BootmanLA

I don't mean this to sound too critical, but part of the problem may be the use of the word "clean". I realize that not everyone thinks this through, but when it's used to mean "no active STI's", it implies that anyone who has an STI is "dirty". For a long time, people used it primarily to mean "HIV-negative", but the offensiveness of taking that to its logical conclusion - HIV-positive men are "dirty" - has helped stamp that out. It's better to be direct: "I've recently been tested clear of any STI's. How about you?" That's a non-judgmental way to ask for the information you're looking for. Of course, guys may well still lie, but that's a different issue.

If you'd read any other parts of this section, you'd know that (a) only RawTop, as the site administrator, can actually delete the account. You'd know that he normally doesn't delete them immediately any longer (the post you're quoting from is more than five years old) because so many people "change their minds" and want back in. You'd know that he's determined that legally, he has up to 90 days to carry out the deletion request, and he ordinarily does that in stages. That makes the poster less visible (deleted profile, for instance) but doesn't remove the ability to log in - so the inevitable change of heart folks can log in and request he cancel the removal request. Most of all, if you'd read any of the rest of this support section, you'd know RawTop is recovering from a stroke and yes, things are taking longer than they might otherwise.

If a private company wanted to do that on a voluntary basis for companies that wanted to use the service, that would be one thing. But there is a fundamental problem with a government mandate for age verification to access something on the web: it's a violation of the First Amendment. You have the right to read and obtain information anonymously. (Anonymous insofar as the government is concerned, that is - a private company can require pretty much any information it desires.) And the only way to prove your age is to prove who you are - to disclose your identity. Telling people "You can't access this otherwise legal content unless you prove your age (and thus who you are)" is unconstitutional.

Suggestion for RawTop: Given that the chat module is so unreliable (for reasons outside your control), might it not be prudent to update the page you access directly from the "Chat" link (ie, before you actually enter the chat software itself) acknowledging that the program has issues, sometimes can't verify your login from your browser, etc., and that while you hope to have this fixed in a future update to the site, users should not expect a smooth experience, and that posting "same here" or otherwise non-informative messages about a problem that is well-known is kind of pointless? Especially since if they bothered to do ANY reading of the seven pages of messages about chat issues before adding their comment, they'd know what's going on?

It may well come in Ohio, but not because of Issue 1. Issue 1 strictly concerns the percentage of the popular vote needed to adopt a constitutional amendment (60% of those who turn out to vote). The legislature can already enact legislation similar to that in these states with a simple majority vote and the assent of the governor, with no vote of the people involved. The only way in which Issue 1 could theoretically get involved in this issue would be if First Amendment activists or the like wanted to put a protection for access to adult sites into the state constitution - under Issue 1, if it passes, that would require 60% of voters to approve of that protection in an election. But it doesn't change anything about the legislature's ability to enact such a restriction.

Also: I'd note that Americans are self-segregating into like-minded communities and states at an increasing pace. One of the stories of America in the post-WWII era was the massive shift of people from rural areas and small towns to larger cities, even if just to the suburbs or exurbs. Coming into contact with an increasingly diverse society is part of what shifted America's social views to the left (a generally good thing, in my opinion). Even if the oldest people involved in such a move didn't change much, their kids and their grandkids did. So even traditionally red states began to shift purple-ish, as we saw with Colorado, Georgia and Arizona, and though it's less far along that process, Texas. But there's a downside to that - many other formerly reddish states are becoming deep crimson, like West Virginia, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, and so forth. There just aren't enough progressive people moving to such places to shift anything, really. and the remaining red staters are resentful of the changes they're seeing and becoming even more vitriolic against gays, immigrants, liberals in general. The media landscape changes - where you can pick your influences, rather than having the big three networks address the entire country - haven't helped. Mainstream news media was never the liberal bogeyman as painted by the right wing, but they were, more or less, uniform in their approaches. Now the right can largely insulate itself from contrary opinions both on TV and online. And with the massive decline in newspaper circulation, most people get only highly filtered news that conforms to their existing beliefs. And then there's things like Florida's shift to the right. When 40 and 50 year old conservatives moved to places like Georgia and Arizona, they brought younger family members with them, and those children and grandchildren came of age in a very different environment. Florida's left tilt originally came from (over time) millions of northeast moderate to liberal people retiring to the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale/West Palm Beach corridor, but retirees don't generally bring their families (who have lives established for themselves) elsewhere. Once places like the Villages sprang up, catering to the same warm-weather retirement impulse but among red-state conservatives, that began tilting the state rightward. Now we're at a point where most of the people moving to progressive places are other progressives, and many conservative families would rather wallow in the poverty and ignorance they know, in places like Alabama and Louisiana and West Virginia, rather than risk their kids getting a whiff of an actually diverse experience. So not only are "they" spreading their own messages of what's acceptable and what's not, but they're making it harder for any other message to get through to the minds that matter.

