I know this post is going to be pretty controversial, but while I would have liked to see us win on Prop 8, after thinking about it for a few days, I think losing on Prop 8 is actually a good thing for our community.

The gay community used to be pretty political - in your face, and radical. We used to look bigots in the eyes and say “fuck you!” Now we look those bigot in the face and want to be like them. We’re running to the suburbs, setting up house like Ward and June Cleaver, and wanting those bigots to accept us.

Well, they’re bigots, why in the hell do we want their acceptance? Why should their acceptance matter? Why is it that our sense of self-worth is in their hands in the first place?

That’s why I think losing on Prop 8 is good for us. It’s a slap in the face to all the people in our community who are trying to be “straight-acting”.

Then there’s the 27% of the gay community that voted for McCain. They fit in there somewhere, but in a very complicated way… Needless to say, they horrify me. Only 15% of Manhattanites voted for McCain, how can nearly twice as many gay people vote for him? How is it that Manhattan is twice as liberal as the gay community?

Yes, I’m legally married, and I think we should have the right to marry and have our marriages fully recognized everywhere. I don’t want civil unions, I want marriage because “separate but equal” is always separate and never equal. [I'd love to get Obama in a room and have him, as an intelligent black man, look me in the eye and tell me that "separate but equal" is a good idea.]

While I want gay marriage, I don’t want our marriages to mimic straight marriages. There are those in our community who want marriage so they can be more like straight people, so they can be better in line with heterosexual norms. That’s just fucked up.

This summer I said I was really disappointed in Lambda Legal for telling gay people not to sue for their rights. I think the loss on Prop 8 sorta vindicates what I’m saying. I realize there’s legal strategy behind what they were saying and they didn’t want negative precidents, but for god’s sake 30 states have now made gay marriage illegal. We can’t even win equality in California where the Republican governor is fine with gay marriage. What does that tell us about the US right now? If you can’t win through being nice in a place like California, you’re fucked and it’s clearly the wrong strategy.

I think we should have a blitzkrieg of lawsuits and our rallying cry should be that we are not 2nd class citizens and we won’t just shut up and sit in the back of the bus. I think we need to hold friends accountable for how they vote, and even take it into our business lives and refuse to do business with bigots, when we’re able to do so financially.

I really like the fact that some people are talking about stripping the Mormon church of tax exempt status. We need to be in-your-face radicals. We need to make people see that it’s not acceptable to be bigots. For too long we’ve let the fundies take the battle to us. Let’s turn that around. Let’s show that you’re not “pro-life” if you start offensive wars that kill tens of thousands of people, and you’re not “pro-family” if you can’t respect loving, stable homes that happen to be gay, and you’re not “defending our children” if you don’t allow unmarried people to be foster and adoptive parents.

If you need a model for how a radical strategy works, just look back to ACT UP and the fight for AIDS treatment. ACT UP was throwing blood on people, but it raised the issue, made a point, and softened people up so they’d make deals with the moderates in our community. But now we have no radicals and the right wing extremists are painting our moderates as “too extreme” and “dangerous”. Well, let’s show them too extreme and dangerous so they can understand the difference.

Get this one… A 23 year old DJ in Raleigh North Carolina named Josh Weaver is under house arrest for barebacking - complete with one of those electronic ankle bracelets. He had plead guilty earlier to having sex on three occasions without disclosing that he was poz and received probation that stipulated that he wasn’t allowed to have any unprotected sex. Well, he got an STD the health officials said could have been prevented with a condom and now he’s under house arrest for violating his probation.

Personally, I don’t get it. I can see criminalizing lying about your HIV status, but I don’t get how it’s the poz guy’s responsibility to tell if the neg guy doesn’t ask especially in anonymous situations. What happened to the concept of personal responsibility? NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR HEALTH EXCEPT YOU!

He’s living with his father, so if he’s really lucky his dad is cool with him having guys over. Once his probation is up I’d suggest he come to some place like New York where disclosure isn’t mandatory.

I mean, a guy who’s that hot should have all the sex he wants…  I know I’d fuck him 

ADDITION:

One thing I want to add here… If he’s on meds and has an undetectable viral load. He’s safer to have sex with than a “neg” versatile guy who’s running around barebacking and not getting tested regularly.

The laws were written in an era where poz guys were pretty infectious pretty much all the time. That’s not the case any more and I’d love to see one of these laws challenged on the basis of the person in question had an undetectable viral load.

To say that all poz guys have to disclose all the time and not require neg guys who haven’t been tested in say the last three months to disclose that their status is actually “unknown” simply makes no sense. The current policy is a lot like a scarlet letter.

Saw this video on Towleroad - it’s brilliant. It reminds us once again why it’s important to vote for gay and gay friendly candidates this year. It’s about giving future generations visible options, letting them know they can be who they want to be, achieve what they want to achieve.

Now compare that to this…

There’s so much I could say about that clip, but the point is many of us grew up around people like that (in my case they managed to state their bigotry a bit more tactfully, but the bottom line was about the same). It’s vital that young gay teens see that when they get the opportunity to get out from under those circumstances there’s a life waiting for them that’s worth living.

