BootmanLA

I'd like to add: just because I think same-sex marriage rights could easily be hollowed out doesn't mean that outright overturning that decision isn't a possibility. Remember that the central holding of Roe - that the right to privacy including the right to abortion (at least some of the time) - was explicitly upheld in the Casey decision in 1992. Then, after twice finding this right existed, the political shift of the court meant precedent could be tossed aside simply because one side won the right election. The Obergefell decision included current justices Alito, Thomas, and Roberts voting against it. On the other side, Kennedy (who wrote Obergefell) was replaced by Kavanaugh, who is no friend of LGBT rights. Ginsburg was replaced by Barrett (likewise). And Scalia, who also voted against it, was replaced by Gorsuch, who likewise is no LGBT supporter. There are already five votes to end same-sex marriage rights on the Court, even if we don't include Roberts (who might vote against overturning), if the right case comes along. And as we've seen with the hard-line conservative movement, they're not above manufacturing a case that puts the issue square and central back in front of the Court to give them that opportunity. My point, though, is that we don't even have to reach that point to have our civil rights eroded drastically. Just as Roe had been eviscerated in many states with 6-week limits on seeking an abortion and the like, the right to marry could easily be undercut to the point that in some places it's almost meaningless. And once you get to that point, ending it completely becomes a lot easier, politically. And bear in mind: Thomas is 75, Alito is 73. If a Republican (ie Trump) is elected this November, both are likely to retire during his term and the nominees to replace them will be 30+ years younger. The opportunity to move the Court to the left at all will be gone for another 20 or so years, until Kavanaugh or Gorsuch, both in their mid-50's, reaches retirement age. And if something happened to Sotomayor (who's 69) while we have a Republican president, make that 30 or more years before the Court returns to sanity.

I (and others) have speculated here that the current Supreme Court is hostile to the same-sex marriage right recognized in the Obergefell case, and more specifically, I've pointed out that the Court doesn't have to outright overturn Obergefell to render much of it meaningless. We got a hint of that this week in an unrelated case, Department of State v. Munoz. In Munoz, the Court held that while Munoz (a female American citizen) has a right to be married to her spouse, an El Salvadoran named Luis Ascensio-Cordero, that does not give her the right to live with him in the United States if the State Department refuses to give him a visa to enter the country. Moreover, the State Department wouldn't even provide a reason to the couple as to why he was ineligible for a visa. And of course, if you don't know WHY the visa was declined, it's a lot harder to challenge the refusal in court; in fact, under ordinary circumstances, the decisions of an executive official to grant or deny a visa is final and unreviewable in court. In essence, the Court applied a precedent known as Gluckberg, which protects citizens from infringements on their fundamental liberties when that liberty is not explicitly spelled out (as, for example, the right to freedom of speech is). Under the Gluckberg test, the person must assert a specific fundamental liberty interest, and then demonstrate that said interest is "deeply rooted in this nation's history." Here, the Court said that the liberty interest being asserted was not marriage per se, but "the right of a citizen to have her non-citizen spouse enter and remain in the United States" - and that, the Court held, was not a liberty deeply rooted in history. So: let's say a president is elected who's hostile to gay rights, and appoints a Secretary of State who, in turn, directs his visa-granting officials to reject applicants who are same-sex spouses of citizens. That decision is unreviewable unless a fundamental liberty interest is involved, and this Court has just told us that there's no fundamental liberty interest involved in a non-citizen spouse being admitted to live in the US because it's not deeply rooted in history. Certainly, in that case, same-sex marriage (which has only been a thing for less than a dozen years, under the federal government) is not deeply rooted in our history either. Then - imagine all the other ways in which marriage ordinarily grants certain rights and privileges and liberties - and imagine for how many of them this Court could say "Well, extending THOSE to same-sex couples isn't rooted in our history, even if we have to let them marry; same-sex couples aren't entitled to X or Y or Z" and see how quickly same-sex marriage is gutted even without repealing it, much as how Roe was hollowed out long before it was actually overturned.

