I really hate "There's Something About Mary," but in my ongoing attempt to become the undisputed master of pop-culture references, I have to mention it on occasion.
Today, I'll be making reference to what I once thought was a gratuitously unrealistic and unfunny scene. I'm talking about the part where Ben Stiller's character is arrested for apparently engaging in public sex at a highway rest stop.
The movie says that highway rest stops are hotbeds for gay sex. When I first saw the flick a few years back, I was certain that those things didn't happen in real life.
Then I discovered a medium much funnier than any Farrelly brothers movie: Phoenix TV news. An investigative feature that aired Sunday on ABC 15 rocked my naïve worldview when it informed me that there's something about Papago Park I didn't know.
Apparently, the "desert playground" is a hot spot for men to hook up with other men in the bushes, just like the rest stop in the movie. Channel 15 claims to have seen "hundreds of men" cruising for anonymous homosexual activity during the "days on end" they spent investigating.
Statements like that would lead casual viewers to believe that roughly 100 percent of the men in the park are there for the sodomy.
The report went on to say that the Phoenix Police routinely set up sting operations to catch these men, just like the cops that arrested Ben Stiller. Now the casual viewers are happy that the good guys are cracking down on sexually deviant behavior.
The news feature doesn't stop there, however. It goes on to show the viewers how they're all being ripped off by the government. Hanging out at the park's ramadas are men with backpacks who hand out special packets to men.
The packets come from an organization called Men Power, and they contain condoms, lubrication and information about STDs and Arizona's public sex laws. The people handing out the packets are quick to warn others about the police presence in the park.
Then comes the shocker: Men Power is funded by the Maricopa County Health Department. The broadcast now has the casual viewers up in arms. They're angry because their tax dollars are paying for a program that encourages homosexual sex in the park and attempts to hide it from hard working police officers.
On top of that, County Health offers counseling to men who have been arrested for this deviant behavior instead of sending them to jail where, as the broadcast insinuates, they belong.
Channel 15 would have to admit that these casual viewers, which constitute roughly 99.9 percent of the viewing audience, are a bunch of moronic robots with no ability to discern fact from fiction.
News 15 expects the viewers to storm the Maricopa County Health Department with torches and Frankenstein rakes until the monster called Men Power is dead.
As I was getting my Frankenstein rake out of the tool shed and loading it into the minivan I just repaired, I briefly snapped out of my news-induced rage and had an independent thought.
Anonymous public homosexual sex is a problem, not because of the homosexual part, but because of the anonymous and public part. Anonymous sex, homosexual or otherwise, puts its participants at an increased risk for a slew of nasty diseases. Public sex disturbs others in the park and leaves the trails littered with used condoms.
Men Power, however, is not part of the problem. They do not increase acts of public indecency. They simply recognize that the problem is there. Men Power informs men about all the dangers of this deviant behavior, but it gives them the option of doing it safely.
With this in mind, I put my rake away and decided to check out www.menpower.org. There, I found out that they also give their packets away in bars and bookstores. I also read some stories from men who engage in public sex at Papago. One man said he participated because he felt unattractive and lonely. He wound up with crabs and venereal warts.
Another man said he decided to stop having sex in the park after a young boy and his father discovered him and a partner in the bushes. Clearly, the people participating in these acts are more human than Channel 15 makes them out to be. Perhaps the option of counseling instead of jail time isn't a waste of money or a deprivation of justice after all.
Casual News 15 viewers need to put their rakes and torches away and realize that Men Power is part of the solution to public indecency, not part of the problem.
Tim Agne is a journalism junior. Reach him at tim.agne@asu.edu.
