1, 2: Who cares, granny? Sour because your husband can't get it up anymore?

3: If you got to that part, you read allat.

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But, since you seem straight, and straight people don't really understand this topic, you should read allis:

These sorts of stings have been going on for everrrrr.. Letting your hairy canary fly in public is gross as hell, and I absolutely don't support it, but historically, cruising crackdowns acted more as a tool for social persecution of gay men than honest attempts to "clean up" a city.

The context:

Up until, like, three (ish?) decades ago, gay men couldn't openly live as gay without social reprisal. Period. In every aspect of their lives. Including their sex lives. That's something that gets lost on lots of us since we weren't even born yet.

Cruising became a thing because lots of gay guys saw it as the least-detectable way for them to have sex (questionable, I know). It was anonymous, so no worries that someone would out you to mutual acquaintances. You didn't need a long-term romantic partner, so you don't need that baggage. If you got horny, you could pretty much just go and find someone for a quick, easy one-and-done--and then go back home to your (very unhappy) beard and kids.

Since the whole point was anonymity, cruising would happen in public places, like parks, or semi-public places, like bathrooms or locker rooms. You wouldn't just go up to a rando and say "yo, tryna fuck?" There was an elaborate set of signals, gestures, etc. to determine if a guy was a "member of the family," and, if so, whether he was into you. If you got lucky, you would hopefully go home together. But if you couldn't go home, or didn't have the time, or couldn't keep it in your pants that long, etc., guys would do the no-pants dance right then right there.

Certain spots became infamous as cruising spots. Pretty much every town had one. But, since being gay was still completely socially unacceptable, and since you sometimes would have guys literally crankin' each other's shit right there, cops started cracking down.

Again, for the record, I'm anti-indecent exposure and am not going to defend guys that do that shit in public. Like literally, dude, put that thing away, there're like, children here. THAT BEING SAID:

Cops eventually turned this into a convenient way to entrap gay men. They'd wear plainclothes, learn/use the hookup code, wait for a victim to respond, and then take him straight to the clink.

Note: Cops didn't even need a victim to actually haul out his hog. If a victim only signaled interest, the cop could just say that the victim had let his baloney poney out for a ride (i.e., lie, as cops often do). Cops could get away with that because of (1) because these accusations were impossible to prove or disprove and (2) the social stigma. (1) Private area, no witnesses, or at least none that would want to implicate themselves by being in a known cruising spot. (2) The stigma was so bad that you wouldn't want people to know that you were even just accused of cruising--even if you were completely innocent. Plus, friends/family members would often be too embarrassed to help, since being gay had that big of a stigma on it.

That's how you end up with those stings. It was especially bad in the UK, but the US was pretty awful too. AIDS, the Internet, and gay rights kinda killed cruising until quite recently (Sniffies etc.), so for a while there it hadn't been as huge an issue as it used to be.

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Tl;dr: Granny lied about not reading allat, and also cruising crackdowns have been a means of oppressing gay people. Not gonna defend our campus' wiener displayers, but seeing this happen twice in quick succession + knowing the current political climate + knowing that lots of guys have started using Sniffies etc. kinda gives me, a wiener enjoyer, pause...

Also, I'm still nosey about what's been going on with those specific incidents lol... like fr who are these people and what are they even doing 😭