Suburban Swingers

Swinging isn't new. California military families reportedly swapped wives at the first "key parties" in the 1950s; these events later became part of the lore of the swinging '60s and '70s. Today's modern swinging movement includes conventions and national publications—and Swing Stock, a four-day campout in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area featuring group showers and the crowning of a king and queen. Swingers even have their own generation gap; older swingers feel that the youth are too superficial or that they are looking for a "big orgy" instead of strengthening their current relationships and making new friendships, says Curtis Bergstrand, head of sociology at Bellarmine University, a Roman Catholic institution in Louisville, Ky.

The Cherry Pit started as a private gathering in an apartment in the 1980s in a neighborhood popular with young urban professionals. It outgrew those digs and eventually moved with its host to Duncanville. In 2004 Trulock and Norris restarted the parties, which compete for patrons of other Dallas-area swinger clubs, including the Silver Minx, Velvet Curtain, Spankee's Club, Iniquity and the Rustic Red House, to name a few.

The U.S. Supreme Court implied in a 1990 case involving the city of Dallas and sex businesses that commercial sexual activity does not constitute expression under the First Amendment. But Klein, the Cherry Pit's attorney, says Trulock and Norris's fight to protect the swinging lifestyle in the privacy of their own home is supported by a more recent Supreme Court decision, the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case that struck down Texas's sodomy law. "That case is the seminal case about regulating private conduct," Klein says. "Any kind of private activity, [even] wearing pink socks in your home." A county judge denied Klein's motion Wednesday for a restraining order against the Duncanville law. Now they'll try for an injunction while the lawsuit works its way through the courts—a process that could take a decade or longer. City officials, declining to comment further, issued a statement saying they will respond to the lawsuit in court and continue to enforce the sex club law.

Officials in Duncanville and other cities that have tried to limit swing club activity have said they're not trying to outlaw sex or cast judgment on private activities. Instead they style their efforts on the need to curtail noise and traffic in residential areas and control commercial sex activity. But Trulock and Norris claim that the Cherry Pit isn't a business. Klein likens their gatherings to Super Bowl parties. "If I invite a bunch of people over to my house to watch the Super Bowl and I provide the refreshments and I ask them for 10 bucks to defray the costs, it's just like this. It's just that the activity that goes on isn't watching the Super Bowl," he says.

Klein describes himself as a "wide-eyed liberal" with a weakness for personal freedom causes. When he was a "baby lawyer" his former firm helped defend Hustler magazine and argued against drug paraphernalia laws. He says he's not a swinger and never plans to be. "To me it was like discovering a tribe of people in some remote area of the world that you had no idea existed, with their own hierarchy, their own social rules, their own code of conduct."

A 2000 study of 1,200 self-professed swingers found a cross-section of respectable America. "They're not that odd. They are Middle America: they're doctors, they're lawyers, they're school teachers," says Bellarmine University's Bergstrand, who co-authored the report. "It doesn't mean that swinging isn't a disaster for a lot of people, because it is," he concedes, adding that the practice isn't something he or his wife is interested in.