It’s a bit like that part in the movie “Clue”

-He threatened to kill me in public!
-Why would he want to kill you in public?
-I think she means he threatened, in public, to kill her.

Thanks for the code section.

Every person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor:
(a) Who solicits anyone to engage in or who engages in lewd or dissolute conduct in any public place or in any place open to the public or exposed to public view.

Jerry,

I believe that this only bans solicitation of sexual acts in public. In other words, you can ask an undercover cop to come home with you to have sex. You just can’t ask him to do it in the park.

You can also be arrested in CA for soliciting lewd conduct in public, and in this case it does not mean prostitution, but simply requesting a person do preform lewd conduct.

I believe that the NC law is similar.

These are the same types of crimes that Sen. Larry Craig and FL Rep. Bob Allen got charged with.

Thanks, as always, for your passion and your ability to slice right through the BS.

I haven’t seen the comparable statistics on what happens in NC yet. But I’m sure that drug and alcohol related problems are many.
To say nothing of poverty, and neglect of children in that state certainly are.

For this man to refer to gay people as an ‘infestation’ on any level reminds me of the offense he takes that gay people exist, and the pernicious perception that they cause a lot of problems in any given neighborhood they live in.

I defy ANY law enforcement professional to be honest about what really poses a threat to innocents in our country.
Even what poses a specific NUISANCE that’s real and I doubt any of them could say it’s gay people.
And certainly not beyond or out of proportion to what hetero people do.

But one thing gay people DON’T do, and HAVEN’T done, is form into organized criminal gangs that outnumber and outgun law enforcement agencies.
There is no tradition of shooting up neighborhoods in which children are gunned down on a basis similar to war zones in the Middle East and Africa.
Nor do gay people RECRUIT children into street gangs.

I see a conspiracy to claim that gay people might as well be gang members and violent organized entities in neighborhoods to hear the conservative or religious right tell it.

If their obsession weren’t so dangerously ONE track and utterly without merit or substance, I’d laugh at their folly.

But for every crime scene, or incident recorded where I have to work, few involved gay people who were PERPETRATORS.
VERY few.

I’m not saying intra sexual orientation crimes don’t exist.
But the ones that are the most violent, and chronic…the gay community isn’t responsible.
And for a city the size of Los Angeles, where there is a concentration of gay folks, that’s saying something.

And believe me, I’m not one or blind sided about this. It’s a fact.

So, this particular political official is the sort of person I’d LOVE to school about a few things.

Tim, thanks for breaking it down about solicitation regarding a monetary transaction and sex.
THAT is illegal.

But picking up someone because of mutual attraction isn’t.

Another thing I’d like to point out, that’s been impossible on another site to educate folks on.
The chronic MYTH that gay people (i.e. gay men) are overrepresented in sex crimes against children or conviction rates for it.

I had to do some research for a project and I did some cross checking through the INNOCENCE Project and other organizations.

What the anti gay FAIL to mention whenever they start talking about crime stats and information is that same sex sex crimes are not or cannot be attributed to homosexuality.
Men who rape boys, are not identified as GAY, but simply as male on male assault.
And of those young boys who were assaulted, their attacker did so out of the perception that the boy was weak or gay.
Any sex crime expert will tell us that aim is to control, humiliate and hurt the target, it’s NOT attraction.
It’s not ORIENTATION that makes a person a rapist. And sex assault is about the most vulnerable target and in any given social situation where the target is isolated, politically and socially weak and vulnerable as well, they are the most preyed on.
And gay children, or those perceived as gay ARE the most preyed on. And gay adult women are the most preyed on as well.

In fact, as you’re all witness to, female victims of priest abuse are barely a part of the conversation. And gay males being considered legitimate to ban from the priesthood as if that would solved the problem of any kind of sexual abuse.
Indeed, abuse from the priesthood is reflective of the similar reasons it happens outside of the church for the same reasons stated before: hetero priests would abuse a boy because the boy was vulnerable, not because the priest was homosexual.

Anyway, I always do some homework before I say something.
And this post is not my opinion, but a matter of criminal statistical facts.

Political figures like this would do a great deal more good by addressing the most persistent and threatening factors in their constituent’s lives, rather than pointing fingers at gay people as the element of most interest that does.

He’s no help to anyone committed to fighting crime, and he’s not influencing the public to be more informed of reality, than just having their bigotry increased and validated.

He deserved to be smacked by that fellow commissioner the way he talked about her son.
People like him have NO idea and never appreciate just how much restraint and patience is required to deal with him and his ilk.

Thanks for letting me vent. The people who need to hear this never want to, but it’s good how respectful you are in comparison.