Route 6A in Johnston, Rhode Island — a landscape of fast-food joints, car dealerships, and the like — exudes a sense of generic sprawl, with the bland promise of anonymity that no doubt made it attractive to seven men who visited the Amazing Express adult video store and theater there on the evening of January 16. But by the time the men walked out, they were in police custody, charged with indecency for allegedly engaging in sex acts, and on a fast track to an unimaginable degree of public exposure.

Within days, reports surfaced that the arrested men included not just a registered sex offender, but also a high-school teacher in suburban Cumberland, Rhode Island; a Republican town official from Connecticut; and the lawyer husband of a judge handling the "shoe bomber" case. Given the group’s generally high profile, the voyeuristic schadenfreude was almost palpable in some quarters, until one of the men, 55-year-old Stuart E. Denton, the well-liked chair of the planning-and-zoning commission in Plainfield, Connecticut, hanged himself in a shed near his home.

Some suspect that police used the seven men as pawns in the town’s long-running effort to reduce the presence of adult entertainment. For years, Johnston officials have used a mixture of police investigations and licensing initiatives to halve the number of such establishments from their one-time high of six. And the allegations derived from the January 16 raid will form the basis for a February 12 town-council hearing that could result in a warning for Amazing Express, the suspension of the video store’s business license, or possibly its closure. Meanwhile, the extended gay community remains outraged, and after a January 30 demonstration outside Town Hall, organizers are considering their next step.

Although they express sadness about Denton’s death, officials in Johnston, a town of 25,000 just west of Providence, remain unapologetic about the raid, saying the community won’t tolerate an "anything goes" atmosphere in the 50-seat adult theater located within Amazing Express. They also disclaim responsibility for the resulting media frenzy that quickly spread the story through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. But critics fault police for targeting the store’s customers and blame the media for running with the story of the raid — which revolved around misdemeanor charges, allegations of masturbation, and crimes of little social impact — as if it were something of major consequence.

Rather than pursuing a zoning process against the store, "They decided they would just shame these guys," says Kate Monteiro, president of the Rhode Island Lesbian and Gay Alliance for Civil Rights. "By shaming these guys, they would warn off anyone else who would be a customer of the establishment and drive the establishment out of business, rather than dealing with the laws." And while the arrested men’s sexual orientations are unknown, she adds, "Homophobia is the activating mechanism in that shame."

Johnston police chief Richard Tamburini says the raid by four detectives was precipitated by complaints from Amazing Express customers. One man was arrested after allegedly exposing himself from a peep-show booth, Tamburini says, and the six others — four of whom were gathered together — were charged after being seen exposing themselves or fondling each other inside the darkened theater, which requires a $5 admission. (Note: Amazing Express, a chain with stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, advertises in the Phoenix.)

"These kinds of situations never come down to a soft landing," says Tamburini. Denton’s suicide was an "unwelcome and very tragic turn of events, but this was the police department responding to complaints from the community. We cannot accept this kind of activity as a fact of life. It needs to be addressed. These men could very well have conducted themselves in this fashion in the privacy of their own homes, and why they decided to do it in a public facility, and risk so much, was a decision that they made on their own." Tamburini and Johnston mayor William R. Macera also describe the alleged masturbation within the theater — without condoms, they note — as a threat to public health.

The town’s track record on similar issues, however, leads Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, to say that the recent raid "lends support to the suspicion that this was just one more attempt to harass the owners of adult entertainment in the town, and if the Constitution is preventing them from shutting these facilities down, it now appears they want to harass the customers." Not surprisingly, the story took on a life of its own as the details hit television in Providence and Boston, and the Providence Journal.

Macera says the town can’t be blamed for a person who decides to commit suicide, and he denies that the Amazing Express raid was intended to cause shame, badger the store, or exploit feelings of homophobia. "I feel it’s very sad that this gentleman in Connecticut decided to take his own life, I guess, for the shame connected with this," Macera says. "But as far as I’m concerned, this is a great country. I don’t have any problem with the gay-and-lesbian movement. They have a right to their lifestyle. My concern is when this starts to interfere with other people’s rights."

The overlooked story in all this, however, remains the extent to which gays and lesbians still face inequity, hostility, and stigma. When it comes to the death of Stuart Denton, "he was killed by the power of shame and the message that if somebody thinks you might be gay, that would be the end of the world for someone," Monteiro says. "It’s a sobering thought, but for the LGBT community, those moments still happen, and they happen much too often."

Arrest records are public information, and it’s not exactly uncommon for police in some communities to publicize the results of sting operations aimed, for example, at men who solicit prostitutes. The obvious intention is to reduce vice through shame. Most of these stories, though, have a one-day lifespan and a pretty limited reach before they fade from view.

A few things made this situation different: the gotcha mentality involving the arrest of men from respected positions in tawdry circumstances; the resulting questions about the fitness of such an individual (the teacher) to work with young people; and misperceptions of how gay men are more likely to be dangerous or engaged in aberrant behavior. These were the messages being fanned, before the body of Denton — a divorced Vietnam veteran who worked as a nursing-home supervisor in New London, Connecticut, and was the father of a son in his 20s — was found Sunday, January 20.

Was it newsworthy that lewd behavior may have been taking place within an outpost of the multi-billion-dollar porn industry? Maybe to some small degree, although it’s clear that the attention devoted to the story vastly exceeded its significance. It’s also telling that to Denton’s friends and neighbors in Eastern Connecticut, the obscenity is not the allegations surrounding his visit to an adult video store, but rather, the way a dedicated town official was reduced to a grotesque caricature. "As far as I’m concerned, the press put the noose around the man’s neck," says Paul Sweet, a former first selectman in Plainfield.

The day after the discovery of Denton’s body, a cluster of satellite-television trucks gathered outside the district court in Providence to cover the arraignment of the six remaining defendants. Three of the men pleaded no contest, meaning that the charges against them may be expunged if they stay out of trouble for a year, and each paid a little shy of $100 in court costs. The cases were continued for two who pleaded not guilty, and one defendant missed his court date.

Denton’s suicide — as well as the odd contrast between the presence of the high-powered electronic media and the mundane disposition of a case that had all the courtroom drama of settling a parking ticket — led at least one member of the media fray to reconsider his position. A few days before the arraignment, on an afternoon talk-radio show on Rhode Island’s WPRO-AM, host Dan Yorke aggressively expressed his view that the accused high-school teacher (whom he didn’t identify by name), shouldn’t be in front of another class, at least not in the same district. Ultimately, though, Yorke came to believe that the allegation — if true — didn’t really have much impact on society or the accused man’s professional capability. Taking up part of the court hallway amid the media throng, Yorke began to wonder aloud about the whole thing. "Really," he said, "You have to ask the question, what the hell are we doing here?"