Trace it’s not about not being held to the same standards as straights. There are already enough straight couples who make out in public, it’s an annoyance, but people don’t become heterophobic because of it. Gay people should be able to show affection without harassment. However, there are more then enough breeder couples out there who impose their “intimacy” on the public and it’s annoying. There are also, exhibitionists within our own community who seem to think it’s appropriate to act out in public. And when they act out in public like those annoying breeder couples do, people react in a not so enlightened way.

For instance, I was on a bus from Montreal to Nashville and there was this lesbotarian couple from Plattsburg New York who got on, who were going to Austin, Texas. While on the bus, they were affectionate, not too badly but when you get out of the Northeastern blue state area, people don’t want to see lesbians making out on a bus. These girls didn’t seem to understand that people don’t like PDA’s from anyone, but when you add PDA with homophobia you get violent reaction. These girls should remember that a bus is not their own car, nor is it their own living room. The PDA should be kept to a tasteful minimum by everyone, but especially gays and lesbians. Why? Because it can be a question of life or death and when you engage in PDA you are infringing on someone else’s comfort zone. Even people who support gay equality(real equality) don’t like having two lesbotarians or two gay men making out in front of them.

NOW, Back to Vegas and New Orleans. This bar in Vegas was an adult establishment, the “moral violations” were more than likely backroom action, which is semi-private. During Southern Decadence the city of New Orleans tolerates nudity, sex, strippers and hundreds of thousands of gay men because we spend 75% more than Carnival. In less than 1 week during decadence, a few hundred thousand gay men spend more than all of the carnival season combined. Carnival lasts from the feast of three kings to Ash Wednesday. That is a LARGE sum of money. This is why,, in the quarter the NOPD doesn’t give a shit if guys show their c*cks or even suck one in public. During Mardi Gras, if a straight man, in the straight area of Bourbon street were to show his cock, the NOPD plain clothes officers would tackle him and arrest him for public indecency. Strippers are officially illegal in New Orleans, both straight and gay, but during Decadence they tolerate gay bars and the sex going on. Yet after decadence, New Orleans reverts back into a conservative city and all the rainbow flags at the art galleries on Rue Royale come down.

The bar in Vegas being raided and shut down for “moral violations” smacks of selective enforcement and homophobia. Las Vegas is for lack of a better way to put it a void of morality. With all the vice they tolerate in the open, it shocks me that some backroom action would illicit such a response. They allow strippers and lap dances at the straight places run by unrepentant gangsters and other low life scum, but if gay people want some action in a backroom?? The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

Trace, perhaps you should show some pictures of your artistic rendering of your penis at the corner of St Ann and Bourbon. Oz is overrated and filled with not so nice boys,, Bourbon Pub is far nicer. You should also visit Cafe Lafitte in Exile and the Corner Pocket.

I have stories about the Corner Pocket which would make a porn star blush.

Well,, the Rawhide is a bit too raunchy for my rather delicate tastes. However, there is an old man bar called the Golden Lantern, aka the Latrine, where a good friend bartends. I used to get drunk and high at that fine little establishment, watch porn on the TV above the entrance(where passers by couldn’t see) and then would go around the Quarter being a slu….. excuse me doing missionary work.

Papa Joe,, the bartender at said fine establishment would keep us all completely gone. I would pre-game at this fine location, show up at the Bourbon Pub or the Corner Pocket(aka the Poakay) or even visit one of those little pieces of heaven known as the houses or bathing. At said establishment I would enjoy the company of distinguished gentlemen and gentleboys and some less gentle than others. Then after a night of complete debauchery,, I would drink until 5am and catch the bus back to campus and sleep like an innocent, pure and pristine baby child.

