Gay Actors Play bait for Gay Men to be Arrested

 Of Black Holes and Other Glories
( documentary images offer an unflinching look at the seedier sides ..2013)
Brazilian Film Maker Fagner Bibiano 

This is the story of two actors hired in the homophobic 20’s to visit mainly men’s rooms in which they would go into the stalls and and use ‘glory holes’ to entice other men to use the hole which they would then use an indelible marker to mark a cross on their penis which it would then serve for the police to arrest them and they would be charge, with mainly vagrancy charges. The idea of this was just to punish homosexuals, since the practice was never going to put a stop on a habit of a population which was not allow to express who they were or be with other men in a sexual way. If you had a best buddy you both better be shown with girl friends and do manly things, be bowling , sports or anything else in which they would be accompany with girls. This is the time that if gay men really wanted to have any freedom at all they had to marry.  Showing a wedding band and talking about your wife and kids would dislodge any propensity to be looked at as anything but a good family man, even if you use time off to spend it with another man.  That wedding band was a certificate of heterosexuality and it kept gay men safer. 

As you cans see charging some men in court just to embarrass them, which in turn they would plead guilty and pay a fine to go back and try again with the memory of the past incident except this time they would be looking for the guys that entrapped them. This idea of using actors was so hysterically unsound that it was quickly abandoned to have the cops after W.W.ll create vice units to curb prostitution and then the same units would go after gay men in the parks, men’s room and even post ads in the news papers to then apprehend the unsuspecting gays and again charge them with any charge that would make these men to plead guilty without a trial.

It’s interesting to know that these units were still in use in New York City until recently. Formed by the last mayoralty administration of Mr.Bloomberg. Yes, the same republican mayor who for purposes of being politically correct came out for gay marriage as he left office. He and his police commissioner were forced to stop arresting men who just happened to pass a porno store and either looking in from the side walk or going inside. The Mayor and his police commissioner used good looking young cops who would sometimes hit and mistreat but always verbally abuse them as they were handcuffed. These cops were so gay looking and play the part so well that it was suspected that they had to be gay themselves.

It is true, to catch a gay man being gay you need another gay man. A straight man wont do. That is why the most damaged done to someone gay in the past and even now is done by someone who is struggling with their sexuality themselves or homophobes that have a fear of gay man because they are so misinformed they think you can catch it like the flu. You also have the psychopath that sometimes is incapable of having sex with either a man or woman and the only way of pleasure is to inflict pain. Until very recently and before the courts started getting serious about hate crimes, beating up a gay man that was not expecting it was an easy thing to do. You were beating up a man that probably was not going to reported it for fear of being outed. This notion was put to rest by a new generation of gay man (millennials) that saw very little sense in being closeted and missing out in having a normal life. There is strength in numbers and by having so many men coming out of the closet, the byproduct being political power; Power brings change. That infamous vice unit that was operating in NYC until the other day, was disbanded because some of the guys arrested would not play ball with the cops and prosecutor. They demanded their day in court. As such, charges were dropped and lawsuits came out against the city. As a result of those men gay or not, to have the courage to seek justice they changed the way the biggest police dept. in the nation operated towards men that some homophobic cop deemed gay and decided to arrest and come up with any charge and then push ‘resisting arrest’ for good measure. Most people forget that when you are charged with something is up to the guy charging you to prove you are guilty either by the preponderancy of the evidence or by a reasonable doubt if the case is criminal. 

Throughout history is shown time after time that people that dedicate their time and sometimes their life’s to either entrap or deny rights to gay men  is because they were homosexuals themselves. 
A typical antigay person is one that is not informed. They’ve heard all their lives all these crazy lies  about those creatures called gay. This condition of misinformation is cured by honest truthful information. Information they can check from an unbiased source. Actually the best way that’s proven to change all these minds is by getting to know a gay person. They realized they have known gay people all their life’s, just they didn’t know they were gay. Another byproduct of coming out is getting people to know you as a person, just another human been. Not a beast, not a special sinner, not an abomination but a loving son, brother and now even husband.

Adam Gonzalez

The following posting appeared at Gay.com written by DAVID CLARKE

Every so often a brilliant theatrical production just doesn’t affect me emotionally, but leaves me spellbound in contemplative thought. This is not to say that the play is not emotionally effective. It’s simply that my logos is kicked into overdrive, and my pathos takes a time out on the bench. Until recently, the last time I personally felt this way was when I saw David Ives’ Venus in Fur at The Alley Theatre in Houston, and now Tom Jacobson’s The Twentieth-Century Way at New York City’s Rattlestick Playwrights Theater holds that distinction as well.

Initially, the audience is led to believe that this play is set in a theater toward the end of the first quarter of the 20th Century. Yet, through some brilliantly constructed machinations of theatrical revelation, the audience comes to see the actors in their most vulnerable states. Starkly naked and stripped of all pretenses, the final moments seem to be occurring simultaneously in the past and present. For the previous 80 or so minutes, the audience witnesses actor Will Bradley as B. C. Brown, a handsomely delicate young man, and Robert Mammana as W. H. Warren, a more rugged and mature man. At the end, the lines that separate us from the actors are blurred, and we are invited to see them as Bradley and Mammana. Much like the characters in Venus in Fur, the two actors engage in an engrossing battle of the wits via a complicated improvisation exercise. The men use their accumulated skills in drama to pervasively one-up the other, with the game set to end once one shows signs of flagging exhaustion.

But, the conflict in The Twentieth-Century Way isn’t a fun exercise. It begins as a game to determine who gets to audition for a film role that both actors are chasing, and that barely scratches the surface of the work’s true drive and purpose. Historically, Brown and Warren were actors hired as “vice specialists” by the Long Beach Police Department during the summer of 1914 to entrap and arrest gay men in private clubs and changing rooms. Through Tom Jacobson’s words, Michael Michetti’s unflinching direction, and Bradley and Mammana’s bewitching performances, we come to know Brown and Warren as one layer of persona that the actors must wear in the show. In addition to these two men, they morph — sometimes at dizzying speeds — through a whole slew of characters. Often these changes are signified with a flower put into a pinhole on a lapel or by a new hat, but in some occasions the jumps occur so quickly that Bradley and Mammana must solely rely on mannerisms and vocal tones to convey the shifts, which they do with laudable aplomb.

Yet, it is through adding these multifaceted layers and differing personas to each actor that Jacobson’s play finds its merit and purpose. Not so much a history lesson on the heinous laws working against homosexual men in the early 1900s, The Twentieth-Century Way is an examination of the roles we play. Are we ever our true selves? Are we ever free from pretense and the walls we construct to protect our hearts and souls? Bradley and Mammana wear many different skins in the show, but by the end the pair of actors are laid completely bare before us. Refering to each other by their real names, they acknowledge that they are being watched by an audience. The audition they are competing for becomes a metaphor for how every action is, in a way, an audition. We audition for jobs, dates, friends, and more. We look at the exteriors and determine worth without knowing if the outsides match what’s inside. We withhold. We hide. We come out. But are we ever comfortable enough or passionate enough to lay everything bare? And if we are, what does it take to get there?

Don’t expect the cast and crew of The Twentieth-Century Way to answer these questions, but they’ll give you plenty of nuggets to chew on as you digest the work and think about these and the others questions it posits. Audiences are treated to one of the most intense tennis matches of dramatic wit written for the stage, and unlike Venus in Fur, I’m not sure this one doesn’t end in a draw.

The Twentieth-Century Way continues through July 19 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place, New York City. For tickets and more information, visit Rattlestick.org.