Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 10:28:11 -0500 X-Sender: kevyn@pop.ksu.ksu.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Kansas Queer News From: kevyn@KSUVM.KSU.EDU (Kevyn Jacobs) Subject: (TOPEKA, GAGE) TCJ LETTER: Keep police in park Sender: owner-kqn%vector.casti.com@KSUVM.KSU.EDU Precedence: bulk FROM THE TOPEKA CAPITAL-JOURNAL LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SEPTEMBER 14, 1995 ================================== Keep police in park It used to be pretty obvious that people shouldn't be having sexual relations in public parks, and that the practice ought to be suppressed whenever it occurred. The same went for soliciting what used to be called immoral activities. But the recent police sting operations in Gage Park have produced the bizarre spectacle of an activist group organizing to protect the "right" of homosexual citizens to solicit sexual favors from one another in public. It is a sign of how low the public debate has sunk. There are laws against soliciting sex in public for reasons that have nothing to do with whether people believe homosexuality is sinful. What might have happened if the gentlemen nabbed in the sting operation had encountered a gang of young gay-bashers instead of one of Topeka's finest? Rather than being beaten within an inch of their lives, they suffered only the indignities of an appearance in Municipal Court and seeing their names in the newspaper. The activists claim that gay men have no place to meet in Topeka. Even if this were true, and it is not, the solution is not to legalize public solicitation and sexuality. One approach they might try is to rent a hall, hire a band, and hold a dance. rather than walking up to complete strangers late at night and asking to join them for dinner at a nearby restaurant. There is a gay community in Topeka, and the vast majority of its members are responsible, hard working citizens who do not engage in the kind of in-your-face sexual behavior that the activists want to legalize. The larger community is not composed of lunatics, and there is scant support for turning Gage Park into a local version of San Francisco's Castro District. Solicitation, whether for heterosexual prostitution or for gratuitous homosexual relations, only encourages people who want to be solicited to come to the park and discourages everybody else. Is this what the activists want, a free-fire zone where anything goes? Chief Beavers is on the right side of this issue. The presence of undercover police officers deters all kinds of crime, not just solicitation. Gage Park is safer than it has been in a long time. There is no reason to turn the place back over to the thugs. --R.E. RAMCHARAN, Topeka.