BootmanLA

It's the transgressive "Look at MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm such a trashy SLUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a WHORE I ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" mentality, aka, I'm hot shit because I'm so transgressive and I'm not bound by stultifying cishet moral standards. Of course, they only feel that way about CERTAIN moral standards. Steal most of the balance of their checking account right after payday and watch a meltdown about how dare someone do something so fucked up and hurtful. Some people just feel the need to be not just "more than" but "excessively and entirely more than".

You asked this of @Shotsfired but if you'll allow another perspective: I'd look at what he wrote regarding saying what you're looking for up front, in your profile. If you only get onto an app or site to find a hookup that afternoon or evening, say that! If you don't want to engage in conversations that aren't going to lead to a hookup (now OR later), then say that too. After that, it's on the other guy to read and comprehend, and if he doesn't, there's no reason you can't be blunt: "My profile says I'm looking for now/today/tonight. If that's not you, thanks, but I really don't want to get into a long discussion." Polite, to the point, but firm. If you do already have that restriction in your profile, I would ask by about the third question he asks: "Not that I mind answering questions about myself, but let's be clear: I'm looking for [name activity] [timeframe: now/today/tonight]. If you're interested in that, great; if not, get back with me when you're ready."

Let me say up front I understand what people are saying about how cheating is "hot". And let me say I draw a distinction between two situations. Let's posit there's a couple who either are supposed to be monogamous (by mutual agreement) or who have specific rules about third parties (as in my previous post, above). You're a third party, and you meet one of the guys in the couple. If you don't know about the situation with the couple, or you don't know he's coupled at all, or he tells you it's fine because he's in an open relationship, then morally, I think, you're in the clear. If you do know, but you have sex with him anyway, and you don't feel bad about it - well, congratulations, you're adding to the misery in the world. Sure, the cheating partner is more responsible for relationship than any outside person ever could be, but you're aiding and abetting someone who is deliberately acting in a way that hurts his partner. If you feel "hot" about that, you're a sociopath, in my book. And while I won't say I hope your dick falls off (which would be a truly karmic response from the universe), I will say karma has a way of evening things out in the long run.

Not necessarily. Cheating is, by definition, the breaking of a rule or rules. One can have an open (ie non-monogamous) relationship that nonetheless has rules, and breaking those rules is just as much cheating. For instance: a couple might be open but agree to one or more of the following: --Never with someone we're already friends with; --Never in our own bed, which is just for us; --Never here in our hometown, but only when traveling; --Never with the same guy more than once [or twice, or whatever limit]; and so on. For that matter, one could have a closed polyamorous relationship, which by definition isn't "monogamy" [which means one sexual partner]. In such a closed polyamorous relationship, sex with an outside party (beyond those in the relationship) would be cheating because it violates the "closed" rule of the relationship.

That's not exactly accurate. HIPAA applies to more than just doctors; it applies to anyone who has professional (that is, through his work) access to covered medical information. That means it includes nurses, any other allied health profession (audiologists, pharmacists, lab technicians), and insurance employees, among others. Second, even a subpoena can't necessarily force disclosure of HIPAA-protected information. If health care information is subpoenaed, then the custodian of that information (the doctor, insurance company, or whomever) must make reasonable attempts to notify the patient that the information has been subpoenaed, and the patient has to then be given a reasonable opportunity to object to the disclosure or to seek a protective order from the court overseeing the subpoena. (Remember that a subpoena is a request for information from a party to a legal action, not a demand from the court, so compliance with a subpoena has to allow for time to handle objections.) That's different from a court order to supply the information (and for the purposes of HIPAA, that includes administrative tribunals, such as an SSI disability hearing panel. But such an order must specify the exact information requested, and the custodian of that information can ONLY supply that information, not anything else. But in general: yes. Not only can person A ask person B about his health information, but A is under no obligation to keep that information confidential if B does tell him. Lastly: One of the drawbacks to HIPAA is that there is no "private cause of action" under it - which in layman's terms means, if your doctor (or nurse, or whomever) violates HIPAA by disclosing some of your health information, you can't sue them yourself. What you can do is file a complaint with whatever regulatory body covers the offending person. That might be the state medical board, for instance, or the state nursing board. Or the state department of insurance (or its equivalent) if an insurer leaks your information. It's then generally up to the regulatory board to punish a violation, as they see fit. You may also have a state cause of action (in state court) if your state recognizes this as a valid claim (some do, some do not). Where such claims are recognized, it's usually as some sort of variant on "breach of contract" or something similar. The state law may incorporate HIPAA by reference, saying in essence that if a provider or his business associates within your state violate HIPAA, you can sue them in state court for damages.