The actual acronym is "DMCA", which stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It dates back to the era when piracy of intellectual property - notably music and films, but other forms as well - began to be considered a serious problem by copyright holders (typically, large music and TV/movie studios). The DMCA, among other things, outlines a procedure for online services to handle claims of copyright violation. Under the DMCA, if someone claims that a file posted online on a given service (say, Facebook, Twitter, generic web hosting company, or whatever) is his copyrighted property, the online service can insulate itself from liability by immediately removing (or blocking access to) the specified file. The person who uploaded it may still be liable for copyright infringement. If the person who posted it contests the ownership of the copyright, there's a process by which the service can investigate the claim (typically, if it's a corporate entity claiming copyright, they're likely to win, if only because they're likely to have lawyers and records to back up their claims). Or the service can just tell the person who posted the file to go fight the copyright claimant in court. Obviously, the DMCA was written by lawyers for the big content producing studios, so its terms favor them. It's designed as a carrot to encourage online service providers to promptly take down copyright violations; by insulating them from liability and allowing them to dump disputes on the courts, the services have a strong incentive to just roll over any time a content creator (again, typically a big TV/movie studio or recording company) files a DMCA takedown request.

I think there's a much larger set of problems than a lack of a sense of community, although that's part of it (as I'll mention). There was a time when the options for gay men's lives in the United States (and elsewhere, but I can't speak to conditions in other countries specifically) were very, very limited, even in large metropolitan areas. Although even bars got raided, gay bars were one of the handful of places where men could meet men like themselves; and for men who couldn't bring home another man for sex (whether because there was a wife at home, or mom and dad, or nosy neighbors or roommates, baths filled a niche need for a place to have a sexual outlet. Out of necessity, more than anything else, gay bars and bathhouses became de facto community centers, because the idea of an actual community center, with resources available in broad daylight with highly visible public signage and internet ads and webpages detailing the services the center provides, was a pipe dream. The bars and baths took money from the community and gave back to the community; they WERE the community, in many places. Once the gay rights movement took off, things began to shift (even as our advances were partially offset by losses). In the seventies, the bars and baths were making money hand over fist; the bars reacted by specializing in particular clienteles, the baths by competing on amenities and special attractions. Baths maintained the pretense of being "health clubs" where people worked out and enjoyed the sauna or steam room and where sex was just something "happened" (even when the weight machines never got touched), but actual sex clubs sprang up where there was no pretense at all. But as states began repealing their sodomy laws, or even simply not enforcing them any more (de facto repeal), other venues began to arise: actual community centers, gay bookstores, gay coffee shops - places you could go to and meet other gay people without it having to be about sex or over alcohol, which had been sorely lacking, so competition for the gay dollar. (In smaller cities and towns, of course, the gay bar often remained the only social option, but we're talking about the places big enough to support bathhouses.) Then HIV/AIDS came along, and whether it was prudent or effective to shut down the baths and sex clubs as a way to prevent the spread, that's what was done in a lot of places. Or they were restricted in ways that cut way into business. A lot of that went away, eventually, but a lot of those locations never recovered. Meanwhile, a lot of gays came of age where regular trips to the bathhouses were NOT part of their coming out, so the baths were no longer a cash machine, especially in cities where soaring real estate values made building rents skyrocket. So maintenance and improvements suffered, as owners were unwilling or unable to pony up the cash to keep the places up. And at the same time, increasing acceptance of homosexuality meant fewer and fewer people HAD to go to the baths to have a place to fuck. That's not to say there isn't a transgressive appeal to the places - but the difference in volume of business between "almost everyone has to come to us for sex" and "people who really like indoor public sex with and in front of strangers come to us for sex" can be huge. So the