You use your words. You say "I'm into rimming (or being rimmed). Is that something you'd like to do?" And so on. If you want, you can preface the discussion by saying "I know we're basically very compatible in terms of what each of us likes, broadly speaking. But there are things I'm interested in (or "I've done that I'd like to do with you") and I'd like to talk about those and see what's on the table."

1. The standard for a court finding the defaming a public figure is much harder to meet than for an ordinary person. 2. Not everyone who is actually defamed feels the need to rush to court and file suit to defend his reputation, especially from a crackpot nutcase like RFK Jr. 3. Defamation requires making a false statement about someone, and opinions are, by definition, neither true nor false. I could say "X person, in my opinion, is a traitor who deserves to be shot" and that, being my opinion, is completely un-actionable. If I said "X person stole $100,000 from me" and he did not, in fact, steal that from me, that WOULD be actionable.

And as someone who manages a system that also uses email notifications: there are multiple points at which this could be failing, some within the control of the site management and some not, so it's not always easy to diagnose. Typically, what happens is that someone does something on this site, and the end result is an email notification. But it could be the forum software isn't properly registering the initial "trigger" in the first place. It could be that the forum software is not able to communicate with the host operating system where the email "dispatching" program resides - possibly due to a configuration change on one end or the other. It could be that the host's email dispatch program has locked up and isn't accepting messages. It could be that the email program was configured to use a particular mail server for sending, and that server's got issues. It could be that the company that contracted with the email server company has switched email service but forgot about this program using the old service. And so on. I get the frustration, but I'm not sure that not getting notifications that a thread here has been updated is crisis-level stuff.

Looking down at my keyboard, I see that portions of the letters on the D, L, V and N keys are worn away, along with the entirety of the C key's letter. It's not lube as I don't use that at the computer, but it's from fingers that are sticky from snacking, etc. while I type. I only replace a keyboard when keys start not working. As someone who learned to touch type in the 1970's, I don't look at my fingers when I'm typing so I don't need to know what key is what, generally; and virtually every keyboard has little ridges on the F and J keys to help us touch-typists find the "home row" position even if we're blindfolded.

Not just "Just before test". If you only get tested quarterly (and I'm not knocking that, just saying), then you could be infected one hour after the blood is drawn for a test and until your next test you have three months you could be carrying and transmitting something. I'd hope that most people who realize they may "have something" would have it checked out earlier than their next quarterly test, but there are certainly some who won't. I agree that this guy's ignorance is staggering (but sadly all too common), and that it's on him to protect himself. But I still think it's a shit thing to do to lie and tell someone you're "clean" (thus giving in to his archaic and insulting language, and reinforcing his stupid ideas about safety). I'd opt for directness and education (and if he didn't want to fuck after that, well, I doubt seriously he's a good enough fuck to put up with that kind of bullshit.

"Majority muslim" and "Islamic" are two different things. The US is majority Christian (for now) but we are not a Christianist nation (yet). A country that is "Islamic" is one where the government is based on the principles of Islam (as interpreted by a particular group, of course, but that's a separate issue). Bosnia is not such a country.

Probably. But absent proof of what, specifically, he means, I'm going to take him literally. Which is more fun, really, because aside from Turkey (which straddles Europe and Asia and thus is really a "Eurasian" country rather than European), there's no nation I know of that is anywhere close to becoming "officially Islamic". Especially considering that a lot of Islamic immigrants to Europe are ESCAPING Islamic states, and while they want to be free to worship in accordance with their religious beliefs, they're not particularly likely to want the kind of merged church-state situation we see in many (but not all) Islamic countries. So the whole idea of "if a European country becomes officially Islamic" is roughly akin to "if Vatican City exiles the Pope" or "if America renounces capitalism and guns". Ain't gonna happen.