One could make the same argument about any costume, including clowns. Yet we not only tolerate people in clown costumes interacting with children; we (or, at least, some parents) pay good money for them to entertain children at events like birthday parties. We take and send kids to Disney parks by the millions, where they see adults dressed up like: talking mice, fairy godmothers, princesses, talking dogs, talking dogs that belong to the other talking dogs, talking ducks.... the list goes on and on. Yet nobody says a word about kids getting confused by these characters. Children are naturally drawn to the bold and colorful. You don't see drag queen story hour being produced by drag queens who look like the Church Lady from SNL; they're deliberately bold, colorful, with extravagant makeup and hair, because that grabs' kids attention and they listen to the fabulous person telling them a story. I keep trying to understand this but I can't even figure out what you mean - are you saying that at some level, drag is *always* sexual? Why is drag - the cross-dressing kind, at any rate - "sexual" but dressing up like a talking dog who owns another talking dog is just clean fun? If what one wears conveys "sexuality" then cis-dressing people are also conveying sexuality - just of the "approved variety." See that woman in that skirt? That's SEXUAL! But as I say - that purpose may simply be (like the makeup on a clown) to grab the kids' attention and focus it on the speaker. They can listen to a cis-dressing person drone on and on reading a story to them, but their attention is likely to flag, just as it may in school. Having a hook to draw the kids' attention makes a difference. There may be an agenda, but I think it's mostly just to enhance the experience. But: even if the purpose WAS to point out to the adults that see, we're safe around kids - what's wrong with that? As I said above, I don't buy for one second the notion that drag is inherently sexual. I think that says a lot more about the people who think that, than it does about the people wearing drag. And that's just the same argument that was used for decades about us - that as gay people, we were *inherently* sexual, that our very existence was *sexual* and moreover, a sexual *threat* - and that was used to justify all sorts of horrible treatment. It's appalling that we would treat drag the same way. Again: this is the same argument used about us for much of the 20th century. We can't be around children because we might "influence" them. It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now.

This says pretty much all of it. I get that monogamy isn't easy (and moreover, doesn't even appeal to a lot of guys). That's fine. Acknowledge that, and figure out how you're going to make things work, to whatever degree of openness, and go have fun. And that openness can be anything from "we share a third partner together" to "we each have whatever fun we want on our own"; it can be "we don't talk about who we fuck outside the relationship" or "we tell each other everything and enjoy hearing each others' exploits" - or anything in between, such as acknowledging an outside partner if it comes up, but not mentioning him otherwise. Open can take a plethora of forms, and only the couple in question can decide what form is right for them. What makes no sense to me is either or both parties pretending to be monogamous but not actually doing so - and lying about it. I just can't wrap my head around a relationship which has that level of dishonesty so close to the core. It's not the fact of the other partners - sexual exclusivity isn't necessary in a relationship, in my view. But honesty is. For the guys on here who've gushed about how "hot" cheating is: I suspect you wouldn't say that if you were the one cheated on. And I suspect you wouldn't feel that way if the "cheating" were something other than sexual. Like, for instance, let's say you found out your partner was skimming $200 a week out of your joint finances to give to a boyfriend on the side. Or to pay off a gambling debt. Or whatever - would you still think it's "hot" that your partner is violating the terms of your relationship?

And I should add: Never forget that George HW Bush gave us Clarence Thomas, replacing the nation's then-only black Supreme Court Justice, with a stellar record as a defender of the downtrodden, with a sexually harassing bureaucrat with a chip on his shoulder about having benefitted from affirmative action his entire life - who has voted against gay rights in EVERY SINGLE CASE brought in his more than 30 years on the Court. He has not once - NEVER - voted that any civil rights law, whatsoever, protects gay people; he has never voted once - NEVER - that any law targeting gay people is unconstitutional. Justices sometimes surprise us with how they end up voting on our issues. Gorsuch wrote the Bostock opinion that laws that bar discrimination on the basis of sex include gay people, for instance, and Chief Justice Roberts joined him that opinion. But Thomas never has, and, I'd wager, never will.

