Angels and Demons

There are a few things in our society that seem so offensive or disgusting, that we can't imagine, just utterly can't imagine, why anyone would do this. There's stuff like rape, incest, scatalogical turn ons, dogfighting, and so on.

Just underneath this must be cruising in men's bathrooms. Indeed, if you followed any of the discussion (if you can call it that), nearly everyone, to a person, found the thought totally disgusting.

And yet, it doesn't take much thought to think someone must do it. Of course, if you find it disgusting, you can't even begin to rationalize why people do it. You can't tell yourself that there would be some thrill, some excitement, going to some place where you could get caught, and meet with someone totally random, and being a US senator to boot.

Instead, the people who find it disgusting demonize.

The people who cruise must be sick. They must be complete perverts. There's no sane way any rational person would do this. So disgusting! I can't even relate to it!

But people are into S&M. People are into rough sex. Is anonymous sex really much worse? Is it because we associate bathrooms with scatalogical functions that we don't like thinking of sex (or probably, just a quick peek or feel) in these terms?

While we can point out that Larry Craig was a complete hypocrite (which I agree) and due to his actions, closeted individuals must resort to cruising bathrooms, it does hide any intelligent discussion that some people find this exciting. Most news firms are unwilling to treat this as a serious subject, to find out what people might be interested, just as many people never found people who love to watch dogfights when Vick has dealing with the scorn (and, does PETA get the biggest boost out of this, or what?)

Too often, we demonize, because we are unwilling to believe, unwilling to imagine, that somewhere, somehow people might have a reason for doing things that the rest of us find objectionable.