Public Indecency Goes to the Birds

By Aaron Bailey in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 3, 2005 7:58PM

In these arctic temperatures, it's hard to be outside, especially long enough to expose yourself and then get your groove on with a complete stranger. Last summer when temperatures actually allowed public sex, Chicago police received hundreds of complaints about gay men having sex at the bird sanctuary at Montrose Harbor.

In response, they set up a task force of eight officers to patrol the area and arrest the guys in the act "bird watching."

Ultimately, police arrested 70 guys, most of whom pled guilty and were sentenced to three months of court supervision. Two cases went to trial and this past week, attorneys successfully argued that the undercover officers were "pretty forward" and acted outside the law by entrapping their clients into an act of indecency. The birdhouse defendants were thus saved from the bighouse.

Chicagoist has only once been solicited for public sex -- at Chipotle and not in the bird sanctuary. Police, however, do allow legal cruising of Montrose Harbor, home of the Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club.