That depends, in large measure, how you define "weren't pro LGBT". For instance, when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008, she wholeheartedly endorsed civil unions for LGBT people with all of the rights and privileges of same-sex marriage. That was only four years after the massive push by Republicans (in 2004) to get states to enact state-level DOMA laws, barring recognition of same-sex marriages from states where it was already legal. Sure, you can that civil unions (even ones legally equivalent to marriage) aren't enough, but that was still light years beyond what the Republicans were doing at the time. Remember, too, that from 2009 to 2013 she was Secretary of State, during which time she had to be circumspect about getting out in front of the president she served on domestic policy issues; she came out fully in favor of same-sex marriage shortly after she stepped down from the State Department. Her husband is largely remembered for signing DOMA and Don't Ask/Don't Tell into law, But DOMA passed both chambers of Congress by a wide, veto-proof majority, and as an incumbent up for re-election, vetoing the bill would have not only been swiftly overridden, but it would have handed the Republicans another issue to beat up Democrats across the board with. As for DADT, remember that was what Clinton was able to negotiate out of Congress from the Republicans' preferred position, which was codifying the outright ban on gay servicemen and women that had been effect as a policy (rather than by law). DADT was progress - slow progress, not enough progress, but better than the regression that threatened LGBT people at the time. Clinton had gone into office intending to simply lift that policy ban, but the threat from Congress to codify it into law led to the compromise of DADT. And which president ended DADT? Another Democratic president, Barack Obama. Bill Clinton was also the first presidential nominee to have an openly gay speaker at his convention, the first to say “gay” in an acceptance speech, and the first to appear at a fundraiser expressly targeted at cultivating support from sexual minorities. And he got ENDA - the Employment Non-Discrimination Act - within one vote of passage in the Senate, despite having nowhere near a majority in the Senate. Let's contrast that with what recent Republican presidents have done. Ronald Reagan famously did next to nothing for gay people as HIV began to ravage our community - despite his wife's close friendship with any number of openly and closeted gay celebrities. GHW Bush refused direct requests to remove the ban on gay people having security clearances or the ban on gay servicemembers, both of which Bill Clinton addressed. (In fairness, I should note that much, much later in life, he served as witness at the wedding of two female friends of his family, in Maine, and around the time of the Obergefell decision he said that gay couples have "a right to be happy".) GW Bush, aka Shrub, not only pushed states across the country to constitutionally bar same-sex marriage, but announced support for a federal constitutional amendment to bar it nationwide (even in states that wanted to legalize it). As for Mango Mussolini, he opposed the Equality Act (barring discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing, public accommodations, etc.); his administration filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court defending employers' rights to discriminate against LGBT people; he banned transgender people from serving in the military; instituted a policy to remove all HIV+ persons from the military; he proposed cutting nearly 1/3 of US spending on HIV/AIDS abroad; and a long, long, LONG list of other steps, all targeted at making an unwelcoming and/or unsafe environment for LGBT people. His famous claim to be the "most pro-gay president ever" stems from a single instance of appointing a right-wing gay proto-fascist, Richard Grenell, to a series of high-level positions for which he was utterly unqualified, solely because he was a solid Trumpanzee and gave Trump's hard-core fascist crew, like Santa Monica Goebels, "cover". Are all Democrats pro-gay? Of course not. Are those who are, perfect across the board in their support? Of course not. But are Democrats - at all levels - as a group far, far more supportive of us than Republicans? It isn't even close.

I think there's a question to be asked here. Are you talking about something to wear or do in an area that's mostly gay-friendly and/or gay-oriented, like Boystown in Chicago or the Castro or the Village? That would be simple - a t-shirt with an arrow pointing toward your back and a sign "Enter at the rear". Outside of such an area, which is what I suppose you mean? It doesn't exist, and I'm not sure it can or should. I'm not anti-sex by any means, and I'm all in favor of equal treatment of gay and straight sexual messaging. But you seem to want something invisible to the public at large, yet visible to "those in the know" as you say. Hanky codes, at their actual useful peak, only conveyed a modicum of useful information. The hanky position indicated top or bottom preference, and the basic colors (navy, light blue, red, gray, yellow) covered the basics and the major kinks. Contrary to some people's beliefs, those extravagant charts listing gold lame and peacock blue as signifying this or that were really more in-jokes than anything else. And bear in mind: the hanky codes weren't used to signal to other gays while among outsiders - nobody assumed a blue hanky in the left pocket of your jeans out on a city street at noon meant anything. They were meant to cut down on wasting time in gay-specific (or at least, gay-friendly) settings, so that two bottoms looking to get fucked didn't spent half an hour chatting each other up before finding out they both wanted the same thing. Or so that a guy looking to be tied up could scan for a left-pocket gray hanky and know he wouldn't get "ewww, gross" as a response for suggesting it. Even if such a symbolic item could be identified, there's a huge problem in teaching everyone what it meant. Back in the hanky code days, word could spread through the bar community (people talk to bartenders, and people used to - imagine - gather in public places and interact instead of going onto apps and websites to connect. Generally speaking only other gay people were ever there, so information about things like the hanky code could spread like the Underground Railroad, without letting the wider public in on the secret. You can't do that any more, because both the bars are significantly reduced in number and anyone and everyone can find something when it's posted online. Because of that, nothing stays "in the community" any more, and even if a bunch of gay people began to, say, wear a cockring on their right belt loop as a sign of being a cumdump bottom, what that means would quickly become widespread knowledge in the community at large - such that most people would avoid that sign because it was no longer discreet.

