Hope to Protect Circuit Parties, Rampant Drug Use
Greg Rohrbough
Concerned Women for America
July 25, 2002

“Gay” bar owners and party promoters are protesting a bill currently in the U.S. Senate that would give both local and federal prosecutors power to battle the illegal drug use at “rave” parties.

Proprietors fear the “downfall of gay circuit parties that raise millions of dollars a year for gay rights and AIDS causes,” according to the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade.

“Circuit parties” are all-night “gay” male dance parties that feature much promiscuous sex and drug use. Homosexual men, particularly young men, fly in to attend the parties – dozens of which are held annually with as many as 20-30,000 attending the largest parties, according to gay activist Michelangelo Signorile. Many men go off into private rooms for individual or smaller-group encounters or participate in public sex on the dance floor. The parties advertise the attendance of “gay” porn stars.

Drugs, Signorile tells us, especially stimulants such as Ecstasy (MDMA), cocaine and Crystal (crystal methamphetamine), are common at such parties; they are, in fact, almost required in order to handle the two or three days of nonstop dancing and partying. Those wishing to get some sleep at some point often take further drugs, especially “Special K,” or ketamine, a horse tranquilizer.

The Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy, or RAVE Act, S. 2633, is on the legislative calendar, and could come for a vote within the next week. It has substantial penalties, both criminal and civil, to those convicted of “knowingly opening, maintaining, managing, controlling, renting, leasing, making available for use, or profiting from any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance.”

Penalties include fines up to $250,000 and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The bill’s main sponsor is Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), and it may pass with bipartisan support.

D.C. circuit-party promoter Mark Lee decried the bill, saying, “what this does is hold the owners and the promoters responsible for the acts of the patrons.” He further explained that many circuit parties provide brochures detailing the harms of drugs, as well as private ambulance service for overdoses.

Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, likened the idea of using promiscuous “gay” circuit parties to raise funds to fight AIDS to “selling cigarettes to raise funds for lung cancer research.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has joined Mr. Lee in opposing this bill, as it would have a “chilling effect,” leading nightclub owners to stop holding such events.

But Knight welcomed the new legislation and said, “Maybe some effects should be chilling.”

Drugs are a critical part of the circuit party scene, said a disapproving Signorile, in his 1997 book Life Outside (Harper), where he explained the circuit phenomenon in great detail. “It seems that circuit events and the sex and partying that surrounds them, for most of the men here, would be completely uninteresting without drugs. That’s what almost every man tells me as I casually ask around.”

Witnessing an overdose at a circuit party in Palm Springs, he even quoted one partier who said, “That’s how you know it’s a good party, if you can attract an ambulance or two.”

“There’s a lot of ritual to the drug intake,” explained “gay” actor/director Jay Corcoran, in the Signorile book. “The drugs are very much like the Communion and the wine, treated very sacredly. People are so into the maintenance of their drugs. The way they store their drugs, their stash, it’s very holy, like the chalice.”