Mass. beach sex riles some

PROVINCETOWN, Mass., July 7 (UPI) -- Public sex and nude sunbathing are upsetting visitors to a Cape Cod beach in Massachusetts, officials say.

Complaints from family vacationers has Cape Cod National Seashore officials vowing to crack down on public sex acts in the Provincetown, Mass., area's beaches, the Boston Herald reported Monday. The number of tickets handed out has shot up from an average of 40 per year to 132 last year, the newspaper said.

"This is not what we're interested in seeing," George Price, superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore, told the Herald.

Much of the open sex involves gays but heterosexual copulation also has been reported along the pristine national shore. Last year, a New Jersey family came upon couples and a large group of men having "sex in the nude, including oral and anal sex right out in the open" among the dunes, the Cape Cod Times reported last week.

"Families are upset and outraged," Price said to the Herald. "It's really two issues, one is the nude sunbathing, which has been around since the '70s and '80s, and that issue is being addressed. But the issue that we're talking about today is public sex: It's a seashore problem and it's a town problem."