Here's the thing, though. We can say "Not all Republicans..." until we're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that (a) a lot of Republicans are, in fact, whatever negative characteristic we're trying to absolve the rest from (pick one or more: racist, religiously bigoted, anti-immigrant, whatever), and (b) that batch of (racist, bigoted, anti-immigrant, whatever) Republicans are not only the base of the party, but its heart and soul. They write the party platform, which - to this day - still opposes same-sex marriage. Despite decades of proof that abstinence programs result in more unplanned pregnancies, more sexually transmitted infections, and more abortions (until the Dobbs decision), they are stalwartly in favor of eliminating any form of sex education that actually teaches kids things like contraception and disease prevention. We can say "Not all Republicans..." until we're blue in the face, but the party governance is in the grip of extremists, especially on the notion of Christian dominance. Even their would-be leaders whose family origins clearly mark them as "those people" feel compelled to Americanize their names to appeal to a bigoted primary electorate - hence we don't have former governors known as Nimarata Haley and Piyush Jindal, we have "Nikki" and "Bobby". We can say "Not all Republicans..." but the man who is essentially its leader - a twice-impeached, twice-indicted grifter - brooks no dissent and despite ample evidence of his criminality is the frontrunner for his party's nomination. No one else is even close in any poll. If "not all Republicans" meant anything, he wouldn't have 76% favorable ratings among Republicans. And that's despite virtually every single one of his former top people - cabinet secretaries, chiefs of staff, whomever - coming forward to confirm that yes, he's just as ignorant and ill-informed as everyone says. Sure, there are individual Republicans out there who don't want Trump in office again, who aren't anti-gay bigots, who aren't racist, who aren't anti-immigrants. The question I have is, "Why?" There was once a principled economic reason possible, that Republicans were better stewards of the economy, but since half our total debt was run up in just two Republican administrations, since the Republicans proved under both Shrub and Hair Furor that they had no principles other than spend the fuck out of the Treasury, that reasoning rings hollow. What, exactly, does the Republican party stand for today - not some faded tintype image from 1952, but today - that any self-respecting, non-racist gay person could support?

Are you suggesting that gay people are pushing for sex ed and refusing to hide being gay so that we can recruit children to a gay lifestyle or something? Surely that's not what I'm reading. If not, please clarify; if it is, well, you'd fit right in with the right-wing assholes who've been trying to harm our community since forever. I'm not sure how you reach people who think homosexuality is a sickness or a sin and "compromise" with them. It's like trying to compromise with people who think the earth is flat or the moon is made of green cheese. Sooner or later, reality has to intrude and responsible people have to ignore idiocy. That said, I don't know any gay people whose goal in life is to promote sexual freedom and drugs to minors. Yes, of course they exist. They're not part of any governing or want-to-be-governing organization I know of. On the other hand, there's a (small but vocal) portion of people on the far right that want to make it legal for adult men to marry young girls of almost any age - and unlike the handful of gay people who might be promoting sexual freedom for older youth, there's a measurable number of right-wing politicians, IN OFFICE, who support allowing adult men to marry girls - in some cases, as young as 12 or 13. But sure, tell me how it's the gays who are promoting sexualizing children.

I'm not saying pedophiles are all right-wingers. I'm saying that most of the ones publicly identified are affiliated with right-leaning groups - churches, the Boy Scouts, Republican elected officials, etc. They're also the ones most loudly insisting that all gay people are pedophiles-in-waiting, just looking to lure in other people's kids. It's projection.

Sure, if the GOP would stop banning what some of us are perfectly happy to let our children attend (like Drag Queen Story Hour). NOBODY on the left is demanding that all kids be rounded up and forced to listen to Verandah Gazebo read Snow White. But lots of people on the RIGHT are demanding that such events be banned - that public venues be closed to them - that people who allow children to attend such things be charged with child endangerment. It's pretty clear who's forcing whose values onto whom.

I assume what you mean is "I've found out I caught something every other visit to the clinic...". If you're catching something every other time you go to the clinic, something's going on at that clinic. Yes, I'm kidding.

Can't comment on the guy in question but it looks very much like he was photoshopped onto the sign in question. I'd doubt whether he's actually any sort of LEO at all - very possibly these "calendar" guys are all essentially cosplaying.

