I really hate this stuff, and I’m getting sick of having to post on it.
Today I saw misleading click-bait headlines on various conservative blogs and websites were like this one: Woke California: U-Turn Signs Are Homophobic. There were many social media posts on accounts like “End Wokeness” with the same implication: those crazy LGPTQ fanatics are out of control, and are now even offended by regular traffic signs.
That was certainly my reaction to just reading the headlines. When I investigated—-my sock drawer is furious with me for using up our quality time together—I learned that the traffic signs removed by the LGBTQ community and the town of Silver Lake, California were considered homophobic because….the signs were homophobic.
In the 90s, before gay dating apps like Grindr, gays in Silver Lake (and elsewhere) relied on printed guidebooks to find public areas and gay bars where they could meet other men like them. “No U-Turn” and “No Cruising” signs were put up in parts of Silver Lake where residents had complained about gay men gathering. The signs were a—subtle? Not so subtle?—rebuke and warning.
The gay community in Silver lake has been trying for years to get official action approved to remove what the LA Times calls “signs of its anti-gay past,” and finally succeeded. None of the conservative websites that mocked this episode as hysterical hyper sensitivity mentioned the “No Cruising” signs in their headlines, and it’s obvious why. Seeing “No U-Turn” as an anti-gay message takes a little thought. “No Cruising”? I’ve never seen such a sign in my life. That one’s more obvious…so they buried it .
Deceit is one of the primary tools of fake news journalism.
If conservative blogs, news outlets and website have valid issues and points to make, they should be able to make them honestly by straightforward reporting. It is very disappointing to see a usually fair and reliable conservative commentary site like Legal Insurrection stooping to these tactics.
Ethics Alarms 
Talk about needlessly shooting themselves in the groin. Do they really think sane, rational people can’t see this stuff? Take the high road, and let the left make fools of themselves with the muck-raking yellow journalism. You know theyre gonna, no matter what.
Why would you need to have no cruising or U turn signs for gays who are gathering? Gathering means that people are congregating in an area. Why is it necessary to go around and around a given area in a car to facilitate an encounter. Park your car and engage with those you want to meet.
We have had no cruising signage in our city but it had to do with cars circling certain blocks where a certain group of adult entertainment workers who plied their trade on the street.
Cruising has a tendency to create traffic hazards if cars slow to make contact with those loitering around to find a hookup. Male customers would go around and around looking for “dates”. The question is if cruising for heterosexual hookups via paid sex workers is discouraged by city officials why are homosexual hookups using the same practice of cruising a known area for such behavior acceptable let alone desirable? Is it just because one may require a financial transaction?
“Cruising” meant “looking for gay sex” when being closeted was the norm. There was an Al Pacino movie called “Cruising.” The context of the signs made their intent clear.
“Cruising” meant “looking for gay sex” when being closeted was the norm.”
That is one meaning it also was a term about going up and down the strip looking for girls in the 50’s and sixties or simply showing off your ride. If it was for gay sex in Silver Lake and gay sex appears to be the norm why are they concerned about the signs when so many other options are now available for them.
I have absolutely no issues with the sexual proclivities of other consenting adults. What I interpret from this story is that cruising for sex is an acceptable practice now that the Gay population believes it has the political power to make demands.
If the signs were established to mitigate a nuisance behavior in a given neighborhood then simply because the Gay creators of the nuisance did not like the mitigation does not make it homophobic. This term, homophobic, is a slur designed to obtain power by denigrating the people who may have lodged a perfectly normal complaint against a group who by virtue of their otherwise legal behavior have disrupted the quiet enjoyment of their homes and neighborhood.
Had this been street corner hookers or teens cruising around in hot rods, no one would bat an eye over the installation of the signage. That is why the signs are not homophobic and should have only been removed if the nuisance behavior had stopped.
If the signs were established to mitigate a nuisance behavior in a given neighborhood then simply because the Gay creators of the nuisance did not like the mitigation does not make it homophobic.
They are traffic signs, Chris! Moreover, cruising for sex isn’t illegal. If a community wants to pass a law or an ordinance within the Constitution,great! Using traffic signs to signal community dissapproval of a particular groups’ idea of legal recreation is homophobic.
You might feel differently if hotrodders decided to cruise around your home. Perfectly legal recreation. You are equating a sign to mean disapproval of gays. We have noise ordinances that prohibit loud music or other sounds after a certain hour which would otherwise be perfectly legal.
