A months-long investigation by WSB-TV reporter Jodi Fleischer unearthed the news that some men have sex inside adult movie theaters, and some neighbors of adult theaters consider such activity unseemly.
Fleischer’s May 7 report on the Belvedere Theatre in DeKalb County also riled some gay activists and civil libertarians who accuse the reporter and WSB of engaging in cheap, sensationalistic reporting in order to attract more viewers during May sweeps.
Fleischer’s report featured undercover camera footage of men engaging in sex inside the theater, and the reporter teamed up with the DeKalb Police vice squad to videotape men being arrested during a recent undercover sting.
“I think people have done that in adult theaters all around the world for years,” said longtime Atlanta gay activist Floyd Taylor, who complained to WSB about the reports.
“This just ruins these guy’s lives,” Taylor said. “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.”
Fleischer did not mention that every man arrested in her piece was charged with masturbation, leaving the impression that they were engaged in the oral and anal sex depicted in the undercover camera footage.
Representatives of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation are attempting to meet with the producer of the WSB pieces on the Belvedere Theatre, said Paul Karr, GLAAD’s director of media field strategy. GLAAD is “always on watch” for exploitative stories during sweeps periods, when stations try to draw more viewers in order to increase their advertising rates.
Fleischer did not respond to repeated interview requests. During her May 7 report on the Belvedere, Fleischer said her pieces were prompted by complaints she received “earlier this year” from neighbors of the Belvedere.
“For us, that raised a huge red flag — why all of a sudden do a story on this during sweeps week?” said Karr from GLAAD. “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.”
But some media critics called Fleischer’s report solid and “a clean hit.”
“Fleischer's story couched this as a place that's a nuisance to nearby homeowners and a thorn in the side to the vice squad,” said Doug Richards, a former local news reporter who now critiques local television media at his blog, liveapartmentfire.wordpress.com.
“She backed both premises with interviews,” Richards added.
Fleischer interviewed two neighbors who described the Belvedere as being a “nuisance” for “decades,” and interviewed her own cameraman about his experience inside the theater.
“They can get real pushy,” WSB videographer Rick Nelson said, explaining the men inside the theater. “I mean, they’ll sit behind you saying, ‘Hey, you want to get together? You want some help?’ It’s, it’s pretty unusual.”
NEIGHBORHOOD NUISANCE?
As much as Taylor champions gay liberation, he said having been inside the Belvedere Theatre himself he can’t advocate for what it represents.
“It’s a shame they have to resort to these types of meeting places,” said Taylor, who described the Belvedere as “a really sad place.”
The inside of the theater reeks of beer and other stale odors, the auditoriums are pitch black except for the soft-core, heterosexual porn playing on the screen, and the atmosphere oozes the pinned-up tensions that defined gay life decades ago, Taylor said.
“It’s something we think is symptomatic of what happens when people are not allowed to have relationships, or when relationships are stigmatized,” said Chara Jackson, legal director of the ACLU of Georgia.
Located in a worn-down strip mall alongside a nightclub and a flea market, it’s “preposterous and absurd” to suggest that the Belvedere Theatre’s mostly discreet, elderly clientele is causing a problem for neighbors, said veteran gay rights activist Willis Bivins.
“I can’t see what these people would be doing to disturb the neighbors,” Bivins said. “Every time I’ve been there, their parking lot has been fairly tranquil.”
Given the downtrodden corridor of DeKalb County in which the Belvedere is located, Taylor argued that police resources were more urgently needed elsewhere.
“To be using police power for something like this, it’s just a totally misplaced priority,” Taylor said.
Bivins also called the collaboration between WSB and the DeKalb Police vice squad “offensive.”
“[The police] must have alerted the news to come and film it — they didn’t just happen to be in the area,” Bivins said.
PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE
Prominently featured in Fleisher’s piece was Lt. Gary Dickerson, head of the DeKalb Police vice squad.
Dickerson agreed to an interview with Southern Voice, but canceled an hour before the interview was scheduled to take place. Dickerson was “called out into the field” and was unable to re-schedule an interview before press time, said DeKalb Police spokesperson Mekka Parish.
Fleischer contacted Dickerson a few months ago about “an ongoing sweeps piece” she was working on, then asked to participate in a regular tag-along program DeKalb Police offers to the media, Parish said.
“We often invite the media, or the media will contact us if they’re doing a certain type of story and say, ‘The next time you go out, can we come along,’” Parish said.
The recent sting was the sixth such undercover operation at the Belvedere since 2004, Parish said. The six men arrested in Fleischer’s report were all charged with public indecency-masturbation, Parish said.
“What adults do at home behind closed doors is their business, but when you bring it out into public then it becomes everybody’s business,” Dickerson said during the WSB report. “We’re trying to change the face of that area and it’s a challenge because it was one way for so long.”
With the Belvedere’s age restriction, $12 cover charge and pitch-black lighting, the behavior inside “is not public indecency,” argued Taylor.
No one has a constitutional right to engage in public sex, said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia. But the layout of an adult business can determine whether the sexual acts taking place inside are considered public or private, Seagraves said.
“We have argued in the past that if there is a place that is set apart in a building where a per
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Richard on 5/20/0810:12 AM:
A few items that the report from WSB overlooked:
1. on the left of the theatre is a nightclub. Each night it is open, there are a number of cars complete with loud music cruising the parking lot. The sexual activities that the report exposed in the theatre are taking place in the parking lot along with drug transactions...all due to the patrons of the club.
2. the tattoo parlor on the right of the theatre usually has loud motorcycles adding to the nightly noise factor as well.
I guess these activities aren't as bothersome to the neighborhood.
