BootmanLA

It's true that there are a lot of gay men in Greece - or at least, quite a few visit some of the major tourist areas. But this guy is describing small rural village life. Those kind of places are far less likely to be accepting of gay men; there's no guarantee it's dangerous, but there's also no guarantee it's safe, either. I think he has a much better feel for what his village will tolerate than those of us who live in more liberal countries. A country doesn't have to be a "dictator state" to be a dangerous place for gays - especially outside of big cities and tourist draws.

I hope everyone realizes that most of what's being urged here - fucking someone under terms that were not consented to (in fact, explicitly NOT consented to) amounts to sexual assault at a minimum and very possibly (in a number of jurisdictions) rape. It's shit like this that straight men for years used to justify forcing themselves onto women: she wanted it, she said no but then she didn't (couldn't) stop me, blah blah blah. What many of you are advocating is that people prove themselves liars and untrustworthy pieces of shit. As a few sane-r people have pointed out, there are plenty of bottoms out there who are happy to bareback; find one of them, instead of forcing what YOU want onto someone who's made it clear it's not what HE wants. JFC.

Here's another way to think about it. When you get a moving violation ticket, you may pay a fine (or a few days in jail, which may be suspended) and lose your license for, say, 60 days. After that, you're free to drive again. But the ticket stays on your record - and your insurer will see it for (typically) three years or so; if you get another ticket within that period, the insurer is much more likely to jack up your rate or cancel you, because you have a history. They wouldn't know about your history if the ticket were taken off your account as soon as you paid the fine and your sentence/suspension was over.

"Large majority" doesn't even begin to cover it. There are seventeen judgeships on the 5th Circuit (not counting senior judges). One is vacant, and of the remainder, 12 of the 16 were appointed by Republican presidents. Two go all the way back to Reagan, four to "W", and a shocking six appointed by Trump in just his one term. Of those appointed by Democratic presidents, one was appointed by Clinton, two by Obama, and one (so far) by Biden. And even when we do get to appoint judges, we fuck it up. Most of Trump's six judges were born in the 1970's, so they're relatively young and could be on that court for decades. Obama's two picks were born in 1953 and 1961, making one of them now 70 and the other 62. Trump's youngest judge on that court is only 45, and if he serves until he's, say, 80, that's another 35 years of right-wing rulings any time he's in the majority on a panel. That's a relic of the days when federal appellate judgeships were seen as the capstone to a long and dignified career, not something you get at the age of 40 (Andrew Oldham's age when he was appointed by Trump). On some of the federal district courts, Trump appointed judges in their 30's, including one who was just 33 (and THAT one had literally never tried a case, civil or criminal, in court as a lawyer). Biden, at least, seems to get the necessity of appointing younger judges, and Chuck Schumer grasps the necessity of confirming them rapidly.

It's not that the mandate to cover preventative care, per se, has been struck down. What's been struck down is allowing a board that was not appointed by the President nor confirmed by the Senate to determine what is a "preventative care" service that must be covered. Right now, those decisions are made by a non-political board of career health scientists in the Department of Health and Human Services. What the court is saying - and to be fair, this is in line with a growing string of cases from many other departments - is that decisions with that much discretion, which amount to major policy choices, have to be made by officials appointed under the Appointments Clause of the constitution. That clause is found in Article II, Section 2, which gives the president the power to appoint (along with judges, ambassadors, etc.) "all other Officers of the United States" as long as it is "with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." The clause also provides that Congress has to create all such positions (meaning there has to be some statutory authority for the existence of an agency or department), and that Congress can, by passing a law to that effect, give the president power to create such positions on his own authority or give the heads of departments that same power. Thus, there are three types of government people, under the constitution: Officers (who must be confirmed by the Senate - such as department secretaries and deputy secretaries, for instance), "Inferior" officers (who may be appointed by a principal officer), and regular governmental employees - essentially, the last group are the "civil servants". The key distinction making an official a "principal" rather than "inferior" official is when the position exercises "significant authority" under federal law, and this is analyzed typically looking at three main factors: -whether a Senate-confirmed official (ie "Officer") can review and reverse the decisions of the purportedly "inferior" official; -how much direct supervision the Senate-confirmed official has over the "inferior"; and -does the Senate-confirmed official have the power to remove the inferior official. The more power another Senate-confirmed official has over the "inferior" official, the more likely he is actually an inferior official who does not have to be confirmed by the Senate. But the board that decides what preventative services must be covered for free under the ACA presents the typical problem: the board isn't appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, yet it exercises considerable authority to act on its own, it's not subject to review by a Senate-confirmed official, nor is it supervised by one. That means the board should be required to be confirmed by the Senate after being appointed by the President. And since it's not, their decisions are likely null and void because they're exercising a power they can't possess. That isn't to say I think PrEP shouldn't be covered - of course it should. It makes financial sense. But that doesn't mean the way the mandate was implemented was entirely legal.

