Via Queerty (Free of an agenda, except that gay one…).  Here’s a bit of a CNN transcript of an interview with Kyra Phillips and an Atlanta vice officer named Darryl Tolleson, on the Larry Craig thing, and what its like to patrol the toilet beat…

Phillips: And tell me about the type of people that you arrested. I mean, give – can you tell me – well, first of all, let me ask you, have you arrested anyone that is well known like a politician or someone of famous stature?

Tolleson: No, I wouldn’t say that. But we have arrested certainly some high-profile people. It ranged from CEOs, bank presidents…

Phillips: Oh, my gosh.

Tolleson: …professors, college professors. So, it really runs the gamut as far as who we actually apprehend and who has been involved in this in the past.

Phillips: Are they gay? Are all of them gay?

Tolleson: I can’t say. I can only tell you that a good majority of these men do have families. And that’s been a little bit shocking to us. You would think that it would be more of a gay issue. But overwhelmingly more and more we’re seeing that these are people with families.

(Emphasis mine) This is pretty much what a friend of mine, Jon Larimore who once ran the Gay And Lesbian Information Bureau BBS System back in the mid 80s to late 90s experienced.  I did volunteer work on the BBS, which was created to be a news and information resource for the local gay community.  It was funded by the non-profit Community Educational Services Foundation.  Jon told me many times that he would get calls on the GLIB support phone line, late at night usually, from men who had just been arrested in a cruising zone, usually a men’s room that had been staked out by the cops, and were franticly looking for legal advice and support.  Jon told me that almost without exception these were deeply closeted men who were terrified of their wives and/or families finding out.

It didn’t surprise me then, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone now.  Even back in the 80s, before the Internet came along (and wiped out all the BBS systems), many of us who were out and comfortable with our sexual selves had already lived lives where we never felt compelled to journey into that pit.  We had a burgeoning social scene, at least in the D.C. area, that was better then the seedy mafia run bars that were all gay folk had back in the early 60s, where we could meet other out and about gay folk.  If all you wanted was sex, there was the bar scene where you could cruise to your hearts content, and sex clubs you could go to if you just wanted to dispense with the formalities.  Even back then the tea room scene was almost exclusively populated by deeply closeted types who couldn’t imagine themselves being seen in going into a gay bar…and the kind who are turned on by the thrill of risk.

For those of us with a more Disney-esq yearning for romance and finding that soulmate to put your arms around, it wasn’t exactly the best of times, but it was light years away from the worst.  And you could see a better place coming down the road as long as gay people kept fighting for the right to just be ourselves, openly, proudly.  I stayed well away from the sex clubs, visited the bars infrequently, and mostly socialized online, and at parties and G.L.I.B. happy hours downtown with my fellow gay geeks.  But I knew from hearing the stories, what was going on with the guys who frequented mens rooms.  At least one vice cop is willing to acknowledge what his own experience is telling him.  Which I guess is a good thing.  But they should all know this by now.