Glory holes and the men who use them

This paper gives a brief description of the "glory hole" and its popularity in certain arenas of public homosexual activity along with an overview of academic and underground resources that have acknowledged its existence. Testimonies, drawn from interviews with ten openly homosexual men in San Francisco who have used glory holes for sexual encounters with varying frequency, form the bulk of the paper, testifying to the diverse motivations, experiences and perceptions that make the glory hole appealing to its users.