One of the charming things about New Orleans sensibility is the delicately phrased offense of "Crimes against Nature".  When I lived there, as a pastor I found myself occasionally called upon to make bail for a friend charged with this arcane Crime. In my estimation his real offense was sartorial but not necessarily unnatural: wearing Rhinestone spectacles and an ill-fitting aqua knit pantsuit of a certain age while hitting on a vice officer. (Who I believe had more cause to take offense at the Rhinestones and aqua knit than being hit on. At least I would be.)

I think that this particular category of crime ought to be retired as it relates to ill-dressed transvestites with no fashion sense, and the bad judgement to hit on police disguised as good-looking men on the prowl. The category of "Crime against nature" ought to be retained, however, to describe another, more disturbing offense, which ought to arouse and offend the dignity of all open-minded residents below Canal.  The particular Crime Against Nature I am talking about is the offense of arresting people caught urinating in the street. Such arrests are indeed a shocking Crime Against Nature.

I am someone who likes the French Quarter pretty much as it is. I would be very distressed if it became nothing but a Disney Land on the Mississippi, with only entertainment and vistas that are suitably family oriented, in this particular case meaning a very exclusive kind of traditional family: one momma, one pappa, and some kids. In accommodation to the modern world of course, the kids don’t all have to have originally belonged to both of them. Some of the kids may once have been just hers and some just his, suggesting a less than unflawed past, but traditional in the sense that no flaws are visible at the the present time.

I work from an old out-dated version of the Gospel, but my version says that Jesus Christ was most concerned about those we call the marginalized and the non-conforming, including the poor, the demon-possessed, the unclean–even including unclean street people–not to mention the sick (mentally as well as physically).

Jesus even had the temerity to say that the harlots and tax collectors would enter the kingdom of Heaven before the self-proclaimed righteous. But others know a different Gospel than mine, and I am willing to let them be indifferent to the unclean if they want to, and to care only about the clean and righteous.

Because of my reading of Gospel, I hate to see all this flotsam and jetsam of the world run out of the Quarter in order to placate the righteous. I enjoyed telling the flot- and jetsam about an old-fashioned–dare I say traditional?–Good News that God loves everybody. I loved living in New Orleans because I liked telling everybody that God loves them, even if they can not or do not want to clean up their acts. In fact, I don't think it is my place to make judgments about how clean anybody else's act ought to be. God loves everyone from everlasting, as the Psalm says, regardless of their acts and not because of any particular merit of their own.

When I was baptized, I promised to respect the dignity of every human being and I do not think respecting a person’s dignity includes telling them they can not live in my part of town because they might offend tourists, most of whom I imagine would be disappointed if they saw nothing in New Orleans but the same sanitized world they can find at Disney’s Emcott Center.

Which brings me back to Crimes Against Nature. The real crime against nature is encouraging folks to drink a bladder full of beer and providing no place to get rid of it when Nature calls. I hope someone with better knowledge of human physiology will correct me if I have it wrong, but is not urination the natural consequence of drinking more fluids than one can sweat away?

I wish one of the City Worthies would tell me what we are supposed to do if Nature calls as a result of drinking water, or soda pop, or even eating snow cones, but especially after imbibing several brews, the very life blood that courses through the arteries and veins of the French Quarter economy. Sure you can go to a restroom if you need to go when you are still in the place where you bought the beer, but what if you leave the bar where you bought it and you are walking along Bourbon street when you get an urgent call from nature?

You could pop into the nearest bar to whiz, but wait! The restrooms are only for customers and you are not one there. So OK, you go in anyway and order another beer so you can use the rest room. I imagine the wise would leave the new beer undrunk on the bar top and just use the restroom and leave, but such wisdom is not usuallly possessed by tourists and mere small-bladder citizens like myself. So, you take your beer and go on walking down Bourbon Street, but you have not solved the problem, you have made it worse. In order to be legal, you have now entered an endless loop that will leave you hopelessly drunk and liable to arrest for barfing on the sidewalk and, to the outrage of all non-urinating people as far west as Algiers, you end up having to relieve yourself in your pants or on the sidewalk. Now I had rather go to jail than humiliate myself by peeing in my pants like a first-grader who did not yet know about one finger or two fingers.

The city could provide public restrooms for the convenience of visitors and citizens, who after all come to the French Quarter to fill their bladders, even if emptying them it is not what we talk about when we promote our many charms of New Orleans. We invite folks to come party, but we do not tell them where they can go potty when they have to face the mundane consequences of the partying we encourage. New Orleans does not provide public pissoirs as they do in Paris. We have to be wary of the how public pissoirs would facilitate all those old-fashioned Crimes Against Nature. I don't know how the French prevent such crimes in their pissoirs, but we can assume that 20 million Frenchmen can't be right.

There is a solution however, even if (and excuse the pun) it is a little potty, as the British would say. The city should require every establishment that sells liquids of any sort–be it water, soda pop, snow cones or beer–to give the purchaser a ticket or token good for one free potty stop at any other establishment that sells liquids. Make these potty pieces look like Spanish Doubloons, of a golden hue to carry out the theme, and stamp a date and the name of the festive occasion on them. I guarantee people will collect them and sell their collections for huge profits on e-bay.

Alas, I doubt New Orleans will accept my idea. City Worthies do not get to be worthy by having either a sense of humor or a sense of compassion. I believe however that eventually the Supreme Court of Louisiana, with its usual profound insight and compassion towards Crimes Against Nature, will decide it is unconstitutional to encourage people to drink without making provision for a legal and convenient place to urinate. Supreme Justice will decree that the city must provide a remedy or stop issuing liquor licenses. Unfortunately I suspect that the worthies, instead of issuing potty pieces as I suggest, will opt for compulsory catheterization at the city limits and require us all to carry a picture ID attesting to such. That will keep those street people where they belong, wherever that is, but to tell the truth, I for one will be put off by it.