In the Health forum, I started a topic about today's news that a federal judge struck down the ACA/Obamacare's requirement that PrEP be covered at no cost to insured persons. That's the place to talk about the health aspects of that decision - what it will mean in terms of people's health, both on an individual level and on a macro-level, for society as a whole. But there's a political dimension to this, too. It's too long and complex to explain in detail here, but basically, in Texas federal courts, you can pretty much choose which federal judge you want to hear your case if you're a right-winger, because there are a lot of federal courts where there is a single judge, almost all appointed by Republican presidents (mostly Bush II and Trump). Conversely, most moderate to liberal federal judges in the state are in larger courthouses with multiple judges (along with some conservatives), so even if a plaintiff wants to forum-shop for a court that leans liberal, he has no guarantee of getting one of the liberals among (for instance) the 8 judges on the Houston division of the Southern District of Texas. And it's patently obvious what's going on: plaintiffs with no connection to Amarillo, including the state of Texas, flock to the federal courthouse there to file suit because they'll get Judge Kacsmaryk, who's as far-right as they come. (Texas's seat of government is Austin, so you'd think they'd file suit in Austin in order to make it easier for state AG's to push their cases, but in fact they've filed at least seven major cases against the Biden administration in Amarillo. Guess why?) Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a lot that can be done, for now. Certainly any district where a majority of the judges are appointed by Republicans (like the Northern District of Texas, where 10 of the 12 sitting judges were appointed by either W or Trump) is not about to change its procedures to require all cases to be randomly assigned. It's bad enough when plaintiffs "forum shop" - by choosing a federal judicial district where a majority of the judges are reliably of one disposition or the other. It's an order of magnitude worse when the rules are structured to let you just pick the judge you want to hear your case. We're constantly being told by Republicans that the role of a federal judge is to call balls and strikes, but when you get to pick the umpire who reliably is going to call strikes against the other team, no matter what, the comparison breaks down entirely.

It's a ten-year old article. My guess is that if the church didn't get rid of its bathhouse tenant quickly, it's because some sort of eviction-control laws in Italy/the EU prohibit them from doing so. I have as many problems with the Catholic Church as anyone, but I doubt sincerely they bought this building with the idea of continuing to lease part of it to a gay bathhouse.

Today, Reed O'Connor, a far-right Republican judge appointed by George W. Bush, ruled that the requirement for insurers to cover PrEP because doing so violates the "religious rights" of companies that object to homosexuality. Leaving aside the fact that PrEP protects both gay and straight people from a virus that infects both gay and straight people, the judge struck down the PrEP coverage requirement nationwide. More on this from a political angle in the Politics forum, so as not to make THIS topic too political. However, there are clearly health aspects to this decision, and that's what this thread should focus on. Specifically: the ruling found that the ACA (Obamacare)'s requirement that insurers have to cover certain preventative care tests, medications, and so forth is subject to religious freedom objections. Moreover, he held that the Preventive Services Task Force, a body within the US Dept. of Health and Human Services appointed by an agency within that department, is unconstitutional because he says it's a body that must be appointed in accordance with the Appointments Clause of the US constitution - that is, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. So that means the federal rules that require coverage of those preventative care items are in doubt, at least when they conflict with the "religious rights" of companies or organizations - because they were issued by a body that itself is unconstitutionally created. Again, this doesn't say that insurers CANNOT cover PrEP, or that companies can't include PrEP as part of their plans. But if this ruling stands - it's certain to be appealed, but the appeal will go to the very conservative US Fifth Circuit - it means that the requirement that PrEP be provided at no cost to the insured person will be gone. Insurers can decide not to offer that coverage at all, or place it in a tier of drugs (like HIV treatment) that has limited coverage with high co-pays, or any number of other possible outcomes. From a public health perspective, this is a disaster - even if the order is eventually overturned, it's going to cause major disruption in the meantime.