Age? It might be any age, because I don't think there's some magic age where kids suddenly are "old enough" to face a person in costume. If there is, we need to ban kids going to Chuck E Cheese, McDonald's, Burger King, any sort of Trick-or-Treating (groomers! groomers!), and more. Kids see a man in drag, and IF they're astute enough to realize it's a man, they understand it's a form of dress-up play, not something sexual in and of itself. And yes, drag can be sexualized, but then so can gym workouts. So can walking down the street. So can... almost any activity in which humans engage. If you want to limit kids' exposure to sexualized behavior, that's fine, but be prepared to (A) distinguish that from drag per se, and (B) apply it evenly across the board to a huge swath of human undertakings. Because if you don't, you're just basically saying you object to drag. And not liking drag is fine, just as not liking sushi or pesto is fine; just don't try to ban drag or sushi or pesto for other people. And how would you define "LGBT content"? Does that mean any story in which there is a gay character, or two characters of the same sex in a relationship? If so, do you also object to "heterosexual content"? In other words, are you saying Prince Charming and Cinderella are fine, but not Prince Charming and Cinderfella? There's a huge difference between acknowledging that same-sex couples exist - that's a societal reality - and going into detail what EITHER of those couples - gay or straight - do in bed.

The only people pushing to have "little boys" watch or engage in anything sexual are clergy (most of whom are very conservative) and right-wing pedophiles (ditto).

Of course, the data raises other questions. Presumably, the way they know which guys have become HIV+ is that they've been tested and confirmed to be poz. It's not inconceivable that, as hntnhole suggests, realizing that "the worst" that could happen already has might well release some guys' inhibitions about fucking a lot more regularly. After all, as someone who's been out and about since before the first HIV deaths were reported, I can confirm that indeed a lot of guys' response to HIV's entry into the STI universe was to restrict how much sex they had and who they had it with, in the hope that by reducing and narrowing contacts they might escape infection. That's not a bad strategy as long as a particular STI is not widespread, but it becomes a lot less useful if even one guy among these small circles or chains of guys having sex with each other gets infected. Once one has HIV, there certainly COULD be a realization that having more sex (with more partners) is now an option. In other words: the question is whether an increased sex life after infection is because of some internal biochemical change brought about by the infection itself, or is it a more or less conscious choice we make, even if we don't really think about it that much?

Without testing (including possible genetic testing), it's impossible to know for sure.

To all of the above, I will add this: you suggested in one reply that you "don't feel depressed", but depression is a lot more complex than simply "feeling depressed" (or at least, it certainly can be). I'm not a therapist or mental health professional, but I do know depression can have both a mental and a physical (ie body chemistry) component. So, for instance, when you have a situation that seems to have no resolution - like having a partner in whom you're not interested sexually, with whom you seem to have significant differences in interests - the result can be depression even if you don't "feel depressed". As another example, you mention that you can't travel due to work constraints, except for very rare occasions that may be hard to negotiate. That, too, could be having a depressive effect that you just haven't identified as such. It's worth having a complete screening done for that. You might find that there are a lot of factors you hadn't considered affecting your mental outlook, and those may be manifesting themselves sexually more than any other way.

That is by definition not a wave. A wave is a measurable increase in something, often (but not always) a significant or dramatic increase. The media choosing to highlight something does not make the incidents a "wave". It may be that there is a wave of STORIES about these incidents, but that's a completely different thing entirely.

Summing up this article: A drunk driver hit some pedestrians, possibly swerving trying to avoid a cyclist. ONE of five listed victims of the incident is a migrant from a nearby shelter - and not even necessarily the one who died (it appears most of the people who were injured survived). Pro tip: if a drunk driver hits a bunch of pedestrians near a shelter for migrants, it's not surprising one of the victims is a migrant. Unless you think he got drunk and drove to the shelter area specifically to target migrants, this has zero to do with the fact that one victim (again, of at least five) is a migrant, and it does not constitute a "wave". Even if several migrants have been injured or killed in traffic accidents in recent months, that does not constitute a "wave" of migrant victims any more than the fact that several of them were men (or women) makes a "wave" of men (or women) being hurt or killed.

It's also the 2020's version of phone sex, where people type out descriptions of how depraved they pretend to be in order to get hard and get off reading other people's pretend descriptions of how depraved THEY are.

A "wave"? What's your source for this? I can't find any reference to it, in either the mainstream respectable media or the crappy Murdoch type tabloids like the NY Post. There have been a few isolated incidents, but a "wave" suggests something either large or coordinated or both and I can't find any evidence for either.