Gay Men Emerge as Key Ally in Fight for Straight Horny Guys’ Rights

On most days, after spending hours pushing porn and faux vaginas at the Adult Book Store in Brook Park, manager-in-training Tammy Ware doesn’t have much time to hit happy hour and bitch about the dickhead who left a stain on the latest issue of Hustler. That’s because she and her co-workers are on a crusade, hitting the streets with clipboards in hand to fight for the rights of horny men across Ohio. She’s trying to get enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot that would overturn a new law that bars dudes from touching strippers at a gentlemen’s clubs. “Most people are really positive as soon as you mention stripper,” Ware says. But not all -- including some of the lonely assholes she’s trying to help. “They’ll be people at the club who say I’m not here for the strippers even though they’re at the strip club and just walked out. They say, ‘I don’t touch them, they touch me.’ You won’t believe how many guys say that.” But she’s found surprising allies at gay bars. “Two weeks ago, we went to the Cocktails, and they’re helping us more than the straight people are,” she says. A lot of gay men have a bone to pick with Citizens for Community Values, a Cincinnati evangelical group and the catalyst for the strip club bill. Before it was targeting strip clubs, the group was obsessed with outlawing everything homo, including an attempt to outlaw men from wearing matching belts and shoes. So while gay men may not appreciate the bounty that is thy naked lady, they do understand the age-old adage “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” – T.K. Kim