LA City Council Removes U-Turn Signs In Gay Neighborhood Because They Are “Homophobic”

“For me, growing up in South Central Los Angeles, cruising had a very different meaning. It usually meant folks in their lowriders or their cars, a lot of hip-hop music, just going up down Crenshaw Boulevard,” Council member Soto-Martinez said. “But here in Silver Lake, cruising, of course, meant something very different. It meant an opportunity for the LGBT community to try to find human connection and intimacy and to be able to express themselves in a society at the time that was not very welcoming to the LGBT community.”

The history of “cruising” in the gay community had very little to do with dating and far more to do with anonymous encounters as well as prostitution.  With the advent of more socially accepted gay society in the US in the 1970s, a cultural problem of sexual solicitation and lewdness arose in public bathrooms and public parks in cities across America.  The habit naturally attracted crime to certain areas and is even cited as one of the primary causes for the rapid spread of AIDS in the early 1980s.

The problem was apparently so bad in the neighborhood of Silver Lake that residents were compelled to put traffic restrictions in place to prevent people from driving back and forth on their street all day soliciting for sex.  Keep in mind, such laws also exist in places where straight prostitution and solicitation are common…