(no subject)
Our (not so) private Idahos
Sen. Larry Craig's arrest shows that 'Tearoom Trade' is alive and well
despite the progress of gay rights.
By David Ehrenstein
Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein30aug30,0,1533982.story?coll=la-home-commentary
Gentle reader, by now you've probably read more than you ever nightmared
you'd want to know about the latest Republican gay-sex scandal. The
revelation that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was caught allegedly trolling for sex
in a Minnesota airport men's room in June comes on the heels of Florida
state Rep. Robert Allen's July restroom arrest, making it reasonable to
suspect that yet another GOP bathroom bust may burst forth by the time this
Op-Ed article goes to press.
But barring further white-tiled tragedy, the all-too-obvious question
remains, "What in the Sam Hill is going on here?" The answer rests on what
can safely be described as bipartisan grounds.
To get there, let's climb into the Wayback Machine and return to Oct. 7,
1964. That's when Walter Jenkins, one of the most senior aides in President
Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, was arrested for soliciting sex in the
men's room of a Washington YMCA. Being that it was three weeks before the
election, LBJ suspected some kind of Republican foul play, but the GOP chose
not to exploit the incident.
The Jenkins affair put "homosexuality" on the nation's front pages in a way
it hadn't been since Dr. Alfred Kinsey's famous report in 1948.
Like Craig, Jenkins could well have said he "wasn't gay." But who was in
1964? Then as now, if you were wealthy and well-connected, you could enjoy
what's contemporarily referred to as a "gay lifestyle" with some ease -- and
a soupçon of caution. For those less well-off, danger lurked. Sodomy laws
were on the books. Bars and clubs catering to the same-sex-oriented were
"speakeasy" affairs often run by Mafiosi who bribed the police to stay open.
When the money didn't arrive on time or in insufficient quantity, such clubs
were raided.
On June 28, 1969, when New York's far-from-fashionable Stonewall Inn was
raided, the patrons responded by fighting the cops. Although gays and
lesbians had resisted before (often right here in Los Angeles), this
Manhattan uprising served to jump-start the modern phase of the gay rights
movement.
That movement, with its defiant insistence on being free to be as gay as
all-get-out, quickly left the likes of Walter Jenkins and, if the cops were
right, Larry Craig in the dust. They're part of a subculture within a
subculture that was memorably identified by the daring sociologist Laud
Humphreys in a landmark sociological study titled "Tearoom Trade."
Taking his cue from Kinsey, Humphreys was fascinated with
married-with-children men who didn't self-identify as gay or bisexual, yet
still sought clandestine sex with other men on the side. Humphreys, when he
began his research, was one of these I'm-not-gay(s) himself, though he
eventually came out.
Published in 1970, "Tearoom Trade" is full of useful information about foot
tapping, shoe touching, hand signaling and all the other rituals those so
inclined use to make contact with one another in such places. Clearly no
media outlet should be without a copy -- especially Slate.com, whose editors
revealed their cluelessness on the subject this week in a "real time
conversation" rife with unintentional hilarity: "I can't believe it's a
crime to tap your foot." "Can someone explain the mechanics of how two
people are supposed to commit a sex act in a stall where legs are visible
from the knee down?"
As for the less blinkered among us, in the age of Ellen DeGeneres, Neil
Patrick Harris, "Brokeback Mountain" and the smooching gay teens on "As the
World Turns," bathroom cruisers seem almost antique. Today's gays want to
get married, and an airport men's room is no place to propose.
Moreover, if what you're "proposing" falls well short of marriage, there's
always the Internet. Larry Craig, meet Craigslist. In short, never has the
admonition "Get a room!" seemed more apropos. It's up to the I'm-not-gay(s)
to discover the real freedoms fought for and won by the people they so
fiercely claim they're not.
David Ehrenstein is the author of "Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998."