Gay smooch on Birmingham bench prompts 911 call

As a social experiment, ABC's 20/20 dispatched same-sex couples to kiss in public in various US cities.

The sight of two men nuzzling each other on a park bench in Birmingham, Alabama prompted one concerned citizen to call the police:

Operator: “Birmingham Police operator 9283″

Caller: “We have a couple of men sitting out on the bench that have been kissing and drooling all over each other for the past hour or so. It’s not against the law, right?”

Operator: “Not to the best of my knowledge it’s not.”

Caller: “So there’s no complaint I could make or have?”

Operator: “I imagine you could complain if you like ma’am. We can always send an officer down there.”

An officer was actually dispatched to investigate the situation.

As Pam Spaulding points out, the "experiment" itself was kind of a silly exercise, even if it did succeed in eliciting some outrageously homophobic behavior and making some bigots look really stupid.

Journalists aren't social psychologists. These kinds of staged events are basically publicity stunts masquerading as research.

Tolerance and nonchalance don't make good TV. So, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the 20/20 segment was going to be about the biggest homophobe that ABC could catch on tape. I agree with Pam that it's not really fair to the people of Birmingham to set up a performance art piece like this and call it news.

That said, "To Catch a Bigot" is a much better premise for a reality TV show than "To Catch a Predator."

Comments

[Norman Costa]

Lindsay,

I have a theory about ABC's 20/20 in recent months. Of course it's a silly theory but here goes.

The producers are trying to provoke an incident that could lead to a real newsworthy event. The cops show up, kids are watching, words are exchanged, invectives hurled, kissers are cuffed, arrested, booked, and tuned up by the police while in custody. The entire story and it's aftermath becomes the basis for a TV screen play and is offered to the Law and Order franchise by the boy friend (aspiring writer) of the executive producer.

The news intern from Columbia university proposed an in depth analysis of the sermons of Reverend Jim Hagee, and interviews with people who left his church because of his religious insults and politics. The executive producer kills the idea as not worthy for a TV screen play.

Any one got a better theory? You can't say the news has been slow these days.

[Rulial]

Someone needs to be fined for improper use of 911.

[Thom]

I disagree with you and Spaulding about the fairness, despite being a native Alabamian who is more fond of Birmingham than the rest of the sorry state. It is a foregone conclusion that residents would throw a tizzy, but that itself is the problem: homophobia is so accepted (and encouraged) there that the producers could bank on an outrageous reaction by the locals. The "ethical dilemma" set-up is a farce, but queer folk in Alabama face this kind of prejudice on a daily basis. It's no good to shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, it's Alabama; what do you expect?" instead of holding them to the same standards of decency and sanity we would hold anyone else.

[Turtle]

I just wonder what reactions would have been to a heterosexual couple acting similarly in the park. I could see folks calling the police to break up a heterosexual couple publicly "kissing and drooling all over each other". I'm not trying to defend homophobia, but part of this may also be a rection to any public intimacy.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Well, therein lies the value of a control group.

Turtle, you could see someone calling the police over heterosexual public cuddling in Birmingham, specifically? Or in general?

I can't speak for Birmingham, but I can't imagine the police being summoned to break up any hetero PDA less explicit than a blowjob. I mean, you never know what some isolated crank might complain about. I'm sure all 911 operators have great stories. But it wouldn't be the sort of thing you could count on in a day of shooting.

[Turtle]

I was thinking specifically of Birmingham (or other soically conservative towns). I was applying my Northeastern-Liberal-Secular-Jewish-Ivy-League narrow minded thinking and applying the stereotypes of what I think life and attitudes are like in Birmingham.

I imagined a Forest Gump-like park bench and the reaction of an older blue-haired lady to hetero public intimacy.

I have actually been to Birmingham, but I can't say I engaged in any park bench actiivites myself.

[Thom]

While not implausible that someone in Birmingham (or elsewhere in Alabama) would call 911 over heterosexual PDA were it especially ostentatious, it's unlikely that the reaction would be as swift or severe as it was in this case. Sexual mores are fairly constraining there, so anybody sucking face in public is going to get a few disapproving stares at least, but opposite sex couples don't have to deal with the additional social disapproval assigned for anyone not ostentatiously straight.

