Head Cases

At least nine cops swarmed through the building, guns drawn, ordering everyone to hit the floor. The memory draws a wry smile from Bill. "We tried to keep that place clean, but with as much traffic that came in, the last place you want your face is on the floor of an adult-video store," he says. "They immediately cuffed us and told us to lay on our stomachs."

One by one, the deputies collected identification from the people in the store. They weren't satisfied with Glenn's driver's license. "The cops took my freaking wallet and found pictures of my wife," he says. Lori wasn't wearing clothes in the photographs, which apparently fascinated the deputies. "They started passing around pictures of me -- sexy shots," Lori says. "I felt humiliated, pissed off, embarrassed. I have no problem with my husband having pictures of me, but they're not for everyone.

"It's nobody's business but who we choose," she adds.

As far as Lori and Glenn are concerned, the same rule should apply to what goes on in places such as Award Video. "I don't believe any person on this earth has any right to have an opinion on someone's sexual preferences, as long as it's not a child and you're not hurting anyone," she says.

Not so, says Jefferson County Prosecutor Robert G. Wilkins, who is determined to put a stop to sex in public places, even if it means using one of the most homophobic laws in the nation.

Glenn, Bill and four other men accused of having sex together in the Award Video theater stand charged with first-degree sexual misconduct, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of a year in jail, plus a huge stigma.

Lori, however, hasn't been charged with a crime, even though she was doing the same things at the same place at the same time as the men who have become reluctant combatants in a fight to legalize homosexuality in Missouri.

Once at the Jefferson County jail, the people who had been arrested were removed from their cells, read their Miranda rights and individually interrogated. The tenor ranged from reassuring to threatening.

"They told me, 'Look, if you cooperate, it will go away,'" Bill recalls. "'We don't want you -- we want the owners. If you don't cooperate, we're going to parade you and your family and everybody through the media and make your life a living hell.'"

Bill confessed, telling the cops everything he had done and seen in the theater. He says he didn't think he had a choice. "They told me they had video evidence, that one of the officers had a digital camera with him at the time," Bill recalls. "If I didn't cooperate with them, they were going to take me into court and put those videos in one after the other and just make me a fool in front of everybody that was there."

Deputies also played tough with Lori, who was on probation for a drug-possession offense. They told her that her probation would be revoked and she'd land in prison if she didn't play ball. The threat worked.

"I was falling apart," Lori recalls. "I'm the only freaking girl there, just bawling. I told them the truth about what we witnessed." The cops pressed for more, telling her that her husband had engaged in anal intercourse and paid for sex. They also accused Lori of being a prostitute, with a pimp for a husband. (Lori's worst fear proved unfounded. Since the raid, she says, the state Department of Corrections has relaxed her probation supervision, and her probation officer has recommended that she be released from probation early.)

The booking charges looked impressive: prostitution, promoting prostitution, drug possession, sexual misconduct.

None of the prostitution cases stuck; there was a lack of evidence.

Despite what deputies might have said during interrogations, no owners were charged. Indeed, Chris Morse -- who managed the business with his wife, Debra -- was among the first released from jail. According to inspection reports from the Jefferson County Health Department, the Morses also owned at least part of Award Video. The drug-possession beefs amounted to two men found with tiny amounts of pot. Both were charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession.

That left the people who were caught with their pants down.

Two weeks after the raid, Wilkins filed charges of sexual misconduct against six men who'd been in the theater. He's almost apologetic.

"I'm perhaps more offended by the conduct of the woman who was not prosecuted," Wilkins says. "If we could have prosecuted the woman who was there, I would have done it." But state law, the prosecutor says, left him no choice.

There's no outright ban on public sex in Missouri. The law says the conduct must be likely to cause "alarm or affront" -- hardly the case in an establishment at which signs inside and outside make it clear that the business is all about sex. But the law does make gay sex illegal, be it in an adult bookstore or a bedroom. At least, Wilkins thinks so.

In 1986 the state Supreme Court upheld the law, dismissing arguments that it violated equal-protection guarantees. According to its ruling in State of Missouri v. Walsh, criminalizing same-gender sex is fair because the law applies equally to lesbians and male homosexuals. The court also said the law was needed to prevent AIDS from spreading.