places decline in terms of cleanliness and repair, which lessens the appeal for all but those who want a transgressive experience; which reduces the income stream further, which exacerbates the maintenance issue.... Factor in the losses of customers who actually died of HIV, and those who stopped having that kind of sex because it was deemed "risky". And I'll throw this in, though I know it certainly doesn't apply in all cases: drug usage/"partying" in the gay community. Drug habits are expensive, and I know of any number of gay bar owners who developed a drug habit over the years that sucked up profits from even thriving bars. When bars in Louisiana were allowed to have 3 video poker machines each, back in the early 90's, the typical bar in any of the state's larger (relatively speaking) cities on average got about $5,000 per month per machine as the bar's cut (and remember, that's for doing nothing except letting the machines sit on your bar for customers to play). At least one owner I know had such a drug habit (and so many friends with drug habits) that when a state-ordered local option election forced the removal of the machines in his parish (county) after almost five years, he'd spent literally every dime of the nearly $1 million extra dollars the machines had put in his pocket, most of it up his and his friends' noses. This isn't to say that all bathhouse owners were drug users - but for those who did partake (and I'm guessing it was a significant portion of them), that's a big drain on a cash engine that's already in decline. And as posts by some users here of late have indicated, the remaining places seem to be making stricter policies, removing amenities, and raising prices simultaneously - which might work for a product in high demand, but for one with already reduced appeal is probably a death sentence. In an ideal world, of course, every major city would welcome gay bathhouses like any other business, and there would be enough patrons willing to pay a reasonable fee for access to support maintaining the place in a safe and appealing condition. But that's not the world in which we live. Along the way, a lot of that role of "de facto community center" has been taken up by other institutions, not the least of which are actual community centers. You wouldn't know it from places like Texas or Florida, but public libraries - imagine! - in all sorts of places have LGBT resources often prominently on display. There are predominantly-LGBT groups in sports (gay rugby, gay softball, gay rodeo, you name it), entertainment (gay choruses, especially), hobbies (gay birders, of all things dear to my heart), and more. On the one hand, it's great that there are all these other options for interaction and reaching out and connecting the current generations of LGBT people with the incoming ones; and while I'm not opposed to drinking per se, I think the reduced emphasis on bars and alcohol as the center of gay connection is a good thing. But on the other hand, the fractured nature of gay connectivity in any decent sized community means it's harder to create a sense of community for the whole. I can remember nights in the late 80's and early 90's, out in the bars in my home city, where you could count on seeing about 75% of the "out" LGBT people on any given Saturday night, just by going to the two larger bars in the city (and one of those two, I'll add, was only "larger" compared with the other couple of hole-in-the-wall joints). There's no longer any one place bringing people together that way on a weekly basis. And as one final note: the internet, social media, "the apps". When you can interact with friends by texting - and thus have multiple conversations going - or entertain yourself by scrolling through Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or whatever, or search for sex partners or dates or relationships online, the actual need for places to interact "irl" (as the kids say) gets reduced (and yes, the concept of community further suffers, but that's another topic). All of which is to say: I don't think anyone is going to step in and "save" the baths or even the bars - whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I just don't think the money is really there, any more, to support them as thriving businesses as there once was. LGBT people born in, say, 2050 are going to be learning someday about the weird things their great-grandparents' brothers and sisters once did to interact with each other, and be totally mystified by it. Just like pre-teens today have trouble understanding the notion of a rotary dial phone, or getting a phone call and having to answer it to know who was calling, and not being able to move very far from the spot in the room where the phone was hard-wired into a box on the wall. Or just like no one in my generation would understand the notion of going around the city leaving one's calling card at friends' houses, much less what "turning a corner" on the card meant.