So I don't think it has to do with Turtle's narrow-minded attitudes about what you think life in Birmingham is like (though "been to" is very different from "lived in") so much as the apparent equation of the two scenarios. It would only be plausible that the reaction to the same-sex couples is the same as what is reserved for opposite-sex couples if heteronormativity (and, I suppose homonormativity, to coin a term) was not a factor.

Clearly, heteronormativity *is* a factor in Alabama, Gov. Don Siegleman having once made political hay out of the terror that was boys wearing earrings. "If God had intended them to wear earrings, he would have made them girls." He relented on his position that they should be suspended from schools only after his daughter assured him that it was just fashion, and not homosexuality.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I hadn't heard that Siegelman story. Thanks. It's ironic because homophobia is a weapon deployed against Siegelman. When I was in Montgomery, people were constantly passing on unsubstantiated rumors that Siegelman a closeted bisexual who surrounded himself with "pretty boys" including Nick Bailey (the former aide whose testimony landed DS in jail).

Siegelman was one of the most heavily surveilled people in recent history, so if there were any evidence, I suspect Karl Rove would have informed us by now. Whistleblower Jill Simpson says the Republicans tailed Siegelman for four years and never found any evidence of marital infidelity with anyone.

But the implausibility of these stories is neither here nor there. The enduring public preoccupation with the good looks of Siegelman's male staff is a symptom of homophobia.

[Uncle Kvetch]

While not implausible that someone in Birmingham (or elsewhere in Alabama) would call 911 over heterosexual PDA were it especially ostentatious, it's unlikely that the reaction would be as swift or severe as it was in this case.

The hypothetical comparison that I find most compelling is with a biracial hereto couple, especially an African-American male with a white woman. Something tells me that the reaction might go beyond a call to 911, but I'm not sure.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I agree, in both cases the more likely reaction would be to commit a crime, not report one.

[Autumnal Harvest]

I don't see why this is a silly exercise. I agree 20/20 was going to focus on the biggest homophobe they could find, but it's possible that the biggest homophobe would just turn out to be someone looking uncomfortable; or someone physically attacking them. That a same-sex PDA can result in a 911 call, and being told by an officer "don't do that in public" strikes me as useful information. It's certainly not a well-controlled social science experiement, but that doesn't make the information in it worthless.

[voxy]

My personal observations of Birmingham are that it is a terrorized city. Spend fifteen or twenty minutes at a convenience store in ANY section of town.
Once I drove through there it made Tampa look downright placid.
Never seen anything like THAT in my life.
This is some sorry schniz for ABC to be spending time on when they could just interview a convenience store clerk and find out why, in a nice section of Birmingham, these regular folks are terrorized and looking over their shoulder.
It's a mexican border shootout waiting to happen.
Good thing they had a camera crew but I don't think those birmingham gangs are scared of too much.

[Thom]

When I was in Montgomery, people were constantly passing on unsubstantiated rumors that Siegelman a closeted bisexual who surrounded himself with "pretty boys" including Nick Bailey (the former aide whose testimony landed DS in jail).

Really? I had not heard that, though I've admittedly been dodging articles about it when I can. I'm not surprised they're passing on such rumors, but I'm surprised they're saying he's bisexual rather than just gay. Folks there tend not to make such a distinction (for men, at least).

I don't mean to minimize the injustice that's been done to Siegelman--or even to imply that he was nearly as bad as his predecessor, the great Fob James, but he is conservative by national standards. In the interest of complete fairness, the explanation for the retraction was that his daughter convinced him it was acceptably fashionable nowadays, the negative implication being that it wasn't gender-bending.

[cfrost]

They're not all crazy down in Dixie, but it doesn't seem you have to look to far to find someone there who'll rise -or sink- to meet the redneck stereotype. I spent a few months in Athens, GA a few years ago where I heard someone on a local Christian hallelujah radio station rant about “fags”. Not the “homosexual agenda” or “gay militants”, as you would hear on homophobe christocrackpot radio here in the “tolerant” Pacific Northwest, where, though being no less bigoted, they at least watch their language, but “faggots” and “fags”.

[gay]

you should take attention also to the italian situazion! according to the most importnat local gay site - http://www.gay.it/ - the gay item is becoming harder and harder due to cultural and political INvolution!