Passengers on gay cruise say behavior of arrested men was ‘inappropriate’

Some were standing on dock on Dominica and saw locals pointing at naked couple

Several passengers who were on a gay cruise last week say two men charged with indecent exposure were naked in their balcony engaging in ‘inappropriate’ behavior in full view of locals after the ship had pulled into port in the Caribbean island of Dominica.

One passenger from Michigan named John described the scene Wednesday (28 March) in a phone call to Michelangelo Signorile’s radio show on SiriusXM OutQ.

John said he had left the ship and was on the port side waiting for an excursion bus when he heard a commotion among some of the locals who were also 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,’ he said. ‘If you’re a gay man and you see that kind of a profile, it’s pretty easy to identify what they were doing.’

Another caller, Joe from Dallas, didn’t see the incident but was on the same deck level as the arrested men and said the ship had docked ‘right in the town center, right in the proximity of lots of people.’

The couple, Dennis Jay Mayer and John Robert Hart, have insisted they weren’t ‘putting on a show for people’ aboard the cruise ship but they did plead guilty to indecent exposure and paid a nearly $900 fine. They had been held in jail for 19 hours in a country where sex between men is against the law.

Initial sodomy charges against the couple were dropped.

The couple was on a Celebrity Summit cruise ship organized by West Hollywood-based Atlantis Events. Radio caller John said an announcement was made at the beginning of the cruise that passengers should use ‘common sense’ when visiting the various Caribbean islands but he said it was explicitly stated that some of the countries were anti-gay.

Another caller who was also on the cruise told Signorile that at times, he ‘did get a feeling of danger. … A feeling of they didn’t want us there.’

by Greg Hernandez
Source – Gay Star News