I attribute things to the Republican party when (a) a Republican does that thing and (b) no one in the Republican party of any stature whatsoever criticizes him or her for it. Or (c) when it's in the Republican Party platform. So, for instance, the fact that Hair Furor has the approval of a solid majority of the Republican party, and virtually no one of stature criticizes him for his outrageous behavior and statements, then yes, I consider that something the Republican party endorses. Being criticized by his ex-cabinet members - who are no longer public officials - doesn't count, because they're not major figures in the party. When the House Speaker, House Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, or a chairman of a major committee in the House or ranking member in the Senate calls him out, I'll credit that. Until then, he's the albatross around the neck of the party and that means everyone who professes to believe in it - because HE is what the party believes in. And when I say that Republicans want to outlaw all abortion, or ban same-sex marriage, I say that because it's in the party's national platform - at least, the last one adopted. People can mealy-mouth whine about "not all Republicans" but if you belong to a party whose official platform - which starts each section with "We believe that...", you are announcing to the world you support those positions. You don't see that nearly so much on the Democratic side because we welcome internal criticism. We have prominent members who sometimes make outrageous statements, and our leaders are usually quick to announce that the statement in question does not represent the views of the party, merely that member. I think the last time the Republican leadership did that was sometime in the Eisenhower administration. If the Democratic leadership were as weak at calling out members for offensive comments as the Republican leadership is, I would happily hang the worst offenses of a Democrat on the party. But I don't have to, because they aren't that weak.

Again, the Democrats, unlike the Republicans, do not usually demand lock-step compliance with what the party leaders dictate must be policy, under penalty of being primaried out of office. You are always eager to blame an entire party (well, only ONE entire party) for the actions of a few who cross the aisle to join the opposing side on a particular issue. But for some reason you never, ever, ever seem to blame the OTHER entire party for the actions clearly endorsed by the vast majority of its members, even when that party's policy choices are steeped in misogyny, racism, homophobia, and other forms of hatred of anyone who is "other" to them. Are you so secure in your privilege as an (apparently) white male that you think they wouldn't come for you in a heartbeat if they took power in a state you're in?

That is not what I wrote, and if that's what you take from it, I suspect the issue is more biases on your part perhaps combined with, shall we say, "uncareful" reading. For starters, we were talking about a map where legislation has been *introduced*. My comments were about *that map*. You made an unwarranted jump to assuming such legislation would pass - regardless of the party controlling the state - and then made a further jump to assume I would blame one party for the hypothetical passage of such a bill even if the other party enjoys a majority. That's so many levels of assumption and guesswork I can't attribute it to sheer inability to read. But here's the reality. Some states have a solid majority of Democrats or Republicans in their state legislature. Some even have a so-called supermajority, generally meaning the number needed to override any veto by the governor, or to pass legislation for which that the state's constitution requires such a supermajority. But a not-insignificant number of legislative chambers are fairly closely divided, meaning a handful of members of the majority party, if they vote with the minority on some issue, can get that issue passed. That's more common with Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans on social issues, because Republicans trying to flip a seat go scorched-earth to portray a Democrat in a swing state as some cross between Pol Pot and the devil, funded by George Soros and an international cabal of baby-eating sex fiends. In any event, if you have a chamber with 53% Democrats and 47% Republicans, and enough Democrats, under that kind of fake-outrage electoral pressure, switch sides on book banning or online access or whatever to pass the bill, it's still a Republican effort funded by, supported primarily by, and voted for almost totally by Republicans. So yes, in some cases, despite your supercilious attitude, it can be the fault of Republicans in a state with a Democratic majority in the legislature that such a bill passes. One reason is that Democrats, unlike Republicans, don't usually punish their members for voting their version of "their conscience" on such legislation. When a Republican does it (ie votes for a Democratic priority), he's immediately set up for a primary challenge by some nutcase even farther to the right who vows never, ever, ever to do something like that. Which is one reason the Republican party's nuts are firmly in the grip of extremists.