Broadly speaking, health care providers in the U.S. do NOT have the right to share your health records, including the results of any HIV test, with anyone without your consent. There are exceptions for sharing within a given health care provider, and of course a doctor treating you is going to seek a release to allow him or her to share your records, as needed, with places like labs where your bloodwork is sent. And there is an exception where the law requires disclosure to protect public health - but that's not designed as a hole to drive trucks through. In fact, keeping HIV/AIDS diagnoses confidential was one of the reasons (though not the only) that HIPAA exists in the first place. Prior to it, there were a hodgepodge of state laws that protected some, but not all, medical information, and many states and localities were routinely sharing info about HIV+ persons under the guise that it was a health emergency. HIPAA was designed to provide some uniformity to that privacy right.

Perhaps, to some extent. But the US is generally a poor performer on world history topics in general, not just on gay issues. Huge numbers of people in the US think that WWII started with Pearl Harbor, for instance, ignoring that by December 1941 France had been in Nazi hands for a year and a half. It's also relevant, though, that WWII largely killed that nascent gay identity in Berlin and drove what was left of it underground for decades. It's not like Berlin remained a liberal cultural beacon after the Nazis took power, and divided Berlin after the war was a pretty conservative place on both sides of the wall. What Stonewall was, in effect, the birthplace of the gay rights movement that actually "stuck". There have been reverses along the way, but things have never retreated, especially in large cities, so fully as things did in Berlin. (And for the record: quite a few other cities had a fairly out gay culture in the 1920's, including in the US. Berlin was certainly one of the biggest and brightest stars on that horizon, but it wasn't an island unto itself.)

Thanks - I'm not really "almost back to normal" - just the skin sensitivity on the forehead is (it had gotten very tender over the entire half of my forehead, not just at the four main infected spots). They're still black and ugly but I can tell the treatment is working. I have a good ways to go before I'm back to normal. Whatever that is. 🙂

To add back to the MRSA discussion: early in the week I started developing an infected spot on my forehead, which I at first assumed was just a typical pore that got infected with something. I cleaned it out, and within a day the spot had both grown considerably and spread to other locations on my forehead. Urgent Care decided it was better to assume it was something like MRSA and treat it heavily up front than to throw antibiotics at it that were ineffective, so I'm on both an oral antibiotic and an antibiotic ointment. The good news is that the skin sensitivity in the area is almost back to normal, and the (ultimately) four spots, while ugly and crusting over with blackish residue, seem to be healing up. All I can figure is that I may have wiped my forehead with something that had staph bacteria on it - and it wasn't at the gym or any other "typical" location, because I hadn't been to any. I probably picked it up on my fingers somewhere, touched a spot on my forehead afterward, and boom.

I agree the danger is there. But here's the harsh, cold reality: if an app/service is free, the app isn't the product. YOU are. Advertisers will pay to have their ads targeted to app users who reside in certain areas or who frequent certain locations (not just sexual ads, but other products, too). If your phone is constantly contacting cell towers in the vicinity of a Whole Foods store, you're much more likely to see ads targeting higher income consumers than if you are constantly pinging towers near the Dollar General. Beyond that, though, data brokers will buy data from the companies that collect it, and often those collecting companies have no idea what will be done with the data after it's purchased. Or the company that buys it may then resell it. Or they may lie about what they intend to use it for. The bottom line, though, is that a company like Grindr or Growlr or Scruff or whatever has to make money to pay for its servers, etc. and the premium, paying members don't carry the whole bill. Selling the data is what keeps these companies open for business. And the companies that buy this information also buy other datasets, which they can combine. So if PhoneNumber XXXXX, associated with Grindr Profile AAAAAAA, is also in other datasets that show that phone number geolocates frequently to Bathhouse ZZZZZZ, and to church rectory YYYYYY, computers have a trivial task filtering and combining these different data sets to paint a pretty good picture of the life of a particular phone user. And remember: none of us, really, EVER read the Terms and Conditions that apply when you click 'Agree' to use any app - whether it's a hookup app or a shopping app or anything else. They're all collecting data, and most of them sell that data, and somewhere big mainframes are crunching trillions upon trillions of bytes of data showing links between this, that, and the other thing. So again, it's not the APP that is outing the priests. It's the people who bought the data from the app. The only way out of it is not to use those kinds of apps in the first place.

