Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 24, 1990 TAG: 9007240532
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LISA BELKIN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: HOUSTON LENGTH: Medium
At a country-and-western concert here on July 8, Wells ducked desperately into a men's room, after the line at the women's room proved unbearably long.
When she emerged (being careful to first put the toilet seat up, the way she found it), she was stopped by a police officer, given a $200 citation and escorted out of the arena, abandoning the third-row seat for which she had paid a ticket broker $125.
It seems there is a city ordinance that says women, no matter how needy or polite, cannot use the men's restroom. And vice versa.
Last week, The Houston Post wrote about her fine, which she intends to fight in court. Ever since, Wells has been Topic A on radio call-in shows and television man-and-woman-on-the-street interviews here. Opinion is almost unanimously on her side.
Her lawyer has received nearly 60 offers from women willing to testify on her behalf, saying that they, too, have sought relief in the men's room.
Other callers have offered to pay her fine, but her lawyer, Valorie Davenport,who also is her sister, says that will not be necessary.
"I don't intend to lose," she said. "This is too important."
The restroom occasionally enters the public arena. Several years ago, Elizabeth Taylor's testimony to Congress about the humiliation women face having to pay to use public toilets led to legislation outlawing such facilities.
And last year, the New York state Legislature voted to require an equal number of "sanitary facilities" (meaning toilets and urinals) for men and women.
In Houston, plumbing codes for large gathering places have long allowed a higher combined total of toilets and urinals in men's rooms than toilets in women's rooms.
The operative theory was that more men than women attended sporting events and conventions.
The code was changed in 1985, after studies found that the theory was not always right, and, in any case, women, by dint of biology, need more "sanitary facilities" than an equal number of men.
But the new code applies only to buildings built after 1985. Wells happened to be at The Summit, which was built in 1975.
Wells and a friend arrived at a George Strait concert early, and Wells decided to use the restroom. But she went back to her seat, she said, after finding a line, more than 30 people long, snaking out the door.
"I decided to wait until the concert started," she said in an interview.
"I figured all those women would go away by then."
Instead, when she returned to the restroom 20 minutes after the concert began, the line had nearly doubled.
While her first trip had been a precaution, she said, this time she "really needed" to use the facilities. Standing in the slowly moving queue, she saw a man enter the men's room across the way with his date.
"I just followed them in," she said.
She said she and the other woman, whom she does not know, cupped their hands like blinders around their eyes as they passed the urinals and entered stalls.
As they left, she said, a police officer clapped them each on the shoulder, gave them the $200 citations and told them to leave immediately.
The police chief and the mayor of Houston, both women, could not be reached to be asked whether they had ever considered such a crime.
A police spokesman, Officer Richard Retz, said the restroom law is enforced routinely, but no arrest figures were available.
Davenport said her plan is to "argue necessity as our first line of defense."
She added, "What do they expect women to do?"
In addition, she will argue that Wells did not in fact violate the city ordinance, she said.
Ordinance 72-904, passed in 1972, says, "It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly and intentionally enter any public restroom designated for the exclusive use of the sex opposite to such person's sex . . . in a manner calculated to cause a disturbance."
Wells said she did not enter the men's room in any such manner.
"I wasn't disruptive," she said. "I was embarrassed to death."
by CNB