PALM SPRINGS, CA – Two gay men, who were arrested in March on the Caribbean island of Dominica for public indecency, have admitted to having sex on the balcony of their stateroom while their ship was in port. John Robert Hart, 41, and Dennis Jay Mayer, 53, of Palm Springs, told gay blog site Queerty that they were engaged in sexual intercourse shortly before their arrest during the gay cruise to the Caribbean, which is operated by Atlantis Events. “We simply went on what should have been the vacation of a lifetime but instead, it turned out to be a very frightful nightmare,” the couple told Queerty in an exclusive interview.

“When you have these types of incidents, people just want to talk about the salacious details. So let’s talk about it: Yes, we were having sex on the balcony. We were [deleted]. There, I said it.” Mayer, 53, and Hart, 41, say that of greater concern is the question of safety for LGBT visitors to countries with a history of homophobia. “The real question is not what we were doing on our balcony, but why is one of the largest promoters of gay cruises and events taking folks from the LGBT community to these countries with laws against homosexuals on their books?

Why are they financially supporting these countries? These countries have laws against consenting adult gay men and women who engage in intimate contact and in some cases just for the existence of their sexual orientation.” The men were charged in late March with “buggery,” a criminal charge that dates to 19th Century British colonial rule. Dominica, which has one of the poorest economies in the western hemisphere—and is sometimes confused with the Dominican Republic—criminalizes consenting same-sex intimacy.