Clayton Cramer is irritated by the loss of privacy in men's rooms, caused by the removal of doors to toilet stall doors. Apparently the door removal is being mandated by governments which want to prevent homosexual conduct.

...Ladies, you may not be aware of this, but in many public men's rooms, especially in roadside rest areas, there are no doors on the stalls. Women's restrooms don't have this indignity--and for a reason.

This is a sore subject to me today. I was driving back from Bend to Boise, and nature didn't just call--but screamed--on a lonely stretch of U.S. 20 between Bend and Burns. I pulled into a roadside rest area to use the men's room.

Having to do your business sitting down in a public restroom is stressful enough already, but without even the modicum of privacy of a door that closes makes the situation even more unpleasant. And seeing the general filth of the toilet made me just endure the scream of nature until I got to Ontario. (Yes, there's not much on that road.)

And why do men's public restrooms get this additional degradation--but not women's public restrooms? Because some gay men use public restroom stalls for casual, completely anonymous sexual assignations. Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (R-ID) briefly brought this whole sordid behavior to the attention of the public, but because it didn't fit the popular culture's image of homosexuality as an enlightened alternative lifestyle, the popular media did their best to spin the story as "hypocritical conservative Republican" rather than asking why this is a depressingly common part of the culture of gay men.

Now, while there is a very vocal group of activists who lay claim to "gay culture," that does not legitimize any claim by such activists that all people of a homosexual nature belong to it. Nor does it legitimize claims by the activists' opponents that a given homosexual person belongs to any such alleged culture.

But for the umpteenth time, let me admit my bias: I abhor identity politics, and think it's unreasonable to define people by their genital conduct, much less build a culture around it.

Cramer also suspects that it isn't the majority of gay men who have sex in restrooms:

...I suspect that a majority of gay men don't have sex in public toilets. But the ones that do aren't exactly rare, and because they can't exercise enough self-control to go somewhere else for sex, they have caused this degrading loss of privacy in public restrooms--and force the rest of us exercise enormous self-control all the way from the Burns, Oregon, to Ontario, Oregon.

The next logical step, of course, would be to shut down all public restrooms. Because some people have sex in them. Does this make sense? If you're a government bureaucrat, yes. Maintenance costs go down, and revenues increase when police issue the inevitable citations for public urination. (Which can always be charged as "indecent exposure" in order to force a "deal.")

Cramer also looks at the intriguing question of what constitutes being "gay":

Over the years, I have been repeatedly told by gay activists that men who have sex with other men in public restrooms aren't necessarily gay--that they are overwhelmingly straight men. If that makes you brain start to catch fire and explode--let me explain that gay activists insist that a person's sexuality isn't defined by who they have sex with, or even who they want to have sex with--but with which sexual orientation they publicly identify themselves. So a man who is married to a woman, but cruises public restrooms for anonymous sex with another man--why, he's straight! Someone who makes an argument like that is obviously confused about more than just their sexual identity.

Is there a gay counterpart to the "man who is married to a woman, but cruises public restrooms for anonymous sex with another man"? Actually, I have known bisexual men who would have preferred women who nonetheless have functioned as lovers to gay men. I once employed an openly gay man whose lover did prefer women and who found gratification in heterosexual pornography. It was a constant struggle for the gay guy to cope with this and he was constantly worried that his lover would leave him for a woman. This is not common, but it does happen, and the otherwise "straight" guys who do this are referred to as "trade." Some gay men are immensely turned on by the whole phenomenon, and while it isn't discussed much (and is fraught with obvious contradictions) it does exist. These men are clearly not "straight" though, and they would have to be called bisexual. The relationships tend not to work out very well, and the guys I've known who have been into that run through one "straight" lover after another, usually because the initial turn-on was occasioned by the partner being "straight" -- and obviously, the more it continues, the less "straight" he becomes. (Either that or the guy finds a woman.) So the built-in half life is very short.

The reason I raised this point about "trade" was not merely to posit a counterpart to Cramer's hypothetical, but because I have noticed over the years that these "straight" men willing to have sex with gays are precisely what many of the gay men who are into restroom sex are looking for. Whether they're straight or not, the fact is that restrooms by their nature enable these men to have a furtive type of contact that they would never otherwise allow themselves to have. These types won't dare go to a gay bars and look openly for sex because that would be like admitting they're gay, and they don't want to do that. So they sit there passively in the stalls, waiting and hoping for attention. Whether they're closeted gays, occasional dabblers in bisexuality, or some strange unidentified new sexual minority is an interesting topic for debate.

Cramer wonders why this sort of conduct is still going on:

Idaho Democratic bloggers like to claim that there's something unhealthy or weird about "obssessing" about homosexuality. I'm actually obssessing about the loss of privacy. If gay men want to signal to other gay men (excuse me, "straight men who like to have random, anonymous sex with other straight men") to go somewhere in private for their actions, we wouldn't have lost the bathroom stall doors!

In 1960, or 1970, or even 1980, when homosexuality was illegal in most states, or even socially octracized in the other states, I could somewhat see the argument for why this behavior was being done in this anonymous and degrading way. But today? Or, for that matter, any time in the last ten years?

Do what you want in private. But do it in private. I want the bathroom stall doors back.

I don't think talking about this constitutes "obsessing about homosexuality," because the subject received national attention with the Larry Craig case. Craig is still married and still denies being gay. As to what he is, far be it from me to say.

However, I don't think public restrooms have much appeal to your garden variety gay man who wants to pick up another garden variety gay man. While there's probably a small amount of that, I think much of the appeal exists among those we would call "in the closet" and among those into both sides of what has long been called "trade." The fact that homosexuality is legal and there are openly gay pickup places is completely lost on such people.

As to "privacy," in what I think is an ironic twist, many of those who seek sex in restrooms do so precisely because see the restrooms as offering privacy. By privacy, I mean privacy of the mind -- the sort that is not offered by gay bars, and which is lost when a man becomes openly identified as gay. Restrooms offer anonymity, and anonymity is seen as privacy.

Like it or not, there are men who have sex with men who do not want the "gay" label, because penalties attach.

Don't blame me; I don't make these "rules."

I can't even make sense out of them.