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VANCOUVER

March ‘7, 1991 Classifieds 986-6222 Office, Editorial 985-2131

Display Advertising 980-0511 Distribution 986-1337

SUNDAY

A return to refinement

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56 pages 25¢

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

May the tuck of the Irish be smiling on you this St. Patrick’s Day - and remember to wear something green.

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RCMP investigate complaints that Bridgman and Delbrook parks are being used as homosexual meeting places

TWO NORTH Vancouver parks have become havens for

homosexuals in search of sex.

Said North Vancouver RCMP Insp. Dave Roseberry, ‘‘We are concerned about the use of Bridgman and Delbrook parks by people who are suspected to be conducting homosexual acts."*

Roseberry said police have received numerous complaints from park users.

“The public are concerned and that makes it a police concern,”' he said.

Roseberry said men, coming from throughout the Lower Mainland and often driving ex- pensive cars, are making Bridgman Park a particularly busy 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. pickup spot.

Said Roseberry, ‘‘They are conducting their sexual pleasures there.”’

The police, he said, will take action on complaints received and “are apgressively attacking the problem”? in both parks. RCMP routinely patrol the parks, note licence plate numbers and talk to park visitors.

“As soon as there is possible exposure to these people, they just leave,”’ he said.

Delbrook Park was made a less attractive rendezvous last year when the district. remodelled the park’s public washroom.

“It’s a fairly open complex so they can’t go in there and hide themselves,’’ Roseberry said.

Added the inspector, ‘‘The law allows that consenting adults can carry on as they wish in privacy. A iot of these toilets in parks have individual locking cubicles. If they’re locked into these cubicles, it’s fairly private even though it’s a public park.””

But, he said, ‘*‘It came to an ug- ly head last year at Delbrook with people complaining because a lot of kids were using the park and there was this type of activity go- ing on.””

Meanwhile, Christopher Koth, coordinator of gay community programs for AIDS Vancouver, said the phenomenon of gay sex in public places has been chronicled in a book — Tea Room Trade — by sociologist. Laud Humphreys. The author coined the term “public sex environment’ for the purposes of his research.

Koth said that Humphreys “hung out’’ in public washrooms,

By Michael Becker News Reporter

traced the licence plates of men who frequented ‘‘public sex en- vironments’’ such as park washrooms for .exual encounters, and then interviewed them.

“He found that the reasons for public sex varied,’ Koth said.

44 [t came to an ugly head last year at Delbrook with people complaining because a lot of kids were using the park and there was this type of activity going on.99 — RCMP Insp. Dave Roseberry

“But there were also basic simi- larities. Public sex externalizes feelings. It fulfills that expectation of men that they externalize their feelings.

“It also fulfills the need to ob- jectify desires. For men who manifest same-sex desires it comes down to the male genitalia. Public sex offers anonymity. There is no meaning attached to it, often no name, no face,"’ Koth said.

Men who meet in parks for sex may be sure of their sexuality, he said, but may also be afraid of it.

“They’re often people who can’t afford to attach themselves in a public way to the gay culture,’’ Koth said.

One explanation of homosexual public sex sees the behavior as “the manifestation of secret emo- ions becoming a secret network of meeting places.”

Meanwhile, Koth is organizing Operation Latex Shield, a gay public sex outreach program sponsored by AIDS Vancouver. Ten volunteers are being trained to take the safe sex message out- doors to guy “cruising areas’ in the West End of Vancouver.

Koth said the program may eventually be expanded to other communities,