Why more cops in the Fens doesn't mean a crackdown on gays

I'm glad to see illicit sexual behavior in public parks is perfectly 'legal' and acceptable for one sexual orientation, but not another. This is the 21st century, can't people just meet over the internet anonymously and go to a freakin' hotel?

Anon (that is your name, yes?) wants us to believe that the "attitude of the Bay Windows article is that the police should be turning a blind eye to the illicit activity," that "Bay Windows is asserting it is prejudice to enforce the law because most of the offenders in this case are homosexual," and that it "is highly hypocritical of [Bay Windows] to complain when the law it equally applied to them when it comes to illicit activity in public spaces."

I'm reading these two news articles and this editorial.

Anon could you please point out from where in these articles you draw your conclusions?

Cuz, I'm just not seeing it.

All I see you getting all huffy about gay sex in the reeds. That is your right; I have no problem with that. Argue away.

Just don't read out words and ideas from the pages of Bay Windows when they just aren't there.

Anon, you spill a couple of thousand letters on the text of your posts. Do you think you could spare a few for the edit box that asks for Your Name? It is tiresome to wonder which Anon you might be.

Though you admonish folk to read the article carefully, you fail to point out the pertinent paragraph, which would seem to be this:

The area is a popular cruising spot because of the tall reeds, or phragmites, that grow in the Gardens. Because the reeds are so secluded, an expectation of privacy exists for those who seek to use the area for sex. This expectation means that any sexual acts committed there cannot be considered ’public sex.’ Trespassing, littering, and drug use, however, are punishable by law.

I'll grant you that this isn't the best journalistic writing, for no one is quoted and no authority is cited so the paragraph could be read as editorializing in a news story.

But, it's not. There is, in fact, an expectation of privacy in a secluded area, even on public property.

Simply because you state that "it is occurring on public property" does not make "it public [behavior], period." When in a toilet stall or when standing in front of a urinal in a public restroom, one has an expectation of privacy that permits activity that would be illegal if done in the middle of Copley Square.

Before you attempt to tar me with the same brush as you do Bay Windows, I'll say that the phragmites have so fully encroached on Olmsted's vision of a Muddy River, that some of these so-called 'secluded' locations are twenty and thirty yards away from a paved path and are completely screened from anyone on those paths. Eradicating might be a reasonable option if it were practicable.

Whether this is enough 'seclusion' to create an expectation of privacy I'm not prepared to say: I'm not a user of this park.

What I do say is that both you, Anon, and Mike Mennonno, betray the sex-phobic Good Gayism described in the Bay Windows editorial.

Here are the concerns Bay Windows highlights:

• crime against persons and property
• litter (condoms, excrement, needles)
• vandalism against the garden plantings and hardscape
• trespassing
• drug use

In addition to these, here is what Mennonno is concerned about:

• "a Muddy River rat" in the park twelve hours day
• Gollum
• a queen looking to fulfill her [sic] blow job quota
• a sister
• a conspiracy queen screaming bloody murder
• and the anonymous queen with a big blowjob conspiracy

Your concerns seem to be:

• illicit sexual behavior
• preferential treatment of homosexuals
• behavior in the shadows when Gays should be Good and conduct licit behavior in respectable and private venues
• the image of homosexuals
• the sleazy fringe
• sleazy alley romps
• deviant behavior

As users of this park, gay men have been meeting for sex here for a half century and more. Not everyone can afford a hotel room. I do not argue for their right to continue this use, but the depth of some folk's frustration can be measured by the industrious vandalism by which they made their displeasure known.

To focus on opinions about 'deviant sex' and 'respectable venues' deflects attention from the true problems of property crime and vandalism, trespassing, the disgusting volume and nature of the litter, and freeing this riverine park from its oppressive, foreign phragmites.

Ageist whining about Gollums and Sleazy Bad Gays may make one feel good and righteous, but it misses the actual problems.

For what it's worth, here is how the Globe writes about activity "shielded from public view:"

Civil rights lawyers say that people engaging in sexual activity outdoors are not breaking the law as long as they are shielding themselves from public view.

“If two consenting adults are out of the view of the public not engaging in drug activity, not assaulting people, I don’t really feel that’s an issue we need to get concerned with,’’ [Superintendent-in-chief Daniel] Linskey said. “My concern is people who are involved in robberies, people who are involved in vandalism, people who are there to harm others.’’