Head Cases

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Department considers its raid on Award Video a success.

"We enforced the law," says Major Mark Tuljetske. He says the cops acted on complaints from citizens who had heard that people were having sex inside the theater. But there has long been evidence that people were having sex inside Award Video and at two other adult businesses in the county with theaters, private booths or both. At the request of the sheriff's department, for example, a Jefferson County health inspector had visited three adult businesses -- including Award Video, Bobbie's Books and Dr. Video, which also has a theater -- in May and June 2000. Shining a black light in the booths and theaters, public-health specialist Joe W. Hainline found semen stains on the floors, walls, chairs and video monitors of theaters in private booths. Despite the findings, no one was arrested until the raid in March 2002. And no one has been arrested since.

On a recent Saturday night at Dr. Video, seven men sat in plastic deck chairs and watched a woman perform oral sex on a man. Her blouse and shorts were unbuttoned; he was fully clothed, with his fly open. The floor was sticky concrete; the walls were easy-to-wipe-clean white tile. Ceiling fixtures emitted plenty of light. The spectators remained silent and clothed. Arms folded, legs crossed, they could have been taking in a Sunday-morning sermon.

The man at the center of attention uttered something about not wanting to climax, and he and his partner left. A few seconds passed, and it became clear that this was not an isolated instance. "They were sure better than the last couple," someone said, prompting a few chuckles and nods. The room fell silent as patrons waited for more live action to begin.

Tuljetske says he isn't surprised that people are still having sex in Jefferson County's adult businesses. Even though the prosecutor says he can't charge heterosexuals who have sex in a setting where no one would be shocked, Tuljetske sees matters differently. He also sees a distinction between group sex and couple sex.

"If you have two people who are consenting adults doing something together, it's different than if you told me that the woman was going from guy to guy to guy," Tuljetske says.

Wouldn't everyone presumably be consenting, though?

"Technically, yes," the major answers. "But there's a thing about the group thing ... in a public place. The consent would not only have to come from everybody involved but everybody witnessing. This is the same deal that we ran into in what used to be Award Video."

The bottom line, Tuljetske says, is that the couple would have been arrested had an officer been present because the officer would not have been a consenting witness. If only men had been involved, Tuljetske says, deputies would have considered more than just consent. "We would look at other issues, health-department violations, things like that," he says.

Four of the people arrested at Award Video have vowed to fight.

"They're the ones who disturbed the peace, not us," Glenn says. He says he will dispute the charges on principle. Although the court record would be closed to the public if he took the prosecutor's deal, what's accessible to the criminal-justice system is a different matter. Glenn says he's worried about how he might be treated if he's ever pulled over by a cop whose routine records check pulls up the arrest. If the defendants take the deal, their chances of getting arrests and convictions completely expunged are nil, says Richard Sindel, attorney for the men who have accepted ACLU representation.

Painful though it may be, they say they'll fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if that's what it takes to make sex between consenting adults, no matter their gender, a legal act.

"I'm not a quitter," says Bill, who ventured into the theater that night and is now charged with having sex with another man. "I was raised to think if you're right, you go for it, no matter what happens."

Robert Rowe feels the same way.

In recent years, Rowe says, he began a twelve-step sexual-addiction treatment program to cure him of his park-sex habit. Now he's trying to avoid liaisons like the one that landed him in jail. "I don't practice the lifestyle I used to," he says.

Georgian Michael Hardwick never was comfortable talking about his Supreme Court celebrity and granted few interviews about his decision to fight. He died in 1991 of an AIDS-related illness.

His nemesis, Michael Bowers, has also been reluctant to rehash their litigation. But his actions speak for him.

In 1991, the Georgia attorney general rescinded a job offer he had made to an Emory University law student when he found out that she and another woman had celebrated a commitment ceremony before a rabbi and their friends and family. He cited Bowers v. Hardwick in saying that to hire a lesbian would violate Georgia's moral standards.

The woman, Robin Shahar, sued him. She lost and exhausted her appeals in 1998 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her case.