Fort Lauderdale
mulls anticottaging toilet

A $250,000-plus high-tech toilet being considered for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., beaches raised even more eyebrows when the city's mayor suggested its timing feature would stop bathrooms from being used for gay sex.

"We're trying to provide a family environment where people can take their children who need to use the bathroom without having to worry about a couple of men in there engaged in a sex act," Mayor Jim Naugle told the Sun-Sentinel newspaper earlier this week.

Public restrooms, Naugle told the paper, reiterating statements he has made in public meetings on the subject, are rendezvous points for "homosexuals...engaging in sex, anonymous sex, illegal sex."

The new toilets, similar to models already in use in New York, Atlanta, Seattle, and the San Francisco Bay qrea, would have doors that open automatically after a set interval. They also clean the seat automatically, meter toilet paper, and play music. The New York and Bay Area toilets are modeled after vintage vespasiennes in France.

It seems a six-figure toilet is expected not only to accommodate its stated function but to solve a social problem: Officials in San Francisco, which got its first high-tech toilets from French maker JCDecaux in 1995, claimed they were clean and non-gender-specific, and would help solve vagrancy by preventing homeless people from taking up residence inside.

Fort Lauderdale plans to install its first one next to the city parking lot--which Naugle calls "the rainbow parking lot"--at Sebastian Street and State A1A, television station CBS4 reported. The beach there is popular with gays.

Fort Lauderdale city commissioners voted June 5 to spend about $25,000 on drawings for a prototype. Final purchase would require a commission vote, city spokeswoman Shannon Vezina told Gay.com.

Local gay leaders agree the area needs more public toilets but can live without the mayor's rhetoric.

"Thank God this is his last term," pride official Marc Hansen told the Sun-Sentinel. (Barbara Wilcox, The Advocate)