Interesting tie-in to the Craig affair in today's St. Louis Post Dispatch

[MadHound]

In Forest Park, the roots of Sen. Craig's misadventure

<snip>ST. LOUIS — Back in the 1960s, long before a U.S. senator got busted for lewd behavior in an airport bathroom, it was called "the tearoom trade."

But social researchers knew almost nothing about it.

So a young graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis started digging. He spent months hanging out in the public restrooms of St. Louis' Forest Park. He wanted to observe the tearoom trade in action: men who met for brief, anonymous homosexual trysts in public. He wanted to discover what compelled them.<snip>

<http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/26263150D474C4EE8625734800098FDC?OpenDocument>

Just thought that this was interesting, especially how consistently Craig has adhered to this study during his little escapade. Including the part about not considering himself gay.

[aquart]

1. Fascinating. Thank you.

[yellowcanine]

2. Interesting but a little creepy too when you think about an old fart like Craig coming on to a young

police officer.

[MadHound]

3. No creepier than coming an old fart coming on to a young woman

Frankly what I find disturbing about this is the risks these people are taking with their health in these anonymous trists. I also think it is a shame that our society has gotten to the point where an entire segment of our population can't be open and free about who they are, instead sneaking around park restrooms to get their jollies.

[yellowcanine]

5. I agree entirely.

[pnwmom]

7. And with their wives' health.

[Alcibiades]

4. Is there a bathroom stall lemon law?

If you've been toe-tapping and whatnot with someone in the next stall, and you open up the door to find it's some old Republican fart such as Larry Craig, can you lemon law them?

No wonder these guys are so opposed to gay marriage--legitimizing gay relationships in this way would mean a lot less mensroom action for them. One of my criticisms of the whole anti-gay marriage position has been that it doesn't threaten heterosexual marriage, but I see now that, in the minds of men such as Craig, it really does. Because they see themselves as "straight" and "normal," they probably think all men would dump their wives and start up same sex-relationships.

[yellowcanine]

8. That's like wondering if you can sue a beer company for all those ugly women/men you slept with

while drunk. I don't think so.

[peacetalksforall]

9. Maybe your sentence has more value in understanding objections then

it does as a quick quip. It deserves study. Now, I'm curious about the psychological 'stuckness' of this aspect of trolling.

"No wonder these guys are so opposed to gay marriage--legitimizing gay relationships in this way would mean a lot less mensroom action for them."

[soothsayer]

6. I'm confused by this passage:

"Forest Park for a while was a huge problem," said city police spokesman Richard Wilkes. "It took awhile for it to be cleaned up."

And because of the covert nature of the signals used to gauge sexual interest, many people might not even know what is going on. "If you're not looking for it, you might not notice it," Brekhus said

snip

If it was so covert, how was it a huge problem?

Also, i swear I recently read about the origin of the term 'tearoom' but this author sez it's of unknown origin. was i hallucinating? (again?)