It’s been a while since I got all that political on here, but I figured it was time again… 

I think it’s come to a point in the election where it’s clear McCain/Palin don’t have much of a clue and the calm, steady, competent choice is Obama/Biden. It’s not just about gay issues…

• Obama (and the people advise him) are better on the economy. Early in the campaign McCain admitted he didn’t know anything about the economy. When he was asked who he’d consider for Treasury Secretary the first name he mentioned was Warren Buffet - an Obama supporter. And his suggestion that the federal government pay for everyone’s bad loans is just offensive to those of us who only took on as much as we could afford. Plus, Robert Reich (I LOVE that man’s mind) is such a strong Obama supporter he supported him in the primaries, despite his history with the Clintons.
• Obama is better on foreign affairs. Why? ‘Cause it’s about diplomacy, not war. The rest of the World is rooting for Obama to win, which means he’ll have an easier time making peace, which is what we need right now.
• Obama is better on civil rights. So much has been taken away from us in regards to civil rights in the past 8 years, we need someone who will stop that and put it back where it should be.
• On every issue except gay marriage, Obama is better on gay rights. Since when is marriage our only issue? There are so many others and McCain/Palin are almost always on the wrong side of the issue, or their support for us is half-hearted at best.

Frankly, I don’t understand US voters. I mean how was it that George W. Bush won the last election? 86% of the people in Manhattan voted for Kerry. That’s about how it should have been nationwide, IMO. I don’t even understand how it could have been close, nevertheless Bush won…

Actually, I sorta do get it. Bush won the last election because of bigotry toward gays. Outlawing gay marriage is what got a lot of conservative voters to the polls and it was enough to get him elected. Think about that for a moment. We might be out of Iraq by now and not in a deep economic hole if it hadn’t been for the fact that so many straight people hate us so much that they went out of their way to make sure we wouldn’t be considered their equals.

This time around it’s racial bigotry, “the Bradley effect” might make McCain win, even though Obama is ahead in the polls. Curious how the news media is talking openly about racism this time around, but didn’t talk about homophobia last time. But again, we might have the weaker candidate win simply because of bigotry. When you think of it that way America deserves whatever misery it gets if its politics are guided by hatred and fear…

Take a look at what average Republicans are willing to say openly these days. I can see why they don’t use the word “moral” much anymore…

How can a Log Cabin (gay) Republican feel good about being a Republican when members of their party use the words like “Commie Faggot” so easily? And no one in that crowd seemed bothered by what what going on. Do you think any of those people would care if they saw you getting gay bashed?

If you’re one of those racists who just can’t see yourself voting for a black man, then as the video below points, out Obama isn’t exactly black - he’s half white. So “vote for the white half”… 

Seriously… Your freedoms are at stake in this election. Three liberal Supreme Court justices are thinking of retiring. If you can’t see it any other way, vote for the candidate who will appoint the best judges.

And if you can’t say Barak Obama’s name without saying his middle name in there too… Do everyone a favor and just stay home.

The problem with democracy is that people like the woman above vote. Yet democracy is still the best system in the long run, but it only works if the voters are educated, and guess which party is best with education?

Just to push the point a little further… In last night’s debate, in the context of discussing hate speech at his political rallies, John McCain said the following…

That’s right, he said “Let me just say, categorically, I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies.” I was shocked. That said, he has corrected some of the people who’ve called Obama a Muslim and a terrorist, and been boo’d for it. So who knows what he really thinks.

That said, look what people at McCain rallies said to a reporter from Al Jazeera…

I’m sorry, but there’s way too much of that shit in the Republican party. It’s time for good Republicans to stand up and say something, but I seriously doubt that will happen. I mean Bush is killing and torturing people and simultaneously wrapping himself in the mantle of Christianity. Meanwhile real Christians, who follow the pacifist teachings of Christ, have said practically nothing. There’s a reason why I’m down on the Republicans - this stuff has been going on in their party since the 70s. I know ’cause I was at some of the Moral Majority rallies with Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell back then. It’s gotten worse and worse and people have just gone along with the fear and hatred. It needs to stop. If we’re lucky Obama will win, things will get better, and what the hate mongers say will just sound empty, hollow and bitter.

10 years ago today Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die tied to a fence. Some things have gotten better in that time, but sadly many, many things have not. An LGBT person is getting killed every eight days - even teens who innocently give valentines to straight guys.

Here’s a clip with Matthew Shepard’s mom. Please be as vocal as this wonderful straight woman in protecting our rights.

And if you still don’t understand why it’s important to vote for Democrats this year - issues like this are where you see the clearest difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans are the ones who consistently vote against hate crime legislation for the LGBT community despite the fact they themselves are protected by hate crime legislation (for religion-oriented hate crimes). On the other hand Democrats consistently vote for hate crime legislation. Yes, there are good Republicans, and I’ve voted for them, but don’t think that just because both haven’t quite figured out that “separate but equal” is a bad idea in terms of gay marriage and civil unions, doesn’t mean there isn’t a very real difference between the parties in matter that can affect you personally.

