Another reason to love Iowa...

Public Sex Not Illegal in Parts of Iowa

via Carnal Nation

What would you do if while hiking in the woods, you came across two naked men having sex? Would you be offended? Would you report the incident to the police? This happened to Tony Brewer in the Johnson County wildlife preserve in Iowa. He was offended by the sight of the two men engaging in oral sex and dutifully reported it to the Johnson County Sheriff. In the past, other concerned citizens have also reported incidents of indecent exposure in the park, ranging from nude sunbathing to full-on sexual encounters. But it seems that law enforcement isn't doing anything about it—or can't.

According to Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, being nude or even having sex in the public park doesn't necessarily break any state laws on obscenity. Like so much else in the legal world, the crime (if any) comes down to intent. Iowa law is quite clear that in order for an incident to be considered a misdemeanor, not only does the witness need to be offended but the 'offender' must also derive some kind of sexual satisfaction from causing the offense. "It's a difficult thing to investigate," said Pulkrabek. "You have to find that specific intent."

News crews have recently gone into the woods to investigate. They encountered some naked men who claimed to be sunbathing. They also found condom wrappers, used condoms, tissues, and even some underwear discarded in the brush. It's clear that the Johnson County wildlife preserve is a popular cruising area, but what should be done about it? Although Sheriff Pulkrabek says that all complaints are investigated, he does note, "The fact of the matter is, people have been going to remote areas and having sex since the beginning of time." Sex in nature is the tradition of the Garden of Eden as well as the scary, transgressive setting of most fairy tales. It's not for public consumption or spectacle; that's why it happens in the wild. In this light, Iowa's law seems eminently reasonable. However, all that litter is utterly criminal. Come on, boys, clean up after yourselves.

Study explores verbal and non-verbal communication in unprotected sex between men

“When he pulled like the lube out, he put a couple of condoms on the table. So I was given the choice… However, we never actually discussed condoms and as the sexual encounter progressed, we just kind of took it at the silence of not saying anything about it and that it’d be okay and or it was going to happen”.

HIV-positive gay men who have unprotected anal intercourse think of themselves as being in settings where ‘everybody knows the rules of the game’, but these understandings are not shared by all gay men, report Barry Adam and colleagues in the November 2008 issue of Culture, Health and Sexuality. Tacit miscommunication, faulty assumptions and differences in decision-making processes are all extremely common, and this raises questions of how to develop HIV prevention messages for specific micro-cultures, they write.

The researchers from the University of Windsor and the AIDS Committee of Toronto conducted in-depth interviews with 34 men who have sex with men. All men reported that their sex was unprotected most or all of the time, although there was one respondent who did maintain consistent condom use, with some difficulty. Ten of the men were HIV-negative, and the rest HIV-positive. The interviews focused on unprotected sex, and examined “the narrative sequences, verbal and nonverbal communication and tacit decision rules” surrounding the practice.

In common with many other studies, the researchers found that many HIV-positive respondents expressed a strong desire to avoid passing on their HIV infection. One respondent said: “I don’t want to put anyone through what I went through when I found out I was positive”.

Read the rest on Aidsmap.

He Said, He Said: QueerSighted Debates Folsom Street and Public Displays of Sexuality

This is a really interesting debate on all that is the Folsom Street Fair, and what it means for "us" and "them" on the blog QueerSighted. Is the infamous and delightful San Francisco fair about civil rights or boys who should just get a room? Please give the post a read now. Come back and tell LifeLube what you think.

California study contests belief that saunas facilitate HIV transmission

“...most men at the bathhouse did not engage in risk behaviour anywhere at all – not at the bathhouse, not at other sex settings, and not in private settings such as a home or hotel...Surprisingly, a number of men who reported recent high-risk behaviour in other settings actually reported safer sex during their current bathhouse visit. These study results contradict the assertion that the bathhouse facilitates large-scale high-risk sex."

Edwin J. Bernard, for aidsmap

Most gay and bisexual men do not engage in high-risk HIV transmission behaviour in saunas or bathhouses according to a study from the University of California, San Francisco published in the June 1st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. The study’s results – which found that some men who reported recent high-risk behaviour in other settings actually had safer sex at the sauna – contest the long-held belief that saunas facilitate HIV transmission on a large scale.

It has been a long-held assumption that saunas (known in the United States as bathhouses) facilitate high-risk sex amongst gay and bisexual men. Although previous studies have suggested that saunas attract men who visit a variety of public sex environments, a recent study from Australia suggested that there are different kinds of risk attached to particular types of public sex venues, and that men who had sex in the backroom of a bar or club were nine times more likely than men who had sex in saunas to have unprotected anal intercourse (UAI).

Investigators from the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, at the University of California, San Francisco used a rigorous probability sampling method to ascertain for the first time men’s HIV risk behaviour while at the sauna, compared with their HIV risk behaviour elsewhere in the three months before their sauna visit.

The study was conducted in the last five weeks of 2001 in what the investigators describe as a “typical North American gay bathhouse”. The participants were a sample of men who were chosen at random on their way out of the sauna. Their responses were weighted to make sure these men were as representative as possible of the entire sauna-visiting population. Participation was voluntary, anonymous, and reimbursed.

