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’d like to compliment John McCain on his choice of running mate. He went with 44 y.o. Sarah Palin – the Governor of Alaska. I think it was a brilliant choice and will get insure him the election.

Things are close now and from what I can tell there are plenty of white people in the US who just won’t vote for a black guy as President. Hell, if we have gay guys who can’t understand why Obama is a better choice than McCain, Obama is shit out of luck.

Palin compensates for a lot of McCain’s shortcomings – she’s young, female, and vibrant. All those feminists that wanted a woman in the White House just might vote Republican. Who knew feminists would vote Republican?

To me this is just all really sad. I don’t get why people don’t understand that McCain is just 8 more years like Bush…

Oh well, at least I live in a wonderful liberal bubble called NYC, where even many of the Republicans are liberal (if you can find them).

UPDATE: So after a few days now it looks like Palin would be even less qualified than G.W. Bush to run the country should something happen to McCain (which is completely possible given his age). Apparently she left the little town she was mayor of in financial ruin and her being on the PTA is still consisdered relevant experience by the Republicans.The question will be who is more qualified – Palin or Quale?

So, any thinking person would never elect her to the #2 spot in the free world, but then again after the last two elections where Bush’s incompetance was so obvious, I don’t see the US electorate made up of thinking people anymore… So, all I can say is, if McCain/Palin win, the US derves every minute of misery they’re sure to heap on them – lost jobs, soliders dying in pointless wars, human rights restrictions, etc.

Just saw this on Joe. My. God.

Ten New York Republican Senators have introduced legislation to the State Senate that will ban homophobic bullying in schools. The ‘Safe Schools for All Children Bill’ calls for training to help teachers identify and respond to bullying and places the responsibility of keeping tack on bullying cases with schools. The bill also includes protection for transgender students and teachers and a cyber-bullying stipulation.

In other words, even Republicans in New York understand that you need to protect gay kids. That’s so far ahead of so many places in the US – usually you just find that stuff in New York City, not new York State as a whole. Kudos to the NYS Senate!

I didn’t grow up here, but I’m still proud to call myself a New Yorker – it truly is a great state!

THE BOTTOM LINE: A portion of the money you give to Manhunt has gone and apparently will continue to go to conservative Republican causes.

Get this – the owner of Manhunt has given the legal maximum to the McCain campaign. If in the past we boycotted companies like Coors for working against gay rights, I think we need to hold members of our own community to an even higher standard – especially ones that make their money by facilitating gay sex!

So here’s what I’d like you to do… Use the customer service link on Manhunt to tell them what you think of their owner’s politics. They’re making $30 million a year off of us having sex, they should not be working against us.

Next, make it so your membership does not automatically renew – change it so you have to manually renew. If they haven’t fixed the problem by the time your membership renewal date rolls around, don’t pay them more until they’ve reversed their policies (a big contribution to the Democrats would be nice.)

And lastly, put something in your profile telling other people to write customer service as well. Let’s make it clear that if they want our money they cannot support people who don’t like gay people.

Yes, they have every right to be self-hating jerks, but not with our money. Use Adam4Adam instead (it’s free), or better yet BarebackRT – anything but Manhunt. Do not give your money to someone who is going to give even a cent of it to the Republicans and set our rights back even further!

UPDATE:

Just to make things perfectly clear… Here is where McCain stands on gay rights vs say abortion rights (which we know Republicans hate) in terms of whether he’d consider a running mate who was pro-choice or pro-gay…

I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far more so than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, you know, a number of other issues.

So there you have it – being pro-gay is an anathema to the guy – pro-life he can live with (surprisingly), but not pro-gay – god forbid! Which explains why it’s unforgivable for the owner of Manhunt to give him money (in case there was any question).

UPDATE #2:

Well, there’s been a big development… The guy who donated to McCain (Jonathan Crutchley) has stepped down from Manhunt’s board of directors. The problem is that he’s probably still the main recipient of Manhunt’s profits. To me, that’s a good first step, but it’s not over yet… I want to know when I give them money that none of it will get to Republicans.

A massive donation by Jonathan Crutchley to a very liberal gay cause would go a long way right now…

UPDATE #3:

I had this whole blog post written which I’m not going to publish. The bottom line is Manhunt is a bit of a divided company. It appears the a majority shareholder (Larry Basile) is pretty liberal, but his co-founder (Jonathan Crutchley) is a Log Cabin Republican who gives to conservative causes. While Crutchley has stepped down he will continue to get a huge share of Manhunt’s profits and will continue to give to causes most of us abhor.