Unless the traffic sign was installed at the behest of the neighbors and they used the reason was to discourage gays in the neighborhood then I would agree with you but my experience with traffic signs is that you need to have a legitimate issue to convince the engineers to get one installed.
That appears to be exactly what happened, according to the published reports.
The same reports that accuse math, freeway overpasses, and walking signs racist? Or are there truly recorded statements during the city council or whatever where complainants were quoted as saying “put the signs up to send a signal to the gays!”
Disparate impact is insufficient evidence of intent. I do not see why “no cruising” signs in Silver Lake is homophobic while “no cruising” signs downtown made to discourage prostitution isn’t heterophobic. Both, according to Occam’s Razor, are likely to discourage behavior that often leads to crime.
No, there doesn’t seem to be any serious refutation of the accounts that those signs were deliberately put up as a hostile message to the gay community.
I’d expect you to put the burden of proof on the accusers. I don’t need to refute the accusation that I’m racist; the accuser needs to provide more proof than “he did this thing that affected a black person negatively.”
More concerning but untouched here is the underlying assumption that “the gay community” cruises around to pick up strangers after midnight.
Past tense. The signs episode occurred many years ago, at a different time for gay rights and acceptance.
This is an Occam’s Razor situation. Do you really think it is likely—or even possible— that the gay community would be focused for more than a decade on removing U-Turn signs without just provocation?
In a sane society, no.
But we no longer live in a sane society. Titania McGrath used to (not sure whether she still does) provide ample evidence that identity politics is all about winning little battles that sane people would normally dismiss out of hand (like “Walk/Don’t Walk” signs being racist) in an effort to force a new lens on their social eyes, so that everything they see can be interpreted in a way to victimize a chosen group.
This is the same thing. There is one simple explanation–some combination of misers who live to enforce rules (every neighborhood and HOA has them) and legitimate complaints about traffic disruptions or the other negative externalities that usually come with populations that actively seek out sex with strangers (hetero or not) exerted enough influence to get traffic rules changed.
Then there’s the victim explanation–it’s definitely a possibility and easily could have been a motivating factor in some of the proponents, but the problem with the victimhood complex is that like any lens, it distorts the information coming in towards a certain predetermined conclusion. Every piece of evidence (and the only evidence provided here as far as I can tell is that some people say it was homophobic) is examined with that conclusion in mind, rather than objectivity or, as Americans are accustomed, bias toward the accused.
At best the accusation is taking a multivariate problem and reducing it to the most politically favorable one.
“Do you really think it is likely—or even possible— that the gay community would be focused for more than a decade on removing U-Turn signs without just provocation?“
Ummmm…yes?
(I know you enjoy the ummms; you’re welcome 😉 )
The 5 Dos and 5 Don’ts of Cruising (out.com)
6. Don’t be too loud in public
The reason why cruising has persisted throughout the decades is because of discretion. If we were getting caught all the time, or straight people became aware all the nasty things we were doing so near to them, cruising would not be a thing anymore. In fact, there would likely be a police officer outside of every sauna, truck stop, and airport bathroom. Don’t ruin it for others. Be discreet. Be quiet.
Having a major event to remove the signage violated this rule.
The entire removal of signs event was designed specifically to show an exercise of political power over those in the neighborhood in which the activity took place. It was a giant fuck you to the local residents.
Calling the signs homophobic is ridiculous because signs are inanimate. What they are actually saying is that the people who had them put up hate gays and the gay population wants them to submit to their will. The idea that the residents hate gays is without evidence. Those same people might take issue with any other activity that interrupts their sleep.
The term homophobe or any of the other words with phobe or phobic as a suffix is a slur no different than Kike, Nigger, Slope, Racist or any other pejorative. Its use is designed to denigrate another personally or another’s point of view to obtain power over the other when it cannot justify its position on its merits.
Explain why “cruising” or driving around and around in a neighborhood looking for sex between midnight and six a.m. should be something that should be promoted or condoned socially. When we actually address the actual issue “cruising” and not the symbolism in the signage we can decide whether or not something is discriminatory.
The signs specifically prohibited U-turns between midnight and 6 AM, as you can see in this video.
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1801632184929030367
It sounds to me as if the issue was that gay men in cars were circling endlessly around and around these residential blocks night after night in the wee hours of the morning in order to pick up other gay men for sex. That is a nuisance to the people who live there, and it’s not homophobic to ban it. If you want sex, go to a gay bar or an adult bookstore or at least move your car-cruising zone to a non-residential neighborhood (which is what I assume happened in real life).