I appreciate that (and you're probably right about the good it does).

Just as a note: When you quote someone's post on here, click OUTSIDE of the quoted part before you start typing your own comments. If you don't, you make it appear as though the person you quoted also said the things YOU'RE saying - which could result in that person being held liable for any infractions. In this case, of course, RawTop, as site owner, isn't subject to infractions. But it's still not kosher to add your own comments to his quoted material without distinguishing which is which.

While this is true and I do support the concept 100%, it's a shame so many people have chosen to post what are pretty obviously fictional "look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee i'm a whooooooooooooooooooore this is whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" tales under the guise of exploring/confronting their past. I recognize we can't call people out on this, but it really does cheapen the efforts by actual victims of abuse as kids to address their concerns and to let others know they're not alone. The price we pay, I suppose.

I can't say for sure - it would almost certainly depend on where you're located, for one thing, and you don't include that in your profile. The general rule, though, is that a blood test (more specifically, particular kinds of blood tests) are the only way to be absolutely sure of one's status. I can't say "suck it up" and go through the blood test, but it's not that bad. My guess would be that a saliva test would not be guaranteed accurate enough to serve as an indication of suitability for PrEP.

There isn't much you can do. The flu virus is spread through close association, with an infected person spreading it to an uninfected person, and flu viruses can live on surfaces for at least a couple of days. Even a place that closes once a day four an hour for deep cleaning could easily serve as a flu transmission location during the period between cleanings. One option might be to get a flu shot each season - which won't protect you against every variety of flu, but will certainly lessen the symptoms or protect you against the ones that are expected to be circulating. That said, there are other flu-like viruses that can also spread in such circumstances. So if you're susceptible to viral infections - and it sounds like you might be, more on that in a moment - then your choices are to stay out of places where you seem to pick them up, or deal with it. And with THAT said: You say you're "don't ask, don't tell", but it's a distinct possibility that one reason you keep picking up the flu or similar infections is that your immune system is compromised, possibly by HIV. If you truly don't care whether you live or die, that's one thing, but assuming you want to continue having fun, knowing whether this is the source of your problems would SEEM to be important. "I really care about not getting the flu (which is treatable and usually passes) but I refuse to care or even know if I'm infected with something much more serious, chronic, and deadly" does not seem to be a particularly rational approach.

