Consider: Like many gays I have also frequented Mackie street – Like many, I too was the victim of assault – twice!!!.
When I went to the police, my case was handled by a “gay-friendly” policeman who took pains to assure me the station was aware of events on Mackie street, and that they had gone so far as to set up dummy cruisers, posing as gays looking for ‘relief’ in an attempt to catch the criminals.

They also paid an informant working at the old age home accross the road but although at the time they knew who the criminals were, they were unable to use a paid informant’s testimony. Instead, they called on me – and other brave gay men who reported their violent experiences – to attend an identity parade to bring the criminals to book.
Four YEARS later, following repeated violence on gays in the area, I was called in again to try identify the criminals once more. Sadly, time and memory played their role and my personal testimony was too vague to help. I for one was VERY impressed by the police attempts to root out the evils of Mackie street!

Frankly, idiots like me, had to learn a hard lesson about repeated returns to Mackie street, before coming home wiser. To now criticise the police who certainly DO have more important crimes to attend to other than the foolish cock hungry gays like me who chose to ignore the obvious dangers of Mackie street, is equally uncalled for in my opinion.

Why should they be held accountable for the actions of gay or married men who REFUSE to acknowledge the obvious dangers of public cruising in a well-known dangerous venue? Why indeed, should the police have to allocate their resources to a militantly aggressive community like mine, when they should focus their attentions elsewhere?

However, the alleged harassment at Camp David is indeed baffling!
Would a sustained campaign calling on a comprehensive response regarding the raids not be a better option than an article calling gays to picket outside a police station?

Finally, a better publicised attempt to call for police awareness, training and response to a Camp David affair would be better served given a better publicised media campaign than Mamba’ notice approximately a week before the event.

I for one shall not attend!

PUYI

I do agree. If you want to give yourselve out as a toffee, be willing to be eaten… We must all take responsibility for our actions.

Some of us cruise at parks and “camp david”, but hey, straight men cruise in pubs and teasers. So what.

Fact is, we all have the right to equal protection and respect.

It is the same situation when a straight guy gets beaten up outside a pubfor trying to chat up another guy’s girl or a sleezy girl with hidden motives. It is no different to gays cruising at parks. We just get noticed easier – considering he fact that we don’t have gay, or gay friendly, pubs that last long enough for us to go there constantly. I wonder why.

Yes there are gay friendly cops willing to help us, but we must admit, they are but a few… Most of us just accept the assault and don’t do anything about it as we don’t wanna be laughed at by the station and endure their remarks.

Intelligent THEN militant. Which is why I recommend clear thinking on the way forward.

A week’s notice to picket outside a police station – in my opinion – just reduces the gay community in the eyes of straights and bigots (they aren’t necessarily the same) to yet another bunch of pansies irrititating the community.

Why is it that the gay community can’t strategise intelligently and productively when it comes to these things?
I am interested to see what sort of turn out / results the picket might have had!