the rationale that they are "protecting the children". However contrived, it plays better with a jury than someone arrested for (as a straight colleague of mine put it) "jacking off in a jack off booth" in an adult bookstore.

Sorry about the longwindedness.

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