I think a whole lot of women would argue that no, "same-sex intimacy" (in the form of sexual encounters) between women is NOT an important part of femininity, or even a part of it at all for many women. No, and you're being silly with this example. A straight boy can think about a girl to get hard, and then compare with another boy, and neither one of them has to have the slightest inclination towards wanting any sexual encounter with another male to do that. They just have to be aroused, and how they GET aroused doesn't have to be anything same-sex-oriented. Not all boys want to compare cocks. It's not "obviously" anything of the sort. And even if they do, it does not logically follow that they should have "games that [they] play with their cocks". You're trying to turn every expression of curiosity about differences between body A and body B into sex games. Girls don't (as far as I know) go into washrooms together in order to look at each other's breasts or vaginas. In fact, women are just as likely to view that sort of interest by another woman as a sign of lesbianism. You seem to think girls can just strip down and poke and prod each other and not have it be sexualized at all - which is bullshit. Maybe some uninformed straight guys think "gay" equals "anal bottom". If they're that poorly informed, that's not my problem. As for what you once read... well, bless your heart, maybe you should try reading something a little more enlightened? In western culture - and I'm becoming more convinced than ever that it's not YOUR native culture - "gay" has long been recognized as men who are sexually interested in other men (and not women). "Love" has nothing to do with that. Again, I suspect that wherever your ancestry lies, it's in a country that ignores men fucking men and pretends that's just "situational", and it's only "gay" (and very likely, a problem) if there are emotions involved. That's not how western culture views it. I'll just leave that there for the laughs. From the Kinsey Institute website: "Instead of assigning people to three categories—heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual—the team used a seven-point scale. It ranges from 0 to 6 with an additional category of “X.”" In other words, they used the scale for *people* - exactly the opposite of what you say here. The Kinsey site goes on to say: "People at “0” report exclusively heterosexual / opposite sex behavior or attraction. Those at “6” report exclusively homosexual / same-sex behavior or attraction. Ratings 1–5 are for those who report varying levels of attraction or sexual activity with either sex. In the original Kinsey Report studies, the X category designated the group who reported no socio-sexual contacts or reactions in their interviews." That is as clear a statement that the scale refers both to what people DO AND what people ARE - that is, the gender to whom they're attracted. I get that for some weird reason you don't want to give someone who's a Kinsey 6 the label "gay" but that's what we, societally speaking, do. On this point you are categorically wrong. Only if (as apparently is the case in your culture) gay men are viewed dismissively. That's increasingly not the case in this society, and I'm sorry if you are from one that denigrates the value and status of gay men. Must suck. You can be "sure" if you want, but I'm not so sure. Of course some guys would do that. But an awful lot of men who have sex with men want a lot more than a mouth at a glory hole. And gloryhole sex is a tiny fraction of the actual sex men have with each other (again, at least in western society). Gloryholes are especially popular among two types of men - gay men who love sucking cock and know that there are some men who will only allow it to happen with the anonymity a glory hole provides (and that there are lots of others who don't need the anonymity but get off on that). And straight-ish identifying men who would never admit to being interested in sex with a man, but who will get their cock sucked in a gloryhole because they don't have to acknowledge it's a man on the other side. Those are far from a substantial portion of gay men. If they're most of the men you know, I'd suggest broadening your social circles a bit.

I'm not a gym goer myself any more, but if I were, I'd do what a buddy of mine does. He carries a small flat pack of Clorox or Lysol wipes and wipes down *every padded surface on every machine he uses in the gym - the bench, backrest, any arm/shoulder pads, etc. before using the machine. If someone else "works in", he does it before each set he does. He wears flip flops in the showers, never reuses a gym towel without washing it first, and so forth. Most of that is just common sense. As for spas, bathhouses, sex clubs, and the like: unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do there to kill the germs that exist, as MRSA can persist on surfaces for hours or even days.

To clarify a bit about this story: The app companies weren't exactly selling their data to "the Church". Rather, a group of rich conservative Catholics bought the data from these companies - which is something anyone with deep enough pockets can do. Then they set some very sophisticated programs to work analyzing the data. Because the app data is geolocated, they were able to track profiles associated with phones that, say, were detected at both gay bars or bathhouses and at Catholic parish rectories. You do enough of that kind of analysis, linked to profiles on the sites, and you can sometimes zero in on the identity of the person involved. Once they identified individuals as priests, this group - again, not the Church, but a private organization of rich Catholic people - took the evidence to the priests' bishop(s). So the Church itself didn't pay for anything. As ErosWired noted, this is perfectly legal in the United States because when you sign up for most apps and services, the Terms of Service spell out that you give the company permission to use the data generated by your usage however they see fit. In some jurisdictions like the European Union, those TOS cannot supersede established legal privacy rights; but in the United States, users have virtually no such rights, with some very limited exceptions (like payment methods - credit card numbers and the like). And even if the company initially says it won't use X or Y or Z data, or it will only use A or B or C data, the TOS almost always gives the company the right to change that policy with little or no warning, other than a message that says the TOS has changed, click here to read the new version (and no one ever does because it's tens of pages of legal jargon). Now, that doesn't make it morally right to do - but then morals are famously in the eye of the beholder.

