Sex Is Not A Public Nuisance
The New York Times this morning reports on a meeting last Wednesday involving city and state elected officials including Christine Quinn (City Council Speaker) and Thomas Duane (State Senator representing parts of Manhattan), Brian Conroy (the NYPD's Vice Squad commanding officer), and LGBT rights activists. The meeting focused on whether or not the city is targeting gay men for arrest on prostitution crimes because of their sexual orientation.
That is the wrong question.
The more relevant questions are: Why is sexual activity - the buying and selling of pornography, the accepting of money for sex - being defined as a public nuisance in the first place? And, what does it mean that simply liking pornography and being in a porn shop is enough to make one the target of a prostitution sting?
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The men have been arrested, according to the article, as part of an attempt by the city to target "public nuisance" crimes by focusing on locations where illegal activities like gambling, underage drinking and prostitution take place. While it is true that prostitution is defined as a crime in New York City the description of this sting operation demonstrates just how private a public nuisance can be. In the following quote from the article, for example, see if you can pick out anything that seems especially public (by which I mean likely to disturb anyone who did not intend to see or participate in the activity):
An undercover officer paid a $10 fee to enter the basement, where there is a theater and viewing booths. There, the officer would meet men and offer to pay for sex.
One man who was promised $25 for a sex act offered to do a different sex act for $50, the lawsuit says. Another, it says, said, “O.K., let’s go” when offered $100. Both were arrested once they left the store, so as not to tip off the business or other patrons about the operation.
In fact, if there is a nuisance at all it is the nuisance created by the sting operation itself. Private citizens are being arrested for a crime they did not initiate and may not have committed at all.
I'm glad that gay rights activists are getting involved in this fight, but to fight these arrests based on unfair treatment of gay men is wrong headed. The real problem here is that sexual behavior between consenting adults is being defined as criminal and it should not be. This criminal status reinforces the stigma attached to sex outside of heterosexual monogamous marriage. The article quotes Senator Duane making exactly this point. He says that several of the men who had done nothing wrong pled guilty to lesser charges because “There is a certain amount of discomfort that these men would be having consensual sex with someone that they just met”.
What this means is that in at least some cases we have men who are essentially convicted of a crime because it is too embarrassing to fight a prostitution charge by arguing that in fact they were just going to have relatively anonymous consensual sex.
This is a wasteful use of public resources. There are much better uses of taxpayer dollars than the policing of consensual sex.
Homophobia and heterosexism are significant problems in this society and we must be diligent about fighting them. This, however, is not about homophobia. This is about a much wider stigmatizing of all kinds of sexual expression outside of monogamous marital sex. We are in a period of increasing puritanism when it comes to sex and the law. Crackdowns on BDSM dungeons in New York, and the new anti-porn and antiprostitution laws in the UK are examples of societies becoming less tolerant of sexual expression rather than more tolerant. The arrests of these men need to be understood in that context and the fighting of their arrests needs to be done on the grounds that no consensual sexual expression should be criminalized. Ultimately that is probably the best way to fight homophobia in the first place.
Politicians and city
Politicians and city councils complicate things. If it's consensual and taking place within an adult environment (no children are forced to watch, because exhibitionism can also be non-consensual from the bystander's perspective), it shouldn't be a problem and it usually isn't a problem unless politicians make it a problem. This sort of thing is happening all over the globe now. Sexual control is back and it's still unpopular. Even where I live, all the way downunder, a local mayor tried to outlaw sex workers working within their premises. This trend to oppress sexuality affects all adults regardless of orientation.
What is irking me at the moment is the way governments are using consensual sex, as it appears in porn/adult film, and using terms like 'child porn' whenever valid arrests are made, to create a negative association and such negative associations become law (e.g. The UK 'extreme' porn law).The term floods newspapers online and in print, and I think that there are a portion of people out there who don't think of porn in a positive light.
This issue is significant. The men you mention and the lesser criminal charge is unfair and during this economic nightmare, which will last for at least two more years, a definite waste of tax payer dollars.
Hmmm
Social purity and dialectic
Actually I believe that what we are witnessing is more a dialectic of social purity and rights based social justice. Unfortunately social constructionism and moral panic often form the vanguard of media influence because its sensationalism is no match for reason in terms of driving policy that is non-evidence based.
The economics of policing of consensual sexual exchange are enormous, yet seemingly immune to audit. In this case, as Elizabeth states, the issue is why this is constructed as a social problem at all, let alone so vigourously prosecuted, even to the level of entrapment. Authorities have plenty of regulatory tools to deal with the control of genuine threats to law and order and public nuisance without constructing specific sexual crimes. Indeed it is difficult to construct a crime here at all, save that of the law enforcement officials in harassing citizenry. What exactly was the nature of the complaint that led to these actions? Was it merely the idea that adults might be discussing sex in an adult video store, or was it aimed to harass the customers of the store and hence disrupt the market? And why was sexuality conflated with underage drinking, drugs and gambling?
The appropriate social construction might be more that it is prohibition that creates the criminal corollaries of the market, such as consuming alcohol, but there is no evidence of associated criminal activity here. Indeed there is no evidence of societal harm or offence.
While we may be delighted that Mr Pinter and his colleagues are being listened to, the real issue is why large amounts of resources are spent in trying to harass sectors of society that the citizenry in general do not envision as constituting a threat to their freedoms and security. Once again public morality invades private morality encroaching on the concept of citizenship for many of its members.
References
Julie Pearl: The highest paying customers. America's cities and the costs of prostitution control Hast LJ 1987Post new comment