Why is it a crime to masturbate in a porn theater?

I haven’t thought about this for several years but you’re right and I’ll patiently wait for a response with you.

[quote] who in the hell is complaining?

The establishment maybe?

R2 That is possible, although I wouldn’t think that you’d want to scare away your customers with the threat of arrest.

I think the theater management made the complaints -just often enough to be seen as on the side of law and order. In other words, it's how they kept their license .

Where the law requires a complaint (eg noise), law enforcement can usually be the complainant. In July jurisdiction the official complaint is made by the police commissioner, but that is in name only as tgecomlmaint will be based on the attending officer’s statement.

Makes me think in this case, the phrasing is bullshit to make it look like they weren’t harassing Rubens.

R5 I think the bigger question is “why do the cops even care?” Don’t they have murders to solve?

I just missed the dirty movie house days but they sound like they were a blast

It’s most likely that no one is actually complaining. These places probably have plainclothes detectives who come in and surveil the theater and report back on its comings (no pun intended) and goings.

It isn’t so much the issue of guys minding their own business whacking off in their seats, but the potential of it snowballing into the aisles, every nook and cranny, and eventually flowing over into the restrooms and walkways with reckless abandon, which isn’t very sanitary.

Law enforcement probably views their actions as nipping things in the bud. After all, unmonitored porn theaters have devolved into open orgies many, many times in the past.

Honestly, I've never understood it. If you are in an adult establishment hidden from the general public, you should be allowed to do adult things.

Police victimizing gay men make it up.

I remember that story and my mother muttering something about how everyone does it, he just got caught.

Was it ever mentioned if he was dressed as PeeWee Herman at the time?

What were the gay porn theaters in New York besides the famous Adonis? The New David was one I remember.

I think he was unfairly targeted by law enforcement because he had a slightly subversive kiddie show based on a raunchy parody originally performed at the Roxy in Hollywood. Reubens, having a taste for kink (I think he was rumored to be a leather power top in another DL thread) simply was not prepared to live the chaste life required of a kiddie-show host and slipped up. He should have bought a VCR and wanked at home. He also should have not shown off his vintage gay erotica collection that included underage teens until retiring his Pee Wee persona!

I never understood how people watched movies in those theaters without doing it.

I imagine a lot of people didn’t make it until the end and walked out when they were done.

But I do remember that scene from Taxi where Robert takes Cybil to a dirty movie.

Could undercover police go into a bathhouse and do the same thing?

Yes numb nuts

R16 Probably, but they usually don’t. It seems like vice laws are designed to be selectively enforced when an area needs to be cleaned up for a big event, or to target certain individuals who are under investigation for more serious offenses

Wow, I was best friends with his close female friend and that act of police idiocy devastated him. I only saw him once more in public, at the funeral of my friend. He is a good man, I wish it never happened

R13, were you ever at the 55th Street Playhouse? It was once an art film house that got done in by porn.

There's a lot of bizarre naivete in this thread.

OP Why stop at jerking off?

[quote]unmonitored porn theaters have devolved into open orgies many, many times in the past.

I love all of the porn movies with this premise, every single one - it always gets me off.

I've seen a couple of old classic gay porn movies at art-house theaters in NYC over the past couple decades and I always hope to see somebody spontaneously going at it but never do. We've become such prudes!

I remember sneaking into the Pussycat theater on 4th Street in Santa Monica when I was 16. Until then I've only seen magazines never motion pictures on the screen.

For a straight film there were a lot of guys watching this Marine wanking. It was insane! I think as long as those gross clothes didn't touch him he was okay with them watching and getting off on him getting off on the movie.

I still remember the movie it was called the Creasemaster's wife with Tiffany million AKA Tiffany melon from the OG Glow.

It was hot but as a teenage kid I was too afraid to do anything. I just ran to a bathroom stall and busted a nut right there. I told one of my friends and they called me stupid because it could have gotten raided or worse, I could have been sexually assaulted.

This is an odd thread with a bunch of comments that don't seem to understand what went on or what's going on.

Paul Reubens was arrested in a sting of people engaging in sex activity in a porn theater. It's illegal because many jurisdictions prohibit sexual activity and/or nudity in public spaces, even explicitly sexual spaces. I don't agree with this but that's what it is. These sorts of arrests were more common a few decades ago but still happen in certain parts of the US. A local bath house cannot permit any nudity in any public portion of the facility due to laws like this.

News reports state that a few people were arrested at the same time Reubens was. He wasn't sought out. In fact some reports suggest that the police didn't know they'd arrested a celebrity until he told them who he was (he was not in makeup and costume when he was arrested). Reubens had been previously arrested for loitering at an adult theater nearly a decade before the 1991 arrest.

R7, the dirty theater days are still with us. After a period of decline, people are tired of the apps, which have made people more unfucked than ever. They are returning to adult theaters and bookstores and bath houses, because they know the people there want to have sex. Bookstores and theaters where I live are very busy, charging higher entrance fees than ever, and the bath houses occasionally are full to capacity with a waitlist.

As R16 said, vice laws were definitely used to selectively prosecute gay men. In some cities civil lawsuits were filed alleging discriminatory policing - straight couples were never arrested for having sex in a park for instance, but gay men were. Discovery for these lawsuits proved that there were no public complaints about sexual activity in the theaters and parks in question - this was a lie to justify the waste of scarce policing resources to harass gay men. And the gay men were often enticed and entrapped by plainclothes officers. This bullshit has ended in many but not all parts of the US. Adult business owners pay bribes for protection in some cases. In other cases, adult businesses are left alone by police because they are not a public safety risk.

In most places I've lived and visited, bath houses and some adult theaters are membership required spaces, meaning they are considered private, not public spaces. These clubs usually require registration and payment of a fee. Nonetheless, where I live, membership in a club like this still doesn't permit nudity in the open, 'public' parts of the club, only in private rooms. Same with the theaters, which only permit nudity and sexual activity in separate, closed viewing rooms.

R14 and R24, you're ignoring an important part of the theater experience for many, which is exhibitionism. Reubens didn't want to beat off alone to a video. The Marine didn't want to beat off alone either. They both either got off on being watched, or they were advertising their availability for further sexual contact. As for the men watching the Marine, they were not fully heterosexual, and/or they get sexually aroused by seeing other sexually aroused people.

I never understood why it would be a crime, either, generally speaking - in a public but essentially "private" place like an adult bookstore or porn theater. R25 covers many of the logical reasons why it makes no sense.

But I can (grudgingly) understand other issues might happen in conjunction with or near sexual activity - prostitution, sex trafficking and drug sales being the ones where law enforcement is probably most concerned.

However else can they maintain the nacreous layer of permacum?

The irony is he was arrested for having safe sex in an age where sex could kill you.

I agree, OP. I once served on a jury where a guy had been accused of lewd conduct because he unzipped his pants in a strip tease theater in Hollywood at 2 am. I ask you, doesn't the Vice police have anything better to do in Hollywood on a Saturday night at 2 am than arrest someone for jerking off in a strip joint? Fortunately the rest of the jurors agreed with me and he walked.

Does anyone remember the now-closed Palm Theater in San Mateo, CA? The cops made it a policy to NOT go in there.