During the high holidays known as Mardi Gras and Southern Decadence, I would go missing for a week or two. I would party and sometimes crash at friends places in the Quarter, if and when I made it back to the Lakefront campus, I would sleep for 6 or 7 hours and go back out partying even more. I would do both the respectable “family” thing and watch parades on St Charles with co-workers,, I would even take day trips into Acadiana and ride jetskis in the bayou watching the parades in Lafourche Parish. But as a rule,, the week of Mardi Gras, baring an act of God, I was not in class or at work.

Southern Decadence was even worse, I would request off months in advance. I would work doubles two weeks before,, so I can have spending money.

Outside of those two major holidays I wouldn’t party too much in New Orleans. I would hang out in coffeeshops in Lakeview or maybe hang out with friends at Cafe Degas being all pretentious and bougie. But New Orleans is a VERY VERY conservative city with a libertarian streak that runs along from Canal Street to Esplanade known as Bourbon street. Too many tourists believe that the Quarter is New Orleans and nothing could be further from the truth. New Orleans is NOT gay friendly, far far far from it. New Orleans voted overwhelmingly for the anti-marriage equality amendment. During Southern Decadence, all sorts of businesses will grab their rainbow flags and waive them, for all of a week. Then they’ll put them away for the rest of the year, this is why those flags look so nice. Gay businesses struggle in New Orleans all year round, and many struggle during Decadence because of all the conservative businesses which treat gays like sh*t all year round are cutting into gay tourist dollars. You might like New Orleans and it might not be anti-gay in your eyes, but you haven’t lived there, you haven’t spent time enough to see how someone will act around gay tourists with money, but then fire someone for being gay.

For instance, I had a friend in my Hebrew class named Bond,, yes Bond. She was a lesbotarian who attended UNO with me, and she and her lover had been together for 5 years. Both were students at UNO and she had a daughter with whom she shared dual custody. Her baby’s daddy was a nice guy, straight but queer friendly biker dude. Bond was an artist and sold alot of her stuff in New Orleans when she and her lover lived in the Bay area in California. As an artist, she thought New Orleans would be awesome. She had visited for years and loved it. She moved to New Orleans assuming that her experience as a tourist/part time resident would be the same as living there. She and her lover quickly found out differently.

They were both staying in married student housing. They gave them grief, because they were gay. But since they had a minor with them, AND they were both students the school left them have married housing. Straight couples with only one student would get it in a heart beat, yet gay couples had to fight for this, even though the school supposedly bans discrimination and New Orleans, at that time, had a domestic partnership registry. Anyway,, for about a year and a few months, both Bond and her lover lived in married student housing. They both worked on campus, both did well in school, had their daughter enrolled in day care on campus. Bond sold her art in New Orleans and things seemed good. Then Hurricane Ivan came, while people were evacuated, the state of Louisiana voted overwhelmingly to ban marriage equality and “any legal incidents thereof”. The school, because they were legally bound to do so, had to evict these two ladies from married student housing. A lawsuit against the school was not possible, because since the school was public, they were bound to follow the state constitution, as is customary under civil law. Bond and her lover(whose name eludes me) and their daughter, decided that enough was enough. They ended up leaving New Orleans and moved. They were looking at schools in British Columbia, Ontario and Massachusetts. Bond left saying, that she had always loved New Orleans, but the corruption, the reactionary conservatism and the extremes in what New Orleans sells itself as and what it really is were too much.

Bond was a hyperpolyglot like me,, her mom was Acadian from New Brunswick and her dad was a Jewish cowboy from Kansas. She and I took Hebrew, Russian and Arabic together. When the school lost her, they lost her scholarship which paid her out of state tuition.

New Orleans is a culture shock to most people,, but what is even more culturally shocking is the differences in the REAL New Orleans and that experienced by visitors. There are even part time residents, who live in New Orleans in time shares for 3 or 4 months, who rarely leave their neighborhoods(ie Quarter, Bywater, Marigny or Uptown) and likewise don’t know much about the REAL New Orleans.

There’s an old adage about New Orleans,, “I always loved visiting, but I’d never want to live there” and there’s a reason why people say this.