Several men who said they were passengers on a cruise ship on which two gay men were arrested for indecent exposure and alleged to be having sex in plain view described what they heard and saw that day last week on the Caribbean island of Dominica.
John Robert Hart, 41, and Dennis Jay Mayer, 53, of Palm Springs, apologized in court. Authorities said they were seen having sex from land, causing military police to board the ship and arrest them last week. They were initially arrested on charges of "buggery," in a nation which outlaws sex between men. That charge was dropped, though the men said they were subjected to treatment that was "inhumane."
Six different callers to my radio program on SiriusXM OutQ, from various parts of the U.S., said they were passengers on board the gay cruise operated by Atlantis Events. They described various experiences, from seeing the military police board the ship to hearing from other passengers who witnessed the incident that the men were naked on their balcony and were "inappropriate."
One caller, identified as John from Michigan, claimed he actually witnessed the incident himself: "We had left the ship and were on the port side there waiting for our excursion buses and so forth. All of a sudden behind us we heard a commotion of a lot of the locals waiting in the area. We saw these people pointing and you could look up and see the profile of two naked people standing on their deck and doing something. If you’re a gay man and you see that kind of a profile, it’s pretty easy to identify what they were doing."
Mayer and Hart have said they were not having sex, though they haven't elaborated on exactly what they were doing. Several of the callers to the show said no matter what the men were doing they were surprised that Atlantis Events takes the gay cruise to anti-gay countries, something that critics online have pointed to as well.
Listen to the full interview below:
Watch a video report on the case below: