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Show 244 and the boundaries separating life at the bar, parks, and mineral baths were fluid. During the 1970s, as visibility became the hallmark of gay liberation, inclusion-minded gays typically frowned on the ''wrong'' kinds of public homosexual behavior. Although many gay men delighted in the furtiveness and "underground" element of the 1960s subculture, gay advocates in the '70s often viewed park cruising and tearoom sex as inexcusable given the availability of alternatives, and lesbians were particularly loath to share the repercussions of such activities. Increasingly, the park became a less legitimate introduction to gay life and more closely identified with married, closeted men and behavior reflecting adversely on the gay community. 109 According to Brian Jeffries, Some of these people, they do the weirdest things, I mean they used to go to the bathrooms in Liberty Park, and I'm sure it was cruisy because I have to admit I used to drive by there, but I don't know that I would ever go in there ... because it was too scary, and I can't believe the things I would hear about that were going on in there. 1 10 However, gays who envisioned a moral middle ground balancing private sexuality with public respectability encountered complex realities. Sexual privacy was especially salient since Mormon Church leaders did not consider what people did in bed strictly private or irrelevant. LDS authorities not only believed that "nothing can be hidden," but also supported laws criminalizing both public and private homosexuality. On the other hand, ostensibly nonsexual public expressions of homosexuality triggered intractable prejudices. Authorities often treated any form of gay visibility as potentially disruptive and invoked public order as a means to exclude gays from certain places, especially those I09"Officer Explains Policy on Gays"; The Salt Lick, May 1976, unpaged. 1l0Jeffries interview. |
