I thought the days of police persecution and entrapment of gays had ended fifty years ago…evidently I was wrong.
Most gay people living today have no first-hand experience of the horrible conditions the gays endured in America. It was downright persecution and humiliation at every turn. It was not just from a group of religious zealots but it was conducted by local, state and federal governments and most of the general population.
The horrid anecdotes of people who were entrapped and prosecuted for just being gay were heard as some common occurrence. I am old enough to remember those dark days in American gay history.
I saw how the LA Times published the names of people arrested by undercover police in park and in the streets and were considered in the same category as prostitution. It was a total war against gay people.
I was at a bar on Santa Monica Blvd. sometime in the mid sixties when an acquaintance I was with told me he was going to the bathroom. After five minutes I see this undercover cop with my friend handcuffed coming out of the bathroom. He was arrested for soliciting the officer and lewd and lascivious conduct.
After his release on bail he told me exactly what happened and I have reasons to believe he was truthful in his account because I had heard it all before. The officer was in the stall and got up from the toilet with his pants on the floor wrapped around his feet; he opened the stall door and showed my friend a much erected penis.
Now, I saw the undercover officer walk out of the restroom with my friend in tow handcuffed and he not only looked hot but was wearing very specific leather attire that only gay men would wear. After my friend was practically forced to perform oral sex on him he arrested him after he ejaculated in his mouth which he followed by pissing on him and simultaneously spewing insults.
I happen to know that there were arrests made on a daily basis in Griffith Park near the observatory; that too was in the papers.
And now we are seeing this crap coming from the police in Michigan:
Michigan Police Entrapping And Arresting Gay Men For Being Gay
“Numerous complaints are coming forth that in Michigan’s Grand Rapids, Kent County, Police are setting up “sex stings” to arrest gay men in public parks, but the men are not being arrested for having sex in public but are being arrested because they are gay.
Equality Michigan say sheriff’s deputies arrested 33 gay men in county parks in 2010 under the state’s soliciting and accosting statute, but claim about half of those arrests involved two men merely speaking to undercover deputies, or making casual contact like holding hands.
The men arrested face the cost of having their cars impounded and run the devastating risk of being placed on Michigan’s sex offender list for life.
Kent County Sheriff Larry Stelma on Tuesday defended his deputies, whom he said are merely trying to keep county parks safe for everyone. The Michigan statue reads “A person 16 years of age or older who accosts, solicits, or invites another person in a public place or in or from a building or vehicle, by word, gesture, or any other means, to commit prostitution or to do any other lewd or immoral act is guilty of a crime.”
But according to Miriam Aukerman, West Michigan staff attorney for the ACLU, who is investigating the allegations says “In these cases, it’s the officers who are making the approaches,” Aukerman said. “It’s the officers who are doing the accosting and soliciting.”
Aukerman also added: “If you look at the exact language of the statute, you could apply it to what happens in bars and restaurants in Kent County on any Friday or Saturday night. It’s legal to go to a park, a bar or a restaurant and say, ‘Hey, would you like to go to my place?’ We want our parks to be safe places for everyone and that includes gay people who are merely flirting.”
Surprisingly one of the most outspoken voices against the police entrapment of gay men comes from the Rev. Bill Freeman of Holland who has stood up and said that targeting gay men is also illegal and should be stopped.
“There is no money changing hands, so this isn’t prostitution,” Freeman said. “We’re talking about two consenting adults who are trying to hook up together and if one of them is an undercover officer and the only thing one of them has done is say, ‘Let’s get together someplace,’ I don’t see the problem. They’re making it a problem because they’re targeting gays.”
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