Actually, I think that the primary concern with HIV medications (both preventatives and treatments) is elevated creatinine levels, not low ones. Creatinine is a waste product produced by your muscles, filtered out by your kidneys. High creatinine levels suggests a problem with kidney function; conversely, low creatinine levels suggest a problem with muscles (dystrophy, liver disease, low protein intake).

That's true as a general statement, and certainly in many states Democrats have voted along with Republicans to impose such rules. That said, Bloomberg's map is inaccurate to some degree; I know for a fact that Louisiana had legislation this year along these lines (to tighten the rules already in place). I have no doubt several other states coded "light blue" on this map also had such legislation. But the concept of "Democratic strongholds" doing this is nonsensical. In every one of the 50 states, legislation is introduced not by party, but by individual legislators. Even if a state has a supermajority of one party, a member of the other party may well be the legislator who filed the bill. So, for instance, it may technically be true that California, speaking hypothetically, is a "state seeking to regulate kids' experience online" (to quote the title of the map). But if the bill is filed by a Republican, it's irrelevant that the state is a Democratic stronghold (although that may help prevent it from passing, or maybe not). The overall partisan makeup of states is irrelevant when evaluating whether someone in the state filed a bill. After all, in any given year, I see bills filed to abolish the death penalty and to expand its use in homicide cases. I've seen bills to increase the penalty for illegal drugs and to legalize the same drugs. The choice to file a bill is dependent on the whims of the person filing it, nothing more.

My post was about the OP's options in the state in which he lived. The condition of health care in my state, your state, in Timbuktu, on the moon, or anywhere in the Andromeda galaxy are irrelevant for that post.

And this is why doctors and pharmacists will tell you: when you are prescribed antibiotics, take EVERY dose, even if you're feeling better half or three-quarters of the way through. It's not going to prevent resistant strains of whatever bacterium you're infected with from developing, but it's going to reduce the chances, significantly.

In the United States, health care is inextricably tied up with politics. Anyone who thinks you can separate the two is delusional.

I'm not going to say your doctor is incorrect, but anything that comes in contact with a chlamydia-infected orifice - not just a penis, but a tongue, or whatever - can spread the infection if it's active. So, for instance, if a man fingers your hole while you have an active rectal chlamydia outbreak, and immediately after touches his cock (say, to jack off), it can spread that way, too. And if he grabs YOUR cock while his hands have the bacteria on them, it's possible to get it in your cock as well as the infection in your rectum you already have. Bottom line: sexual contact, of any sort, during an active outbreak is strongly discouraged if you don't want to spread it.

Honestly, anyone dumb enough to fall for a scam this poorly worded probably deserves to be scammed, so that they don't lose their money to something more sophisticated, like a Nigerian Prince.

I'm a "self-identified bottom" and I always appreciate a nice ass on a top man. It's great for grabbing hold of if we're fucking face to face, pulling him in deeper, for one thing. Deciding what all "self-identified bottoms" want is pretty presumptuous. I understand some bottoms - not pointing any fingers - want nothing more than a dildo on a vaguely human-shaped body, because they literally don't care about anything but the dick, but that's not everyone. To answer the OP's question, the weirdest thing I've ever had someone request is to be force-fed an entire loaf of Wonder Bread (the basic sliced white bread version) before sex.

I'm sorry this happened. But the fact is, if an anal rupture has not healed naturally and it's been 3-4 months, you need to go see a doctor, pronto. The longer you wait, the more damage can be done that will be harder to repair - assuming it can be repaired. I realize you live in one of the shittiest states in the US for health care for uninsured people, with one of the shittiest governments in the US in charge, but you need to beg, borrow, or scrape together the money for a visit to an urgent care site (and they may send you to the ER). You might well have developed an infection that won't go away on its own, or otherwise injured yourself in a serious, serious way. No amount of folk healing advice from anyone on here is going to change that. This is a time for actual medical professionals, not suggestions for creams or cleaning.