And just a reminder it’s still going on 10 years later even in urban areas…

I used to be a huge fan of serosorting - the idea that neg guys only fuck with neg guys. Now I see things differently and think it’s completely naive to think serosorting will work except in a few circumstances that don’t apply to most gay guys. A couple things changed in my thinking, but the final nail in the coffin was the Swiss statement that says it’s generally safe to fuck with a poz person who’s got a consistent undetectable viral load and no STDs.

Let’s look at the different general groups…

Negative guys who have limited sex with carefully selected partners and get tested regularly. These guys are probably the most believable when they say they’re negative. But the problem with them is that “carefully selected partners” means they’re probably not going to have casual sex with you. They’ve chosen to put staying neg over having a good sex life.

Negative guys who try hard to serosort - always ask status and time of last test. These guys are the next most likely to be genuinely negative, but who knows if the guys that fuck them are really neg or not… Either they’re not having much sex or they’re using condoms a lot.

“Negative” guys who casually serosort. You’ve seen they type - they’re the ones taking anonymous loads, but have “neg ub2″ in their profiles. They barely ask if the guy they’re having sex with is neg, and it’s such a casual request guys feel fine lying to have sex with them. These guys tend to not get tested very regularly, so in a way they’re sorta the highest risk group since they’re taking loads, not getting tested, and barebacking with guys just like themselves.

“Neg” guys who don’t really care about their HIV status. One thing you have to remember when you ask someone if they’re neg and they say yes is whether they care about staying neg. A growing number of guys just don’t care. And if they don’t care about their HIV status, they care even less about yours. If you don’t really get to know the guy and just trust them, you’re being incredibly naive…

Poz guys with undetectable viral loads. According to the Swiss study these guys are actually pretty safe to have sex with.

Poz guys who haven’t started meds. Obviously risky to have sex with, but often people don’t try to differentiate between these guys and the guys with undetectable viral loads and just lump all poz guys into the same category.

“Low risk” poz guys who lie about their status. Usually these guys are bottoms who feel that their lie is somewhat justified by the fact that the risk to the top is generally pretty low, and if they’re undetectable then they feel they really are as low-risk as a neg guy, so they just say they’re neg to “keep things simple” and get more tops to fuck them.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” poz guys. These guys operate on the concept that your health is your responsibility. If you take a load without asking their status, then you’re OK taking a poz load.

Stealth breeding poz tops. These guys know they’re poz, may have a high viral load, and will do whatever they can to get their poz load in your neg ass including lying when asked about their status. There aren’t many of them out there since what they’re doing is illegal, but there are some.

So the issue is that the guys who are most likely to be negative probably aren’t going to have sex with you. A few will cross your path, but not that many. The guys who are out there having sex are poz guys and high risk neg guys. Even if someone says they’re a total top - can you really believe them? And since people are most infectious right after getting infected themselves “negative” guys who are activey barebacking are really the most dangerous guys to have sex with.

That is the achilles heal of serosorting - that if you serosort you may wind up taking more risk, not less. If one of your tricks turns poz, you’re at far more risk than if you had stuck with poz guys with undetectable viral loads.

When guys realize that it’s safer to have sex with undetectable poz guys is when it gets really complicated. At that point they realize they’re taking poz loads, and serosorting seems pointless, so they often just give up with risk reduction completely.

I know that was sort of the case with me. I was trying to do risk reduction then I realized guys weren’t telling the truth when I asked their status, and if I stuck with “negative” guys who were taking loads from anonymous tops like me, then I was actually having sex with the guys most likely to make me poz. On top of that I like sex and when I stopped worrying about whether the guy was poz or not I started fucking some really great bottoms - since poz guys have fewer inhibitions…

Then there are the guys who realize that they’re rewarding liars and punishing people who tell the truth by saying ‘no’ to poz guys who are upfront about being poz. Yes, this means they take on more risk, but they usually feel that becoming poz is inevitable given what they like to do sexually…

That said serosorting is a decent strategy for a certain type of person. If you’re the type who likes getting to know the guy you’re having sex with, and being romatic, then you’re probably not having sex with a lot of guys to begin with. The fact that you get to know the guys is one of the things that’s vital to effective serosorting. And most of the guys like this have no problem dropping back to condoms if things don’t feel quite right…

Those are the guys who should be serosorting, but I doubt there are many of them reading this blog ’cause I tend to treat bottoms like impersonal fuckholes. Often I don’t really want to get to know the guy. I’m perfectly happy if there’s zero conversation. The bottoms who get into that are either poz or on their way to being poz ’cause you can’t stay neg if you take anonymous loads on a regular basis.

If you like anonymous sex with lots of guys (like I do), then serosorting just won’t work for you. My advice to you is to just accept the risk, get on with things, and enjoy your sex life…