Does your block feature day-glo sex toys in shop windows? Are anti-syphilis fliers depicting cartoon phalluses regularly left on your windshield? Do your neighbors celebrate "Bear Day"?

If you answered yes to these questions, then you live in the Castro, in San Francisco, and probably shouldn't let your neighbors know that you read FlynnFiles. The Los Angeles Times's front page recently hosted an article suggesting that homosexual city enclaves and children don't go together. And as Bay-area homosexuals increasingly adopt and arrange with donors of the opposite sex to procreate, they, too, are discovering that the Castro and kids don't mix.

"It's scary. It kind of makes you shudder," the piece quotes eight-year-old Zander commenting on the XXX-movies and sex toys publically displayed in his neighborhood. "It's not scary," his twelve-year-old brother, Brody, explains, "It's just gross." Where Brody and Zander live, the adults are more childish than the children and the children are more adult than the adults.

A lesbian mother of two "complained about a sadomasochistic tableau in a clothing shop window that featured a male mannequin chained to a toilet." The store owner wouldn't budge, so the mother will--she's moving. "Another parent complained when an antiques store displayed a kitschy life-size statue of an aroused naked man," the article notes. "Owner Robert Hedric said he reluctantly covered the offending portion after police intervened." The mere presence of normal couples, particularly married couples with children, inflames some locals. "Twelve years ago, Jeremy Paul and his wife, Lyssa Kaye Paul, were among a wave of heterosexual parents to colonize the Castro. They embraced the neighborhood's flair. But sometimes they didn't feel welcome. Gay waiters scowled while taking their order. Men sneered at them on the street." Now, as children in the Castro aren't such a curiosity, more tolerance and sensitivity has been extended to this minority community. "Slowly," the article claims, "both sides have shown compromise." The piece cites as an example of this spirit of "compromise" the Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Community Center's decision to ban nudity in its halls, "requiring the center's bondage classes to stay behind closed doors."

Robert Hedric, the gay German who removed the sexually-excited mannequin from his shopfront, fears that prudes are ruining the unique, homosexual culture of the Castro district. "What surprise is next? Are they going to outlaw the Gay Pride Parade?" Hedric wonders. "This is the Castro, not the Vatican." Like anyone would ever confuse San Francisco for Vatican City?

Thanks for highlighting how gays want it both ways - they demand the right to be sexual in-laws (i.e., marriage) yet don't want to give up being sexual outlaws either.

Here are the ones who want you to confuse San Francisco with Vatican City:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_Perpetual_Indulgence

My reaction to this is the same as my reaction to the 4/20/06 "Kings and Kings" post. What business do normal, heterosexual people have raising their children in Sodom and Gomorrah? They have no excuse for not getting the hell out.

The issue of homosexual parents and their children is clearly far more complicated and lamentable. All too often these children are produced and used as pawns in political machinations, perhaps even to damaging extents that their parents never could have imagined or would have willed. The worst tragedy.

more "Sodom and Gomorrah" info fyi, to FF readers:

1. where those "tableaus" and mannequins are on display is a quarter-mile away from where venomous George Galloway spoke to anti-American antiwar crowd last year, at Mission High School, as featured here:
http://www.zombietime.com/galloway_sf/

2. The Gay, Lesbian, etc., Center was built on the site where the former Libertarian bookstore used to be (which I believe Justin Raimondo and friends ran in the 1980s, stoking their rhetorical fires before they made AntiWar.com happen)

Items like this just continue to reinforce that fact that being gay is an aberrant lifestyle. They just can't help but flaunt their sexuality and as has been noted, the love that dare not speak its name now won't shut up. And the more they flaunt, the more their belief that they are superior to the Breeders.

As with most things in life - do not judge all based on one.

As a gay (and proud of it) conservative (even more proud), I am disgusted by the lifestyle of many left wing gays and lesbians. I value freedom of speech. Even more so, I value a safe community for families - I do tend to value community over the individual, in the flow of good ol' lower-case republicanism.

Please - always remember - not all gay men are sexual perverts, not all gay men support the leftist L/G/B/T/Q/Gay Pride Parade paradigm, not all gay men support gay marriage.

I, for one, do not associate myself with gays who behave like this.

Anthony,

To be sure, I don't think a majority of people are necessarily against homosexuals as, for the most part, a live and let live attitude generally prevails. But, why can't people be who they are and not have the need to constantly be advertising their preferences? Especially when it’s advertising about something as private as sex.

If most had your attitude, there would be little need for discussion on topics like this.