Manhunt (the company) is hiding behind the excuse that the company didn’t give the money, an individual did, but for me the bottom line is that money from customers is going to people and causes most of their customers have huge problems with. Yes, Crutchley has the right to give the money, but he shouldn’t expect his customers to want to give him more money to give to conservative causes.

The company is also being completely rude to their customers who object. If you put anything about it in your profile (like “I won’t fuck Republicans who give money to McCain”) they remove it and send a pissy message saying Manhunt is not a political forum. To me that’s bullshit. If their profits can go to conservative political causes, then they should at least allow funny polticial commentary in profiles. And for god’s sake – APOLOGIZE! The letter they send is so fucking harsh and never once acknowleges that people have a completely understandable reason for being mad at them.

Basically, given how they’ve handled the situation they’re saying what Crutchley did is reasonable. I have a big problem with that. They need to be on their knees apologizing for his actions and separating themselves from him. They really need to buy him out, bu I understand that takes time.

Here’s what I urge all of you to do…

• Stop giving Manhunt money
• Try out other hookup sites like BarebackRT and Adam4Adam
  
• When you have to ask other Manhunt members to e-mail you pics, explain why you don’t have a paid membership.

IMHO, I don’t think a formal boycott of Manhunt will work. The issue is too complicated since there are liberals at Manhunt, and people feel sorry for the employees of Manhunt. As far as the employees I’m not too worried about them as a group – the jobs Manhunt will lose, some other hookup site will gain.

But don’t take this lying down… Please send a clear message that Jonathan Crutchley is a liability for Manhunt and the sooner they buy him out, the better…

In case there was any doubt, a new study out today confirms that HIV acts quickly. The idea that it lies dormant is now fully debunked.

“It was stunning to see how quickly the immune system was affected,” said Haynes, who is the lead author on the study.

To deal with the shrinking window, clinicians can check for the presence of HIV more often, but the potential for catching cases early enough for intervention looks bleak. The earliest and most infectious stage of HIV has vague and practically unnoticable symptoms.

“It looks like HIV does a lot of damage very early on,” Haynes said. “Now we feel that the opportunity to intervene most effectively may range from about five to seven days after infection.”

Doctors are going to have to start screening patients for the HIV virus even if they come in with what seems like a headache or a common cold, Leone said.

Why they say 5 to 7 days when the window for effective PEP has been 72 hours for a while now, I don’t know…

The upside is that good HIV tests should be able to detect infection much more quickly. Which means you don’t have to wait 3 months to be sure you’re neg. It also means that if your doctor does a blood draw and tells you to come back in two weeks – by then it’s too late to do anything about it. That may be fine for routine checks, but it’s not OK when you think you just got infected.

Life has been crazy the past couple weeks (I’ve worked through 2 weekends now) but it’s starting to calm down. I’m sorta horny but more tired, so just been jacking off a lot. I’ll get back into the swing of things soon enough… But in the meantime…

Have you ever wondered why black guys have such high rates of HIV infection? I mean look at this HIV infection graph the CDC released last month…

Black guys are off the charts. Yet it’s not like black guys are all that much sluttier or anything. Or why is AIDS such a problem in Africa? Once again people may start to wonder about black sexuality, but it turns out it’s not that at all…

A new report out today says the real reason is that 90% of black Africans and 60% of African-Americans have a genetic trait that makes them 40% more likely to become HIV positive than people without the genetic trait. The trait was actually a response in their evolution that made them resistant to a certain form of malaria, but now makes them more likely to become poz.

It’s a bit of a cruel fate really. Not only does Africa have long standing development issues, but now we find they’re basically cursed when it comes to HIV and AIDS. On the other hand, the ancestors of northern European whites, who have so many advantages already – their ancestors who survived Smallpox gave 1% of them the ability to be completely immune to HIV and 10% of them the ability to be “resistant” to HIV. It’s like the people with all the advantages just get more advantages, while the people with all the problems, just get more problems…

So if you’re black this is just one of those things you’re going to have to deal with. Black guys who want to stay negative have to be extra careful.

But the really sad thing is how AIDS will just continue to decimate Africa… Those of us who live in the West are so incredibly lucky – we have the wealth to pay for drug cocktails that take make a manageable situation out of a health crisis. Now imagine the equivalent of the gay community in terms of likelihood to become poz, only no money to pay for the meds – and no chance of being able to afford the meds. Always urge politicians to give funding for HIV/AIDS in Africa – it’s the least we can do as rich Westerners…

The one bit of good news today was that HIV positive people can now enter the US as visitors and as immigrants! This means there’s no fear you’ll be asked to leave the US if you become poz…