Almost one in twelve of the 440 respondents reported that they did not have any sex (i.e. anal or oral sex) during the visit, and the rest (91.5%) reported that they engaged in oral sex during their visit. A total of 44% reported anal sex: 33% had protected anal sex only, and 11% reported UAI. Of these 44%, more men reported having insertive anal sex (29% protected only and 7% unprotected at least once) rather than receptive anal sex (14% protected only and 5.5% unprotected at least once). Among the 158 men who engaged in insertive anal sex, one in five reported doing so without a condom at least once. Among the 85 men who engaged in receptive anal sex, 28% did so without a condom at least once. Just over half (52%) of the 24 men who had receptive UAI were HIV-positive, whereas fewer than one in three (29%) of the 31 men who had insertive UAI were HIV-positive.

In contrast, more than one in four of the 440 men (27.5%) reported having UAI in the three months before their sauna visit. Almost twice as many men reported having had UAI in private than in public (21.5% versus 12.5%; p <> Of the men who engaged in UAI in the previous three months, a quarter (24%) also engaged in UAI during their visit to the sauna, whereas only 5% of the men who did not engage in UAI in the previous three months engaged in UAI during their visit to the sauna (p <>

Of the 403 men who reported oral or anal sex at the sauna, men who reported UAI in private or in public in the past three months, and men had been to a sauna in the past year, were more likely to report UAI during the current visit.

The investigators note that “most men at the bathhouse did not engage in risk behaviour anywhere at all – not at the bathhouse, not at other sex settings, and not in private settings such as a home or hotel...Surprisingly, a number of men who reported recent high-risk behaviour in other settings actually reported safer sex during their current bathhouse visit. These study results contradict the assertion that the bathhouse facilitates large-scale high-risk sex.”

They argue that, “the vast majority of the sexual activity that occurred in the setting would not contribute to HIV transmission, even though some men at the bathhouse persist in risk behaviour not only at the bathhouse but in private and other public settings.”

Pointing out that “men who engaged in UAI tended to do so wherever they had sex,” they conclude that saunas are “a point of access to reach these men with appropriate intervention” and that “public health has the opportunity to design innovative prevention interventions that men can take with them and that target reducing their risk behaviour not only at the bathhouse but wherever they have sex.”

See the article on the aidsmap site here.

Reference Woods WJ et al. Probability sample estimates of bathhouse sexual risk behavior. Journal of Acquired Immune

Do Public Sex Play Spaces Make Public Health Sense?

via guest LifeLube blogger Mark Hubbard de Nashville

They have lots of names: Bath houses. Sex clubs. Back rooms or dark rooms. Regardless, it seems like every so often this question is raised. Most recently, it was asked on a gay men’s health email group.

Each question on the subject leads to another. Will closing a sex play space improve the overall health of the community? Do guys engage in behavior in these spaces that they don’t, can’t, or wouldn’t elsewhere? Is the likelihood of someone having multiple risky exposures greater in these spaces? (more bluntly put, do more people take multiple loads anally in these spaces?) Does this result in higher “disease burden” for the community?

I can’t answer these questions in a scientific way. I suspect that doing valid research on this subject would be difficult, expensive, and controversial. One list member indicated that such a project is underway, and I’d be very interested in the results.

Meanwhile, I wanted to describe what it’s like when there are no "public" sex play places legitimately allowed.

I live in Tennessee, where there hasn’t been a legal bathhouse since the very early 80's. What we do have are boothstores, private parties, and the net (sites, chats, and groups, etc.) Over the last few years one of the private parties in Nashville rose to the level of being a de facto bath house [complete with lockers, an orgy room, multiple big screen videos, open bars and other party supplies, a huge pool, and more.]

Boothstores go through cycles of being more or less vigilant about rules, but sexual activity is always a reality. Condoms and lube must be purchased which may arouse suspicion from staff. Recent legislation and enforcement crackdowns have reduced the number of these venues.

Although the hosts of the mentioned "pseudo-bathhouse" always provided condoms and lube, and while its rules poster encouraged people to "take responsibility for their own health and protection," the only real safety message in the space was about using Viagra and poppers. Significant opportunities to engage the clientele onsite did not realistically exist.

At least in this region, those who are cruising online certainly create opportunities for themselves to bottom multiple times in a night. In addition to using the above venues, they do it by organizing parties of various sizes in their own homes or hotels. They do it at regularly scheduled events organized via yahoo groups and the like. They do it by renting cheap motel rooms close to the interstate, logging on, and asking for what they want.

My feeling is that it would always be preferable to nurture collaboration between the venue and authorities. What comes to mind are basic things like making lube and condoms easily accessible, providing a minimum amount of lighting and resources for cleanup, and providing access for outreach and education efforts.

I also have friends who live in Atlanta that I've regularly visited over the years. There was no bathhouse nearly a decade. While that may have had a temporary effect in reducing exposures, what eventually happened was that parties of the type I’ve discussing emerged (with and without the use of the internet) and some evolved into semi-permanent underground sex clubs. These often are completely unlicensed firetraps, discourage discussion of self-care, make access to condoms and lube difficult if not impossible, and barely have enough bathroom capacity (forget about showers).

No, I don’t have supporting data, but I have always believed that having a regulated, legal public sex venue in my community would reduce harm.

mark

Mark Hubbard, Nashville

Photos in this post are from the site Bathhouse Addict

"Your online guide to bathhouses & other sexy places."