Children have also been raised since eternity by single mothers. Or by entire villages, where children of a tribe are considered the responsibility of the entire tribe. Children have been raised by other relatives and by adoptive parents, both married and single, for enternity as well. Regardless, this is 2021, and in western societies at least, same-sex couples and openly LGBT people have been around for decades, in public. There's no excuse at this point for legislation that *in effect* treats us differently under the law. Period. Bullshit. I don't label them "different". But I do label things as accurately as possible because labels, aka "nouns", are how we identify things. Other labels, aka "adjectives", are how we describe things. We need words for things in order to communicate about those things. Of course heterosexual women care if a man in whom they are interested is gay or straight. But that doesn't mean they think he's of "lower social status". I'm starting to get the idea you may be, ethnically speaking, from a culture that demeans homosexuals. If so, then your ideas, however quaint and primitive, are meaningless to me, and certainly shouldn't be dictating how a first-world society treats its people. Here's the thing: the only "boys and men" who need things from "other boys and men" - that is, other than friendship - are the gay ones. You seem to be suggesting that if we just stop calling gay people "gay" that nobody will care if boys fuck boys and men fuck men. I assure you, that is not the case. Maybe in some nation that officially denigrates gay people but doesn't care if men are fucking men night and day, just don't talk about it - but not in a more enlightened place. That is just stupid. It's categorically stupid. In fact, the very definition of "gay" is "a man who is interested in sexual interactions with other men." That's what the fucking word MEANS. Now yeah, in some places, that's considered a horrible thing - that is, admitting that's what you like. In such places, men who want sex with men are supposed to pretend they want women - they even marry them, sometimes fuck them (or not), but then they go right on fucking men or getting fucked by men discreetly, on the side. Well, some of us have matured beyond that kind of game-playing deceit. If that's what floats your boat, fine - but don't try to impose that bullshit idea of life on western society. Jesus Fucking Christ - you really do seem to think that boys can "get it out of their system" and then marry women. News flash: men did that for centuries. IT DOES NOT WORK. Period.

To add: the converse of this is that if something like shigella (or any number of other pathogens) takes root in your gut, the antibiotics needed to treat it are not usually that discriminating - that is, they don't target shigella and only shigella. A lot of "good" bacteria in your biome can be wiped out (or at least sharply reduced) by antibiotics powerful enough to treat this kind of thing. They'll often recover, over time, but your system can be out of whack for a long period.

Your experiences and mine - and those of most people I know - are different. Even something so innocuous as a teacher having a picture of his/her family on her desk is an announcement about his or her family structure. Beyond that, the principal made a public announcement one year that a (female) teacher's husband had been killed in a car accident and asked for a moment of silence in his honor. I had (hetero) teachers who were married to each other, and everyone knew that Mr. Smith was married to Mrs. Smith. Even more telling, Mrs. Smith got pregnant one year, so it was abundantly clear to everyone that Mrs. Smith was sexually active. More than one female teacher I knew got married during the school year or between school years, and took her husband's name at marriage, so it was patently clear what their "orientation" was. As I said: heterosexuality is so pervasive that you don't even notice it, or think of it as "sexual orientation". But it's always there and right in front of you. It's only noticeable when it's something other than heterosexuality. But the bigots can't come out and say "straight good, gay bad" - so they say we can't talk about it at all. Except, as noted, we do, all the time, for straights. I think most men favor heterosexual intimacy because that's how they're wired. If you think straightness in culture is because women take care of kids, you seriously, seriously need to do some research. So basically you want to teach them the mechanics of gay sex but nothing about actually being attracted to someone, romantically, of the same sex. That's about as fucked up as I can imagine - it reduces gay people (and in your formulation, gay men especially) into purely sexual beings, ones who fuck men because it's convenient and feels good, not because that's how they're wired. That's... fucked up. Seriously.

If you have rectal chlamydia, it most definitely can be spread by sex, period. You could spread it topping, or to another top by bottoming for him while you have an active infection. The good news is that it's usually treatable and it doesn't take that long (usually a week) to clear up. Ask the medical professional who provides your treatment for the infection how long you should avoid sex to be sure, as some antibiotics take longer than others to completely clear the infection.