Oh, almost certainly, but then so do male-on-male porn actors doing "country boy" scenes. I think in general, "they" already have as much weaponry to use against us as anyone could imagine, and most of it just falls flat outside of very limited circles. Even in terms of things like books in libraries, the most that "they" seem to be succeeding with, for now, is getting some of those titles restricted from circulation by minors - not that I think this is "good", at all, but it's telling that they've generally given up trying to get such material banned from public libraries. And yeah, there will always be some people who freak out and turn violent against LGBT people because of some deep-seated homophobia. But that's going to happen whether there are funny pro-LGBT songs with somewhat explicit lyrics circulating on the internet, or not. Certainly we need to take reasonable precautions for our safety, but self-censoring for a false sense of security is a losing strategy.

I haven't used one so can't comment thereon. That said, I've seen these around online for years and years - they're certainly not a novel idea.

No, it's not. States do not have a responsibility to "uphold" a federal law. They have a responsibility to not VIOLATE a federal law which binds the state. The fact that you don't seem to understand this basic principle of US government - hint: see "federalism" - makes it difficult for anyone who DOES understand this concept to take you seriously on this matter. You can, of course, call it corruption if you choose. You can call anything corruption, because "corruption" doesn't have a legal definition in either federal or state law - it's a descriptive term used by lay people to express an opinion about something. There's a huge difference between "I think X is corrupt" and "The state of X has a responsibility to uphold federal law Y" - the latter of which is almost always not true on its face.

I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. That's on you.

With respect, I do know quite a bit about California (and other places, too). Yes, states often challenge federal laws, and sometimes refuse to follow them until forced to by the courts. There's a long history of this, for instance, with regard to segregation. The fact that states often refuse to abide by federal law unless forced does not mean state law supersedes federal law, any more than you speeding or doing drugs or whatever else you might do that's illegal means your choices "supersede" the law. Perhaps it's not clear to you how law works, especially the interaction between state and federal laws, but I can assure you, saying California law "supersedes" federal law is simply factually incorrect. With respect to medical privacy, here's how it works. Federal law (HIPAA) defines the limits - for federal law purposes - of medical information privacy. For good or for bad, however, that federal law does not provide what is called a right of private enforcement - that is, the right to sue when your rights are violated, which is a separate right. Enforcement of HIPAA rights, therefore, is up to the federal government itself, through the various United States Attorneys (in the DOJ) for the various judicial districts around the country. And again, for good or for bad, those US Attorneys don't have the resources to sue or bring charges for every HIPAA violation. States can pass their OWN medical privacy laws - and many or most have. They can set a STRICTER standard for privacy than HIPAA, and they can create a right of private enforcement - in state, not federal, court - for violations of that state law, which is what California has done. An example of a state attempting to "supersede" federal law would be the opposite - if, say, Texas gave blanket permission for medical providers to disclose medical information to law enforcement officers, for example, and then blocked (or tried to block) the feds from charging any doctors for those violations in federal court. THAT would be "superseding" federal law, and it just can't happen. As for immigration: you're correct that states, in general, cannot set immigration policy that conflicts with federal law. States try - and routinely fail. What you miss is that the feds cannot, in general, co-opt the states and force them to use state resources to enforce federal policy; and the feds cannot, in general, bar states from using their own resources how they choose. So, for instance, if California offers welfare benefits (paid with state funds) to undocumented immigrants, even though the feds consider the undocumented person deportable, the state isn't "superseding" federal policy - it's just choosing to use its own resources how it wants. And refusing to use those resources to, say, round up undocumented persons isn't "superseding" federal policy either. Likewise, if a California town stops an undocumented person for a traffic violation, the feds can't demand that the state arrest the guy rather than issue him a ticket, and then hold him until the feds can be bothered to pick him up - the state can CHOOSE to do that, if it wants, but it can also say "not doing your dirty work for you". You can call that "being a sanctuary state" if you want - there's no such legal term - but it's not California trying to supersede federal immigration law. It's California saying "We're not going to spend state money to enforce federal law. You have federal money, spend your own to do it."