Bloglander

Do you find the above photo offensive? 

Not the pic of the three good-looking folks in the Bisexual Awareness Week poster, but the photo of the middle-aged dude who spent midday in the Spokane Community College Lair student center "protesting" what he considers the "lewd" imagery on said poster by sitting on top of the ladder without a shirt? 

As far as protests go, it wasn't exactly marching across the bridge in Selma. And for Scott Maclay, an SCC medical student, president of the Rattlesnakes Motorcycle Club and the lone man baring his desire to cover up those frisky poster children, Thursday's demonstration wasn't quite in the same league as the protests he organized against police militarization in December that attracted the likes of Rep. Matt Shea and attention from conspiracy-minded websites like InfoWars.com. 

Most students who ran across the smiling Maclay around 11 am either laughed and moved on or ignored him entirely. When he caught someone's eye, he'd quickly point at the Bisexual Awareness Week poster and asked, "Do you believe this image violates the student conduct code?" 

Of course, most college students haven't even read the student conduct code. I can't even remember if any of the three schools I attended even had one. But Maclay claims that the Spokane Community College Student Code of Conduct, which has a long list of clauses that really make for some entrancing reading, essentially says that since he's offended and finds the poster's image "pornographic," then the school should take it down. When the administration disagreed with him, well, that's how we end up with a shirtless guy on top of a ladder, asking people, "Hey, would you want me coming to class this way?"

We can probably all answer that in the negative, no matter what our sexuality, right?

For his part, Maclay claims that he has no problem with bisexuality; he's just protesting the "lewd" image on the poster. He's just a church-going, caring guy, worried about the kids touring campus with their parents being confronted with sexual imagery.

Betsy Lawrence, though, isn't buying it. An SCC English professor and faculty advisor to the SCC Global club — a group representing LGBTQ students on campus and organizers of Bisexual Awareness Week — Lawrence said, "I do think it's a gay and lesbian issue for him," and noted that SCC students "picked and created" the image and poster with the intention of being provocative. 

"If you were to make a safe-sex ad, you'd make something that looks like people about to have sex," Lawrence said. "You see all sorts of things on a public campus."

Darik French, a software development student, was tending the Bisexual Awareness Week desk for the SCC Global club a few feet from Maclay's ladder, handing out brochures and free condoms to any interested parties, and collecting donations for breast cancer research. He welcomed the "friendly debate" Maclay was having with a few people who stopped to take his photo, lured into a conversation by Maclay's bareback antics. 

Cassie Wright, a medical student like Maclay, stopped to read his sign and laughed at the idea the poster was lewd. 

"My sister who's 10 years old has seen worse things than that. It's PG-13," Wright said. "I've seen worse on an American Idol billboard."