ATLANTA - Gay activists in Georgia's DeKalb County are up in arms after a local television station's undercover report about a gay adult movie theater generated sensational headlines and community outrage at the expense of patrons' privacy.
According to the report by WSB-TV reporter Jodi Fleischer, men have sex inside the Belvedere Theatre. Neighbors are up in arms about the "unseemliness" and "neighborhood disruption" of that sort of behavior. Gay activists find it insulting and degrading that Fleischer videotaped the arrest of patrons.
"I think people have done that in adult theaters all around the world for years," longtime Atlanta gay activist Floyd Taylor told Southern Voice , a gay lifestyle publication based in Atlanta. "This just ruins these guys' lives. Bless their hearts, those poor old men don't have anywhere else they can go to find affection because...well, because life's a bitch."
The theater is located in a tired strip mall that also houses a nightclub and a flea market. Gay activist Willis Bivins said he found it hard to believe the mostly elderly patrons were disturbing the neighborhood.
"I can't see what these people would be doing to disturb the neighbors," Bivins told Southern Voice. "Every time I've been there, their parking lot has been fairly tranquil."
Particularly offensive to Taylor and others was Fleischer's failure to mention those arrested in the sting - the sixth at the Belvedere since 2004 - were charged with public indecency-masturbation and not some of the more interpersonal activity alluded to in her piece. Bivins said he suspected the arrests represented collaboration between police and the TV station.
"[The police] must have alerted the news to come and film it - they didn't just happen to be in the area," Bivins told Southern Voice.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation called the piece "sweeps week exploitation" and has attempted to meet with the station's management about it. Primary among the organization's concerns is that the report was aired months after it was filmed.
"For us, that raised a huge red flag - why all of a sudden do a story on this during sweeps week?" Paul Karr, GLAAD's director of media field strategy told Southern Voice. "If they were genuinely concerned about the concerns the residents had, they would have done good investigative journalism when it was brought to their attention, not four months later."
The Belvedere is a licensed adult-entertainment establishment. Local residents are challenging the license's renewal, according to Southern Voice. The theater closed shortly after Fleischer's report aired May 7, but a sign on the door said it would reopen "soon."
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