If you’ve been reading this for a while you know I’m neg, but pretty “poz friendly”, even bug chaser friendly. At least on a fantasy level I think it would be sorta hot to be a poz top. The sex I get into is a lot about power/control and risk/vulnerability – it’s just natural that the whole HIV/poz thing accentuates those factors, so I totally get how HIV gets eroticized.

I’ve even gone as far as wondering if I wanted to bottom for a high viral load top to hurry things along. The high viral load guy I fucked this past month offered to breed me and given that I tend to bleed when I get fucked (’cause there’s a tear down there that’s never quite healed properly), had I gone for it, it probably would have done the trick.

But I didn’t go for it, though I was really ambivalent. Curiously I had the apartment to myself some nights and getting bred on those days would have had a certain poetic/ironic quality to it. World AIDS Day was one day, and on the “gift giving” side of things – my birthday was another day I had the place to myself, and then there was a day early in Christmas week.

In the end it came down to the fact that while I don’t mind taking risk having the sex that I normally have being a top, I didn’t really want to do more than that. The phrase that kept going through my head was “life has enough hassles I don’t need to go looking for another one”.

Now, had I been a bottom I think the decision would have been completely different. In that case my normal sex life would most certainly have resulted in becoming poz, so I think I would have embraced the whole poz thing and bug chased. There’s something to having a decent idea of who pozzed you, or knowing when it happened (say a gangbang), or having a video o it. And I probably would have done the same if I were versatile.

But I’m a top and it’s not certain that I’ll become poz, so I’m going to just keep doing what I’m doing. If it happens, I’m fine with it. If it doesn’t, I’m fine with that too…

I guess my whole point in this post is to say I know where a lot of you are coming from. I understand those of you who are bug chasers, and I understand those of you who choose not to bug chase but still fantasize about it. To me it all seems pretty normal.

This is probably way too much information, but here it goes… I got my parents’ Christmas card/letter yesterday and just shook my head in amusement…

We [family name] have ‘Breaking News’ – a new adopted daughter – SARA PALIN. She is such a breath of fresh air and helped us survive the election. Tonight the news broke that someone torched her Church. This saddens us greatly. The America we once knew is fast disappearing, but we are grateful to have lived 84+ years in a more loving atmosphere.

When my parents were born, blacks were segregated and couldn’t vote. Women couldn’t get jobs other than ones like secretary, librarian, teacher, cook, etc. One of the bloodiest most inhuman wars in history (WWI) had just concluded. They spent their childhood in the Great Depression. Then they went through Hitler exterminating Jews, the Japanese occupation of China, the massacres in South Asia, countless famines and brutal dictators, KKK lynching of blacks, race riots in the 60s, and so on, but somehow people like their son wanting to be treated as an equal makes all those other things look insignificant. Somehow all that other stuff is my mom’s definition of “a more loving atmosphere”, and gay people daring to live in committed loving relationships means she’s no longer in “a loving atmosphere”. That’s just fucked up! For a while I’ve had serious problems with my mom’s definition of the word “love”. This is just one more example of that…

Needless to say I don’t spend much time around my parents. Every few years I give it another shot, but I think the try a few years ago was my last.

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.