Or another way of looking at it is that gay men were welcome to cruise that neighborhood for sex until midnight but then had to knock it off. If that’s homophobia, it’s a pretty mild strain.
Jack: “No Cruising”? I’ve never seen such a sign in my life. That one’s more obvious…so they buried it”
Not really. From the story:
”While the “No Cruising” signs were removed after the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council voted to dismantle them in 2011, some of the no U-turn signs remained.”
Maybe they did not mention it because those signs were long gone.
this fight seems to be exclusively about the no U-turn signs.
-Jut
Thanks. But the “no cruising” signs would have clarified the story if they had been mentioned up front.
Some troll will replace the removed signage with this… https://translineinc.com/products/signs/traffic-signs/regulatory-signs/r3-18-no-u-turn-or-left-turn-sign/
I’ve never seen no cruising signs, but I’ve seen signs with similar intents, aimed at other sub-populations (or communities in Marxist terms). No skateboarding signs aimed at teenage skateboarders. No proselytizing signs aimed at Jehovah’s witnesses. No loitering signs aimed at panhandlers, teenagers and prostitutes. No soliciting signs aimed at door to door sales people. Nuisance behavior is nuisance behavior. You don’t need to hate gay people to not want nuisance behavior by gay people to occur on your street.
Private behavior by others doesn’t interest me. I don’t care what other people do so long as I am not required to participate. My participation tends to be the sticking point with me.
In general, I don’t want to know about other people’s sexual proclivities. I do approve of similar levels of information across “minority groups” and majority groups. For example, casual mention of non-sexual off work recreational time is fine. If you say, for example, my partner (same sex girlfriend/boyfriend, husband/wife, etc) and I are going canoeing this weekend, that is as acceptable as if you say my opposite sex significant other and I are going canoeing. But, in the same vein, if you want to tell me graphic details of your sex life, in general I don’t want to know that regardless of your sexual orientation. I don’t need to know about the strap on you just purchased or whatever, no matter your sexual orientation.
This changes somewhat with closeness of association, but remains within societal norms. If we are friends, and you want to talk about the problems you are having in a romantic relationship, sexual orientation is not an issue. I might have less advice to offer someone in a same sex relationship because I have never been in one, but I can offer the same advice I would offer an opposite sex couple in analogous situations and hope it applies similarly. There is some discomfort for me in these situations, not because I am “homophobic”, but because I am not certain my experiences are actually equivalent or appropriate comparisons. I usually give disclaimers to this effect, and tell my friends to disregard me if my advice doesn’t seem to apply.
All that said, I don’t want any couple, heterosexual or homosexual, having sex in a car in front of my house. Go find somewhere where you aren’t bothering people to engage in exhibitionist behavior. Don’t shine your lights in my front windows at 2am repeatedly or play loud music when I’m trying to sleep or trigger my dog into barking hysterically in the middle of the night. Don’t shove your beliefs down my throat or try to make me buy products I don’t want. Don’t be a pain in my ass.
This sounds like what people were doing, being a pain in the ass. That is unethical no matter what minority status you have.
Whether teenagers, heterosexual prostitutes or homosexuals, cruising behavior sounds like nuisance behavior. Just like door to door solar panel sales people bothering me 3 times a week is annoying, or skateboarders running me over is annoying, or people playing loud bass is annoying, or Jehovah’s Witnesses waking me up at 6 am on a Saturday to preach the word of god is annoying, naked people screwing in a car in front of my house twice a week is annoying. It is unwarranted, unwanted, nuisance behavior. I don’t care who does it, so if you are gay the signs saying stop doing what you are doing are no more homophobic than any other sign banning unwanted behavior are teenager-phobic, Christian-phobic or homeless-phobic. Just stop being a pain in the ass and we are good.
A lot of those sound Constitutionally dubious. No proselytizing? If it’s a nuisance per se, that’s one thing. If it’s a nuisance because of the group engaging in the conduct, that’s discrimination.
It is based on behavior, not based on who people are. No proselytizing signs are usually placed in strip malls or apartment complexes. I don’t think signs on private property are unconstitutional, but I’m not a lawyer so the legality of it is not what I’m addressing. There are also a lot of streets where I live that are privately owned by the neighborhood they are in. I don’t know the laws around that sort of thing.