AGAIN: To quote Viking8x6:

I think there's a huge difference between Reagan and Trump, though (well, actually, many huge differences, but...). Especially with respect to Europe. Quite a few liberal Europeans probably fretted that Reagan was going to end up provoking a nuclear war with the USSR, but at least they knew on whose side he stood (with them, against the USSR and eastern bloc). Trump, by contrast, has made it clear he's fully prepared to hang western Europe out to dry, NATO be damned. I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if European sentiment (outside the authoritarian bloc) is strongly for Biden, at least as opposed to Trump, because they can watch what's happening in Ukraine and realize that very little (other than the US helping Europe) is keeping Russia from just taking whatever parts of whatever countries on its border that it wants. Yes, the Princess of Wales was a huge deal in all of Europe in the mid-80's, much more so than any US president. But again - I suspect the reason nobody had much to say about Reagan was that they knew he was on their side (as indeed all US presidents since WW2 had been). Europeans no longer have the luxury of ignoring which party's in power in the US, and by and large, they know it.

One can, of course, believe in anything, including little green men from Mars, a flat earth, or a moon made of green cheese. That doesn't render the belief reasonable in terms of the available evidence. A $35 contribution from four years ago to a group like ActBlue (or WinRed, on the other side) is not grounds for recusal, especially given the overall record. As multiple legal commentators have pointed out, any other defendant would have been jailed, at least temporarily, during the trial for contempt of court for the many, many violations of the gag order as well as his behavior in court in general. Trumpanzees may wail and moan about the indignity of trying him in the first place, but the evidence was pretty much overwhelming. I am pretty confident the verdict will be upheld.

Considering that Hair Furor, Jr. is a widely acknowledged gun nut who's so coked up during half his podcasts you wonder if he personally is causing shortages in the white powder supply in the eastern US, I'd say there are plenty of people like him.

He gave three contributions totaling thirty-five dollars to ActBlue, which is not "anti-Trump" per se but more specifically pro-Democrat. If you think $35 is a significant sum that merits disqualification to hear cases, I would like to introduce you to Justice Clarence Thomas, whose take from right-wing individuals and groups in the form of gifts, donations, vacations, and the like currently sits somewhere north of $4 million dollars. If Thomas can hear ANY cases at all, given that background, Merchan's $35 donation is by comparison invisible. As for his daughter: again, I would like to introduce you to Ginni Thomas, who conspired with the J6 folks to attempt to overturn the election while her husband was hearing election challenges (and he will vote on Trump's immunity claims as well). Let's deal with the structural rot before we deal with things like a daughter who has her own career in another state.

Lots of side effects of medication are temporary. I'd give it additional time, if I were you - but if the 1-1-1-1 you're proposing seems to work, I'd strongly urge you to shift to daily use instead. Having a regular dose in your system is likely less impactful on your digestive system AND is documented to work. And it's likely, although not guaranteed, that if you keep taking the medication, your system will adjust to be able to handle it without disrupting your digestion & excretion functions. I don't know of any studies that have tested a 1-1-1-1 on-demand routine, but I suspect that the reason the 2-1-1 dosing was chosen as effective is that big influx of anti-retroviral medication hitting your system and being available at the point when you might get infected. The general recommendation is to take the double-dose before sex as close to, but at least 2 hours before, actually having sex, precisely because the drug will be most heavily concentrated in your system, providing the most protection. A single dose, especially one taken several hours before sex, may just not have sufficient "ooomph" by the time you might get infected.

"left-wing authoritarian social bent"? What a stupid fucking phrase. You're on a website devoted to male-male sex - something that's only legal, in much of the world, because of that "left-wing authoritarian social bent" you decry. Homosexual acts weren't decriminalized in Britain (where I take it you're from) because conservatives did it; you owe your ability to participate on this very board to that "left-wing" blah blah you're moaning and bitching about. So please clarify: what, exactly, are you opposed to that the "left-wing authoritarian social bent" has imposed on you? I have a pretty good idea, but I'll give you the opportunity to explain yourself in case I'm wrong.

