Every summer, the gays of the culural elite (like John Waters, Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan, musician Rufus Wainwright) gather on the car-free Fire Island and Provincetown, Mass., to party and play. And yes, sometimes have sex outside, they way all creatures were meant to! Only in recent weeks, they've been getting arrested for that. (Awkward!) As Cherry Grove resident Choire Sicha writes for Radar, "[The Fire Island arrests] are the first known arrests for public sex on the federal land." (Some people think a "circle jerk for freedom" might help matters.) Meanwhile, in Provincetown, an effort to keep public sex under control via citations for "lewd acts" have shot way up, says the Cape Cod Times.

Few details are known—the National Park Service has not yet confirmed the arrests or said why they have now begun patrolling the land. On the weekend of Friday, June 13, at least one gay man was detained in the small wooded area popularly called The Meat Rack, which is both a cruising ground and also a thoroughfare between the two gay towns of Fire Island, Cherry Grove and The Pines. The following weekend, at least two were arrested.

This coming Saturday, June 28, one Cherry Grove resident is proposing—via posters around the towns—a day of action, what he is calling "a circle jerk for freedom" around the park service's (abandoned) building in the Meat Rack at the edge of the Pines.

When contacted for comment, Sicha denied any personal Meat Rack cruising, declaring himself a "K-mart bathroom and Craigslist M4M" kind of guy.

Gay Men Arrested for Sex on Fire Island [Radar]

Park Officials Target Sex in Dunes [Cape Cod Times]