[caption id="attachment_10907" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Sign warning about prostitution"]
[/caption]Carol Forsloff - Most folks believe it is important that everyone have equal rights to freedom of expression and lifestyle, but at what point does that become license and end up with a corrupt system?
New Orleans is a melting pot of the “regulars,” the middle-class ordinary guys who mow lawns, greet neighbors, go to work and enjoy the ambiance of city life. New Orleans is also a disarray of different character types. It is a place, of course, where everything goes and that some folks believe needs changing for the city to fully recover.In this atmosphere the best can thrive, and so can the worst.
Richard Socarides has written for the Huffington Post about "A Summer for Gay Rights", and certain court cases aimed at making marriages for "gay" couples legal. The article stirs for some readers the issue of gay rights and neighborhood rights and what do folks do in what might be an ordinary neighborhood conflict anywhere else.
The issue of "gay" rights goes far beyond "marriage" if taken too far into breaking the law, as some neighbors maintain, given their experience. While minority groups exercise their rights, should that occur at the expense of the rights of others?
It becomes worse when the perpetrators of neighborhood problems are attorneys, using their power of persuasion and their status at times to do what they please. Add the fact they are gay, and whereas that is no issue in most discourse, it becomes an issue if the gayness is used as the issue when people complain of behavior that is loud, boisterous and so over-bearing in showing the worst side of social interaction at times that it becomes a bad issue, because of bad behavior.
In sum, it is not the gayness; it is using it as a shield for doing things that folks would not do in a middle class neighborhood anywhere without complaints.
“How can I have peace of mind, do the right thing and not be harassed myself?” a citizen asks, someone who is not anti-gay but who would complain if a noisy 16-year-old dominated the block with loud radios, as anyone would.
In this case it is reported these men of the law set up a bordello to flaunt their lifestyle. It is an “in your face” place, similar to what would be in a “straight” neighborhood if some neighborhood ladies put a red light over the doorstep and sat in front of windows advertising the business we all would understand simply by the “advertising.”
People who need peace and quiet and the old and ill have problems in these cases. That is true when the noise is high and the parties loud.
In New Orleans, however, the police are intimidated at times by people they consider important or in authority. There are investigations into this type of corruption right now even as there were investigations about the Danziger Bridge that brought racism still present in New Orleans out into the open.
In this case attorneys, and anyone else in a position of power, can do as they please because paybacks and personal connections mean a lot in this Southern version of a city that never sleeps. It only becomes a problem when some people need to sleep, and others simply don’t care. Then neighbors are set against neighbors when a simple phone call to the police department should ordinarily suffice.
In New Orleans, calling the police is often not what folks can do and have the attention they need. When trust is not there with the police, an ordinary problem takes on extraordinary dimensions.
The neighborhood becomes a war zone in situations like these. The accuser can become the victim; the problem grows. The police are nowhere to be found because, again, calling them might make the problem worse.
The stress of the times, with a city still healing from Hurricane Katrina and worried about what might come next with potential hurricanes this season and an oil spill at the door, increases the potential for confrontations between neighbors that might otherwise rely on each other for support.
Having a gay neighbor is no problem at all, but when using a minority status and police and public influences to dominate, then it is.
There has to be a legitimate way to complain about social problems without being accused of being a social problem as well.
In New Orleans, these are the complications, of ordinary living.
Those complications will continue until the clean up of the city is more than building restoration, but within the very agencies that run it. Whether this is an idle story, or not; it is likely true because that’s the way it is when laws are broken in a city where who you know can be more important than what you know. That might be the problem in other cities, certainly; but in the Big Easy it goes on so easily in some places it has become culturally ingrained.
In the meantime, in this city that never sleeps, the citizen that can’t sleep when sleep is important and can’t live without being targeted as well ends up, asking wearily, and warily as well,
“When will New Orleans be the neighborhood where when “anything goes” some of it is not allowed.”
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This is the newspaper rendition of a narrative of a Hurricane Katrina victim, a neighbor, a person of good education and one who says she has no bias against gays as well, but simply wants some sleep and has been arrested and charged without seeming recourse because of the power-broker system for simply complaining about it.
Richard Socarides has written for the Huffington Post about "A Summer for Gay Rights", and certain court cases aimed at making marriages for "gay" couples legal. The article stirs for some readers the issue of gay rights and neighborhood rights and what do folks do in what might be an ordinary neighborhood conflict anywhere else.
The issue of "gay" rights goes far beyond "marriage" if taken too far into breaking the law, as some neighbors maintain, given their experience. While minority groups exercise their rights, should that occur at the expense of the rights of others?
It becomes worse when the perpetrators of neighborhood problems are attorneys, using their power of persuasion and their status at times to do what they please. Add the fact they are gay, and whereas that is no issue in most discourse, it becomes an issue if the gayness is used as the issue when people complain of behavior that is loud, boisterous and so over-bearing in showing the worst side of social interaction at times that it becomes a bad issue, because of bad behavior.
In sum, it is not the gayness; it is using it as a shield for doing things that folks would not do in a middle class neighborhood anywhere without complaints.
“How can I have peace of mind, do the right thing and not be harassed myself?” a citizen asks, someone who is not anti-gay but who would complain if a noisy 16-year-old dominated the block with loud radios, as anyone would.
In this case it is reported these men of the law set up a bordello to flaunt their lifestyle. It is an “in your face” place, similar to what would be in a “straight” neighborhood if some neighborhood ladies put a red light over the doorstep and sat in front of windows advertising the business we all would understand simply by the “advertising.”
People who need peace and quiet and the old and ill have problems in these cases. That is true when the noise is high and the parties loud.
In New Orleans, however, the police are intimidated at times by people they consider important or in authority. There are investigations into this type of corruption right now even as there were investigations about the Danziger Bridge that brought racism still present in New Orleans out into the open.
In this case attorneys, and anyone else in a position of power, can do as they please because paybacks and personal connections mean a lot in this Southern version of a city that never sleeps. It only becomes a problem when some people need to sleep, and others simply don’t care. Then neighbors are set against neighbors when a simple phone call to the police department should ordinarily suffice.
In New Orleans, calling the police is often not what folks can do and have the attention they need. When trust is not there with the police, an ordinary problem takes on extraordinary dimensions.
The neighborhood becomes a war zone in situations like these. The accuser can become the victim; the problem grows. The police are nowhere to be found because, again, calling them might make the problem worse.
The stress of the times, with a city still healing from Hurricane Katrina and worried about what might come next with potential hurricanes this season and an oil spill at the door, increases the potential for confrontations between neighbors that might otherwise rely on each other for support.
Having a gay neighbor is no problem at all, but when using a minority status and police and public influences to dominate, then it is.
There has to be a legitimate way to complain about social problems without being accused of being a social problem as well.
In New Orleans, these are the complications, of ordinary living.
Those complications will continue until the clean up of the city is more than building restoration, but within the very agencies that run it. Whether this is an idle story, or not; it is likely true because that’s the way it is when laws are broken in a city where who you know can be more important than what you know. That might be the problem in other cities, certainly; but in the Big Easy it goes on so easily in some places it has become culturally ingrained.
In the meantime, in this city that never sleeps, the citizen that can’t sleep when sleep is important and can’t live without being targeted as well ends up, asking wearily, and warily as well,
“When will New Orleans be the neighborhood where when “anything goes” some of it is not allowed.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the newspaper rendition of a narrative of a Hurricane Katrina victim, a neighbor, a person of good education and one who says she has no bias against gays as well, but simply wants some sleep and has been arrested and charged without seeming recourse because of the power-broker system for simply complaining about it.
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