Gangbang Harangue

Who needs Sen. Rick Santorum and sodomy laws when sleazy local tv news operations like Denver’s ABC affiliate are doing a bang-up job of exposing people’s sex lives, handing supposed transgressors over to law enforcement and destroying careers? John Ashcroft may be America’s ayatollah of surveillance, but you can’t beat Denver’s 7 News’ DC-based John Ferrugia when it comes to sting operations designed to purge immoral behavior–as well as spike those ratings!

"7 NEWS Investigation has uncovered another emerging scandal," boasted the Denver station’s website last Thursday. The "scandal" soon raced across the news wires. "7 NEWS has learned that an Air Force Academy cadet is allegedly running several Internet group sex organizations from his academy dorm."

The piece was reported on 7 News that night by Ferrugia who, along with his "investigative team," spent two precious months "tracking the cadet" at the Air Force Academy. They skulked around with hidden cameras, getting the cadet–who was to graduate in three weeks–to give all the lurid details. The cadet’s supposed "organizations" actually consisted of websites he created that "promote group sex among as many as two dozen men and one woman" (and apparently included photos of himself and others in the act), though according to one of 7 News’ own producers, nothing about the sites even hinted at prostitution or coercion.

Nonetheless, as the report touted, "7 NEWS showed academy leaders what we found in our two-month hidden camera investigation and they took immediate action. On Wednesday, academy police searched his room and seized his computer."

What was the crime here that forced 7 News to go to the academy after "tracking" the 23-year-old for two months?

"There was technically no crime, this was consensual sex," a guy in the 7 News newsroom told me matter-of-factly, when I called for comment.

Really? Then why is this a story?

"Well, it was conduct unbecoming," he explained.

Gee, so is homosexuality, according to the military–or any sex of any kind by unmarried cadets and deployed soldiers, for that matter. Will 7 News soon put under surveillance the entire U.S Navy, whose members voraciously screw cheap hookers–in group scenes too, I’m sure–in ports around the world?

Suddenly flustered, the guy on the phone passed me on to investigative news producer Kurt Silver, who proudly described how 7 News conducted this groundbreaking investigation.

"We were able to trace his emails back to the academy," he said, even though the cadet used a Yahoo email account on the site, which was independent of the academy’s site and made no reference to it. "We were able to trace the email through another computer program back to the academy, through the headers on the email. It tells you the IP address, and it had the originating IP address."

In other words, though the sites were independent and anonymous, the cadet, 7 News claimed, used the academy internet service to sign on to the web and to presumably upload his sites. That scenario, however, was in sharp contrast to an assertion in the New York Times: "Academy officials… expressed doubts that he could have posted the materials from the academy grounds. Mechanisms in the academy’s computer system, they said, prevent cadets from gaining access to gambling and pornography on the Internet."

"It’s conduct unbecoming," Silver repeated to me, stating the reason why he believes the cadet’s activities were so egregious and horrific that they warranted a two-month sting operation by a Denver television station. "When we met with him undercover, he even said it himself, said that he knew it was conduct unbecoming of an officer or a cadet. It’s also because he was using Academy computer lines."

What if the cadet had used his own dial-up account to access his website? Would that still have made it a terrible transgression worthy of a news report? Does Silver actually deny that cadets are having sex, including group sex?

"Do you understand what the site is?" he shot back in response to those questions. "It’s called the Denver Horsemen. They would have parties with a single woman and up to 30 men."

Well, in New York we’d say, "What a lucky girl!" She was, after all, participating consensually, as Silver confirms. "No one was coerced or forced or paid," he said.

Was there also gay sex among these 30 men, and was that another reason why 7 News took the information to the academy?

"It wasn’t homosexual sex," Silver said. "Well, actually, I can’t tell you what went on. My understanding is that it was 30 men on one woman. Basically we’re looking at it in terms of the climate and culture and how he was able to run the site for two years on the academy’s service. I think the compelling part of this is that this is happening in the shadow of the sexual assault investigation at the academy."

Finally we were getting to the crux of the matter–the excuse the ratings-obsessed crusaders could hide behind in claiming that this is a story: the rape scandal that was uncovered in the Air Force Academy several months ago. For years, female cadets were apparently sexually assaulted while high-ranking officials may have known about it and looked the other way, with some women even punishing the woman for speaking out.

So now, after the military–and the media–had seemingly long ignored sexual violence against women in the Academy, they’re set on cracking down on consensual sex in which nobody gets hurt. And they’re creepily using Dworkinesque anti-porn feminism to bolster their case.

"We spoke with a PhD who used to work at the Academy in the office of development," Silver explained. "I believe she said that gang bangs are akin to simulated rape."

Give credit to Silver for at least offering some rationales, pathetic as they are. Reporter Ferrugia, on the other hand, was downright belligerent, galled that I’d even ask him why this is a story.

"I don’t understand your questions!" he fumed, before hanging up on me. "I’m not here to discuss my ethics or my news judgment with you. I’m not playing this game."

Before the charges of hypocrisy are hurled at me for complaining about these inquisitors after having myself delved into pundit Andrew Sullivan’s sexual behavior–reporting on his "bareback" sex web pages–let me say that anyone who’s followed my scribblings over the years knows that I’ve never had a knee-jerk, orthodox view of journalists covering sex and sexuality. Andrew Sullivan is a public figure, and he spoke very candidly–and ad nauseum–about his sex life and moralized about others’ sex lives. He publicly espoused viewpoints that his own private behavior defied, and the activity–sex without condoms among HIV-positive individuals–is itself dangerous. As an influential writer and spokesperson, his claims that the AIDS epidemic is over were equally destructive and made his online appeals for unsafe sex all the more relevant.

But this cadet is not a public figure, nor did his private sexual activity harm anyone. He’s the only victim here, swept up in what seems like a media-inspired witchhunt for which a rape scandal is being used as a cover. And the real "game" for hacks like reporter John Ferrugia is all about sensational television.