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…  😉

The other night I met up with a guy I know through the blog. Didn’t fuck him – just went out for drinks. He’s like the third person I know who’s in his 40s, in a 10+ year relationship, who’s a bug chaser. In all three cases the boyfriend has no clue.

I’m wondering if there’s a difference based on age when it comes to bug chasing. He was talking about how younger guys (tweens) just think of barebacking as normal sex. Then there’s a whole group who just don’t want to admit they’re bug chasing when they tested neg and are taking anonymous loads from guys they don’t know. But I think guys in their 40s saw some of the horrors and when they decide to take loads they’re more honest with themselves about the risks and what they’re doing.

Then there’s the whole relationship angle… Needless to say that’s a bit complicated, and interesting as well…

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…

It seems like there’s been a lot of discussion of bug chasing on this blog recently. The “Neg 4 Neg” gangbang bottom taking a poz load, the bug chaser going on a sex vacation in SF and wanting as many loads as possible, and so on… I’m wondering whether I’ve gone too far. Not sure if I’m 100% comfortable with the public image I’m projecting. I mean it’s all happening and on one hand it’s sort of like news reporting… But there’s also an element of facilitation and eroticizing guys becoming poz and that’s where it gets to be a bit “dark”.

So I’m wondering what you guys think of it? Am I going too far? Should I step back and lighten things up a bit? Tell me what you think… The poll has answers that sorta cover the gammut, but feel free to add something under “other” or better yet – leave a comment on the post…

Oh yeah – I’m not going to feel obliged to do what the poll results say, but I will definitely take them into consideration…

UPDATE: It’s pretty clear where the poll results are going… While about 1 in 5 of you want it to go darker, the vast majority want it to stay the same and preferably lighten up a bit. What’s telling is that the “lighten up” percentage has been going up as the days drag on. In other words, the occasional readers may be put off a bit by the heaviness of the blog. The argument for staying the same is that this is my life and it won’t be all that interesting if I censor it.

So, to that end… I’ll change how I right about things, but not so much what I write about. In other words, those of you who like it dark will need to read between the lines. I’ll put all the details in there (neg4neg gangbang, etc.), but won’t dwell so much on the risk factor. Here are a few examples…

The bug chaser visiting San Francisco wanting loads – I’d just leave out the bug chaser part and say a bottom is on vacation wanting as many loads as possible. It would completely change the nature of the post – if you wanted to read the other related posts you could figure out the details…

There will still be occasional updates on HIV and AIDS research – that won’t change. I may think twice about some of the stories however… For example, I’m not sure how important the “HIV Strikes Quickly” story really was.

The story about three sides of a stealth breeding gangbang – I’d do it with less detail and more as a cautionary tale (neg bottoms who take anonymous loads will wind up getting poz loads).

The story of what a bug chaser is thinking as he makes the decision to take all loads instead of being “neg4neg”… That one would be done pretty much the same way. There are some things I think just need to be expressed unedited.

When I talk about my hookups I usually just stick to the facts of what happened – so no change will be needed there…