DR. THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

The bathroom wars are not new. In the mid-1980s, I studied comparative literature in the graduate program at UCLA. The Comparative Literature Program was housed on the third floor in UCLA’s iconic Royce Hall, modeled after the Cathedral of Saint Ambrose in Milan. Although Royce Hall was one of the four large structures of Royce Quad, the original 1929 campus, its third floor was a fairly remote place. It might have been that remoteness that made it a place of rendezvous for campus (and undoubtedly for many off-campus) homosexuals, who, then as now, apparently get a “kick” from performing pornographic acts in public places.

The popularity of the site intensified. At night especially, if one were working in the computer-room and needed to use the facility, it was always a gamble whether one would walk in on some obscene performance taking place in one of the stalls or, blatantly, on the tiled floor. A beloved septuagenarian professor who was possibly the most courteous and civilized man I have ever met, once stumbled into a multi-party orgy and was rendered near-apoplectic by the experience. The chair of the Program reluctantly acceded to a many-times seconded request to report the problem to the campus police.

What do you suppose was the response of the campus police?

It was this: They removed the doors from the stalls, making the facility difficult to use for anyone with a sense of modesty or dignity, except for urination. The perverts were undeterred. Shocking people was half of their thrill, obviously.

A healthy response would have been to lock the facility door and give out keys to the third floor, or regularly to police the premises after five o’clock. But already – this was 1986 – the healthy response was politically incorrect. Everyone had to be made to suffer on account of the unwillingness to enforce a simple standard of decency.

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