Politically correct sex on the beach

By David Paulin

It's amusing to see how politically correct newspapers invariably tiptoe around certain aspects of certain gay lifestyles. Consider, for example, an article in Monday's Boston Herald about how angry officials with the Cape Cod National Seashore are cracking down on public sex on the beach.

What kinds of sex might this be?

It's toward the bottom of the Herald's story that George Price, superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore, says:

"The majority is gay, but we've had issues with hetero sex as well. Families are upset and outraged."

Interestingly, Price apparently didn't say how many heterosexual couples were involved -- or whether these couples were engaged in one-on-one sex or in group sex. But that information might be interesting. It's tempting to think that Price added the part about heterosexual misconduct as a concession to politically correctness; or perhaps the Herald's reporter steered the interview in that direction, prodded Price into suggesting that that men and women also were a significant part of the problem.

The Boston Herald, for its part, strove to point out,

"many gay community members are also appalled about the recent surge in public sex, which is illegal under federal and state laws and can incur heavy fines."

The paper also noted that the "number of citations for public sex acts more than tripled, from an average of 40 to 132 last year." However, it failed to provide a breakdown of how many of those public sex acts involved heterosexual verses gay couples. It's not hard to read between the lines, however, thanks to some interesting anecdotes that the paper provided toward the midpoint of the story:

Complaints have included whale-watchers sailing past large groups of nude men, and families stumbling upon people engaged in sex acts on the pristine national shore that attracts tens of thousands of vacationers from throughout the world each year.

One complaint, issued in 2007, was from a New Jersey family walking in the dunes who encountered couples and a large group of men having "sex in the nude, including oral and anal sex right out in the open," the Cape Cod Times reported last week.

Sometimes, newspaper readers cannot even read between the lines when they read about issues involving homosexual sexual misconduct. In Texas not long ago, the Austin American-Statesman ran a brief article about a police raid on a nearby rest stop where a number of arrests were made for "lewd and lascivious" behavior. Curiously, the paper did not elaborate. What was going on? I had to asked my brother-in-law, who lives near the area. "Oh, it's a big gay hangout," he explained.

Why did the paper fail to mention this interesting detail? No doubt due to political correctness, the desire not to offend any well-organized gay activists who would be upset over any unflattering portrayal of an unmentionable aspect of some gay lifestyles -- sexual promiscuity in public places, on levels and a scale that simply do not exist among the most promiscuous of heterosexuals, who lack a large and assertive movement enjoying media protection.