To be clear, the mayor said, "We want to welcome gay people to visit our city — but I think we want to make sure we crack down on criminal activity."
Although many gay people in town were furious about Naugle's remarks, others, it must be said, were only vaguely aware of them. Multiple 20-somethings who were asked about the comments were more concerned with clubbing than politics. At least one gay couple missed the entire firestorm because they were off getting married. And another gay man might have behaved differently if he'd been more aware of Mayor Naugle's wish to "crack down."
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That man, who was arrested in Fort Lauderdale on Monday, August 6, and charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, spoke with New Times only on the condition of anonymity. The 56-year-old said he was in Holiday Park that afternoon with sex on the brain. He had read about the spot on cruisingforsex.com.
It was about 4 p.m., he said, following a thunderstorm. He doesn't know what possessed him to go to the park — he's had a supportive partner for 12 years, he said. Perhaps he was thinking of the way it used to be for guys of his generation, growing up in the Carolinas without gay role models or information. "You figured things out for yourself," he said.
The venture to Holiday Park "was just a curiosity," he tried to explain, his voice nervous even a week after the incident. "I don't even need to get into the psychological aspect of it." He says he had no intention of having sex in a bathroom. "It was more of a visual erotic thing. Like, a mental thing — of possibilities."
This is his version of events: A white man in a pickup truck pulled up along his driver's side and motioned for him to roll down his window. The man asked to see his dick. So he undid his zipper.
The guy in the truck suggested they leave the park and go to his place. They drove a few blocks and parked. Then two other cars pulled up, and three men jumped out and started yelling. He knew then that they were cops, he says — and he was scared. He begged them not to arrest him.
"They wanted two things," the man says. "First, they said, 'Tell me somebody who can sell me some tina,' " slang for crystal methamphetamine. If he could, they wouldn't arrest him. "And the second thing, they said, 'Are you part of those fags that were protesting the mayor?' "
Although one of the cops was nice, he says, another told him that he has two kids, and if he ever saw a gay man masturbating near his child, he'd take a baseball bat to his head.
The police report differs slightly from the defendant's account. It suggests that the man was masturbating with his window open before police started talking to him. And despite the man's insistence that no kids were around due to the earlier thunderstorm, the police squeezed in a sentence at the bottom of the report that echoes the mayor's concern: "It should be noted children were at play in this park."
The officer also wrote that the detectives "were in an undercover capacity in Holiday Park to combat lewd and lascivious behavior."
A public information officer at the Police Department said there was no recent increase in such efforts.
For a $25 bond, the man says, he spent 30 hours detained.
"Maybe I was stupid," he said. "Maybe I was naive."
He is not political, he said. But was he aware of Naugle's recent complaints about gay sex in public places, and the protests?
Oh yeah, he said — "Flush Whatever-His-Name-Is."
