Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Hot in recent homo news from San Francisco has been that city's debate on re-opening the gay bathhouses closed in the 80s. Dawn has been impressed with the political acumen shown by bath house proponents, but feels that a satirical piece by Arthur Hoppe in the San Francisco Chronicle made the best case for allowing liberty to trump the "social worker impulse." Hoppe argues, tongue firmly in cheek, that instead of pushing for the right to have sex behind closed doors, free from the prying eyes of the condom cops, gay activists should, instead, demand demolishing all walls and doors in all hotel, motels, and such.

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"Instead of making gay sex private, we should work to make straight sex public," notes Hoppe. "This is why I have formed the Committee to Remove Motel Room Walls. Lord only knows how much unsafe sex is practiced behind the closed doors of our licensed motel rooms. If the city can require motel owners to have sprinklers in their ceilings for the safety of their guests, it can certainly require them to take down their dangerous, anti-social, interior walls."

Hoppe continues: "Unlike gay sex, unsafe straight sex also burdens society with a plethora of other problems, such as unplanned pregnancies, unwanted children and unwed mothers. These dire results surely saddle the taxpayer with welfare costs at least as onerous as the financial strains imposed by AIDS. True, once we make sex public in motels, straights will seek privacy in bushes, parked cars and bedrooms, just as gays do now. But there's no reason that sex inspectors couldn't be installed in all such likely spots. The Constitution might quibble with breaking into bedrooms, but inspectors would achieve much by simply pounding on doors at midnight and shouting, 'What's going on in there?' Even more exciting, however, is the prospect of driving a stake through the heart of one of the great evils of our time: adultery. Think how many broken homes would remain unbroken if the inspectors required every coupling couple to show a marriage license. Of course, some prudes will say that making all sex public would be offensive. But the only alternative, as I see it, is to agree that what consenting adults consent to do to each other in private is none of the government's business."

Bravo for your modest proposal, Mr. Hoppe.