Virgin on the ridiculous? Should the police be involved?
Earlier this week, Pink News reported that two men had been arrested for having sex in a London gym. This got me thinking: was it right that they were arrested? Should the gym have phoned the police? Should they have just dealt with it internally?
Virgin Active: should they have reported gay men to the police?
Comments on the news piece were lively, attracting a couple of hundred replies within hours of being posted. Some were saying they should get a room; another commented that “it’s no wonder the homophobes have such a low opinion of us.”
The article makes clear that they were in the sauna area, and not in general view, in a corner of the free weights area or on a treadmill. They were arrested for “outraging public decency”, which is a common law offence that can result in unlimited imprisonment and an unlimited fine.
The couple were released without charge the same day. However, if the police had decided to prosecute, it could have been devastating for them: they would have had to appear in court, and if convicted, would probably be barred from many jobs, including any which involved working with children and vulnerable adults.
The long arm of the law
Involving the police can have unintended consequences, as the mother of a 15 year old found out a few years ago. He daughter was smoking cannabis at home, and, at her wit’s end, the woman went to the police, hoping they’d be able to have a quiet word with her daughter. Instead, the police jumped into a car and raced the woman home, smashed their way into the house, arrested the daughter and also charged the woman with allowing her home to be used for the consumption of cannabis.
The point is that the woman could have found a better way of dealing with it than the blunt instrument of involving the authorities; similarly, the gym could have taken the line of asking the couple to leave, or even banning them from re-entering. Instead, they took what might be considered the nuclear option – once the process it started, it’s out of their hands and could end up going far further than intended.
PR team gets involved
The gym’s PR team justified their decision to get the police involved by saying that they “acted according to the law by reporting the discovery of suspected illegal activity among members”, adding that “clubs have a responsibility to report any suspicion of illegal activity such as serious consensual activity or outraging public decency.”
While the act might not have been within the rules of the club, and the staff may have considered it undesirable, I wonder whether their decency was truly outraged? I think they should have taken a less authoritative line, telling them to stop, or banning them, rather than getting police involved, with all the consequences which could have occurred.
5 comments
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Joffrey
I could not agree more with Max. Such behaviour is unacceptable and helps reinforce the stereotype that being a gay men is only fuel by a sexual perversion rather than simply a love for people of the same gender. All of this because some men cannot keep their c*ck in their trousers and get off on taking risks with no regards to the implications of their actions or who might be witnessing such disgraceful behaviour.
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Damien Williamson
The real question here is whether the police would have been called if the couple were heterosexual. If not then the gym over-reacted.
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Serg
We need to be responsible adults and not shag in a public area. I see both sides of the coin. However as an adult you know very well that this could lead to big trouble. I also understand the trill one may get. Very much like when you were a kid and cut class to hang out with your friends. However when your a kid… You know you might get caught but know that in the end you won’t get more then a telling off by your parents. As an adult you know if your caught shagging in public you might very well find yourself in jail and with a very nasty fine and a long standing record against your name. In short shag at home! Or somewhere the police can’t arrest you.
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Maybe “Should they have dealt with it ‘in-house?’ ” would be a more appropriate fourth sentence…..just a thought….
I can’t help but feel demonising Virgin Active for calling the Police is way off the mark here. Quite simply, whether the staff’s sensibilities were outraged or not, they are employees at a huge, corporate company, and therefore their actions cannot simply be attributed to their own personal response to finding two men shagging in the sauna, but what the company protocol says, which I imagine is probably pretty clear cut regarding illegal activity discovered in the gym. Equally, they have a duty to the other members of the gym, not only in that branch but across their chain, so merely turning a blind eye, telling them to stop, or kicking them out might not be seen as a sufficient deterrent for future instances of this kind of behaviour.
Now, of course everyone knows that this kind of thing happens all the time at the gym, otherwise there wouldn’t be this level of debate!
Big chains of gyms, particularly in big cities, are more then aware that gay men cruise at the gym, and that occasionally men do have sex there – they certainly are not naive to it, and it is a major point of concern for them. Many gyms have made their Sauna facilitates unisex, or have reordered their changing room layouts to eliminate secluded nooks and corners to make the space less conducive to hanky panky! So this perceived severity of calling the police in this case is more then likely the culmination of several instances of men using the the gym to hook up with other men, forcing the Gym owners to implement a zero tolerance policy.
Finally, what this boils down to is, these two people got caught breaking the law – their sexuality really has no baring on it, it’s that simple. They got caught, and therefore they should take responsibility for their actions. If these two consenting adults really really just wanted to screw, then they were more then entitled to go home with each other, get a hotel room, go to a sex club or sauna – but they chose to have sex in a public place. In the eyes of the law, no matter how common place sex at the gym might be, this would have been the same if they had chosen to shag at the supermarket, or in the local library, and it would have been the same if they have been a straight couple. Lets be honest, no ones lebido is THAT overpowering that they can’t keep it in their pants until they get home!
The Law is truly blind, and in this instance reasoned, since the two men were released without charge, but had there been more severe repercussions, it would have had nothing to do with their sexuality, and if it had barred them from working in certain sectors that would have been their own fault, and I for one would have had little sympathy.