Village People songs, like cliches, are there for a reason.

Turns out YMCAs were tagged as a cruiser’s paradise long before the costumed boy band lampooned the health clubs’ rep in the 1978 hit single.

The dirty secret was out at least as early as October 1964, when Walter Jenkins, a 46-year-old married advisor to and longtime buddy of President Lyndon Johnson, got caught in a sting operation blowing an older dude in a stall in the men’s room of a Y just a couple minutes walk from the White House. (The actual club where Jenkins did his business has been rebuilt since he got stung.)

News of the sex bust didn’t break for several days — turns out Jenkins on the day of his bust went straight back to work at the White House after his release from the police station, and worked past midnight as usual.

But, when the story broke, just weeks before election day, it broke big. One biographer said Jenkins became overnight “the most famous homosexual in America.”

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I just can’t stop! I’ve got the madness! Let’s sew up this bracket right now! FBI, CIA: Show me your men!

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: My, how the tables have turned. Look who’s on the other end of the interrogation table now, FBI! Do you have women working inside your workplace? We have ways of making you talk. Cue the Rage Against the Machine! Fire up the waterboard!—What’s that you say? You publicly post your org chart on the Internet? My bad:

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Though hate crimes decreased on the whole in 2007, the FBI reports that the year saw a marked increase in violence against gays. Hate crimes decreased by 1 percent; crimes against gays increased by six.

So are anti-gay crimes on the rise? Or are they just being tracked and recorded better?