So Larry Craig gets busted for playing Savion Glover in an airport right around the time that the mayor of Fort Lauderdale launches a crackdown on a gay-sex-in-public-places problem that may or may not exist. This is serving to bring gay cruising areas to media attention in a way that hasn’t happened since the George Michael incident, and this time the facts of the case aren’t overshadowed by a celebrity personality.

I caught part of a news piece yesterday on the “problem” of gay cruising in bathrooms and the country-wide crackdown that will probably result from it. I’m conflicted on this. As a gay man, I’m wary of any other way that we can be scapegoated. The last thing anybody needs is for another mass association between gay men and illicit, dirty, most likely unsafe sex.

In the other hand, as a rational human being with aesthetic sensibilities, I can’t very well claim that its my right as a sexual minority to go looking for ass wherever I damn please. As Michael pointed out in his post, its the year 2007 and the internet has rendered most outdoor cruising spots moot.

It’s one thing to frequent an out of the way, known homo hotspot like P street beach. Its quite another use your rolling suitcase to block the door crack in an airport bathroom and use an antiquated system of signals to entice your fellow sitter to…what? Blow you underneath the partition?

The closest I’ve ever come to pulling a Craig is at the age of 13 when I felt unusually hormonal and decided to jerk off in a Walmart restroom. As I came into my hand to the sound of the gentleman next to me making a bowel movement, I decided right then and there that bathrooms and sex just don’t mix.

And I didn’t even have to get arrested.