Hunter Biden is charged with (a) buying a gun while being an active drug user, and (b) paying some of his taxes late (though they have been paid, with penalties and interest). I, for one, consider trying to skirt election laws in order to seize the highest office in the country a tad more problematic than a gun charge that even US attorneys admit is almost never prosecuted, or a tax violation that has already been corrected and is far, far less than the amounts the Trump company was found to have defrauded. Your mileage, as a non-American, may vary. Bullshit. The only world leaders who respected Trump are the other authoritarians, and even they considered him second-tier and easily manipulated. Regardless, we know him much better in this country than you do, just as I'm sure you know your own local pols better than I do. He's a serial fraudster found liable for sexual assault and is about to stand trial in the coming months on a bunch of other serious charges. If you choose to "respect" that kind of man it says more about you than you may realize.

Do you have any source for that insane notion that Stalin "legalized gay marriage" or that he "made straight marriage illegal"? Under the tsars, homosexual conduct was illegal (though certainly it was unevenly enforced). When the revolutionaries seized power, they abolished the entire criminal code (including the prohibitions against homosexual conduct) but that was not out of any enlightenment OR "elevating gays when it was convenient". Rather, it was a wholesale repudiation of the legal system that preceded the revolution. Even while homosexual activity was technically not illegal, it was still strongly discouraged, and by 1934 it was illegal again. Likewise: marriage as a legal institution was swept out as part of the legal purge of the tsarist regime, but that did not "legalize" gay marriage - it simply got rid of recognized marriage, period. That, too, was reinstated before too long, and it did NOT include same-sex couples.

The rectum does, in fact, absorb fluids - not as much as the colon does, but yes, it does.

Perhaps the survivors might have developed a herd immunity - but as we know, this virus keeps mutating, and even those who survived an earlier bout of COVID sometimes die from a later infection from a different variant. There are some diseases that, once you get it, you can almost certainly not get it a second time; COVID is NOT one of these. And how many hundreds of thousands - or millions, worldwide - would have died while we developed this (far less than perfect) "herd immunity"? Is that number higher or lower than the infinitesimally small number of people who've had serious bad reactions (including death) to the vaccine?

Trump *claims* he raised $200 million. I'll believe that when AUDITED financial statements for the campaign come out. Based on his civil fraud trial, this would hardly be the first time he's dramatically overstated the value of something.

I would cheerfully suggest that anyone who thinks politics has nothing to do with being gay, and who doesn't want to discuss politics, stay the fuck out of a clearly labeled political discussion area. I think snorting/injecting/smoking drugs has zero to do with being gay, for example. Shove whatever you want up your nose, light whatever chemicals you choose in a pipe and inhale to destroy your lungs and brain all day, if you want. Slip that needle full of whatever kind of poison you fancy and press that plunger - hell, hook yourself up to an IV and mainline the stuff 24/7, if that's what floats your boat. I don't care - I just don't want to be around it. So that's why I don't go into the ChemSex forums. Maybe, just maybe, you anti-political people could do us the same favor here.

A lot of members share that view. But it's important to remember: this is NOT primarily a "chat live" kind of place - it's a discussion board, where the views expressed and the stories told and the experiences shared remain as part of the system, for everyone to see - not just the handful of members who happened to be "in the chat room" when something is mentioned. It's also important to understand: this forum software (the boards where all these messages are posted) and the chat software are two different pieces of software from different vendors, never really intended to work with each other in the first place. The site developer was able to make them work together for a while, but as each software package has evolved, unfortunately new incompatibilities get introduced, making "keeping them working together" almost impossible.

To answer the first question: new members, when they first join, do not have the ability to "react" (like/upvote/downvote/etc.) to postings. That's an ability you gain, after making a certain number of posts/responses (that number is not disclosed to avoid people gaming the system to get there). And at first, you only have the ability to "react" to a small number of posts each day. Over time, with participation, all of the things you can do on here grow - you can make more replies, you can react to more posts, etc. - but you get there by participating and demonstrating your good faith. As for the second: I see a blue jock strap as your avatar - if that was your intent, you got it!

It's always difficult letting fantasies go - they're a part of us.