Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240265
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FINDING NO RESPITE IN THE PARK
It's none of your business, but to best tell this story, I need to reveal to you that I am heterosexual.It has been a lifelong condition and my resolve on this front shows no sign of weakening.
For many years, my sexual preference wasn't an issue, save for the time a guy pinched my butt in a restaurant in New York City.
My sexual orientation continued to be a nonissue until 16 months ago, when we discontinued our evening newspaper and Roanoke became a morning-paper town.
This had a severely discombobulating effect on my life, as I always have been one to take my news in the evening. I could comb my newspaper by night, after my young family's chaos had subsided, and greet my new day grumpy but well-informed.
The morning edition screwed that up. It is difficult to read a newspaper while milk-bloated Lucky Charms are dribbling from the table's edge. I leave home every morning without my news fix.
Sometimes, to combat this void, I tote the newspaper and a cup of coffee with me and pause en route to work so I can nibble news in the park nearest my home.
Wasena Park is a dingy urban park. No amount of sprucing can offset the litter-strewn bluff across the Roanoke River from the monkey bars. But at 8:45 a.m., the parking is easy and that's all you need to read a newspaper.
If only life were so simple in our complex world: A guy staying abreast of current events while sitting in his car in a public park. No threat. No fumes. No cost. No way.
Hardly have I gotten to the corrections on A-2 that my car hasn't attracted a squadron of cruisers.
I see them from the corners of my eyes and I position my coffee cup on my dashboard to signal that I'm a simple newspaper-reading heterosexual.
It never works; my coffee cup is never a sufficient talisman to scare them away.
They are gay, tooling the park in search of sex.
Though most encounters are merely long glances at me from slowly passing cars, we've had exchanges before.
I've told some of my pursuers to flake off and I've shouted them away so loudly that my spittle dots my car window.
Macho swagger aside, I'm never satisfied. I always drive away, leaving the park to deviants.
And so it was that I was rooting for Roanoke's solicitation law to retain some teeth - good, ripping, canine teeth in yet another court challenge.
A couple of years ago, a local judge warned city police to quit selectively enforcing the sex-for-hire law against gays in Wasena Park.
Monday, another local judge whacked at the Roanoke law. Offering sex isn't sufficient grounds to merit arrest, he ruled.
Constitutional scholar I'm not. I'm just a heterosexual guy who wants, once in a while, to read the newspaper in the park.
But the judicial fallout here is plain: My rights to use my park, or my sidewalk, or my street, must yield to permit a sexual aggressor the right to exercise his.