BootmanLA

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There are no bathhouses in New Orleans any longer. The last one closed many, many years ago. There are a few ABS's in seedier parts of the suburbs but none in an area I'd want to set foot in.

While the name hasn't changed, southern US history textbooks (and by extension, those used in much of the United States) papered over "slavery as the root cause of the Civil War" for decades. Widely used and approved high school history textbooks taught concepts like "the slaves loved and depended on their masters for protection" and "slavery taught many slaves skills and trades they were able to use to better themselves" and other apologetic horseshit. And when it comes to the war itself, it was frequently painted as due to some vague concept of "state's rights". What right was in question, for the states? The right of the state's residents to own slaves. What right were the Confederate states most worried about losing? The right to own slaves. What rationale did almost every southern state cite, in their declarations of secession, as the cause for removing themselves from the Union? Preservation of white supremacy and the right to own slaves. I support the teaching of Critical Race Theory - AS IT IS PROPERLY DEFINED AND UNDERSTOOD, which means not in any way, shape or form in the caricature presented by GOP idiots and mouth-breathing "conservative" shitheads - in the setting in which it is intended - that is, advanced collegiate courses and law schools. "Critical Race Theory" - again, understood properly - has NEVER been taught in elementary or secondary schools. But opportunistic GOP/conservative divisive operators - like most GOP politicians today - have managed to convince poorly educated Americans that "CRT" is something else entirely AND that it is being used to brainwash young minds. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These politicians attempt to make "critical" mean "criticizing" - and then further twist the phrase to suggest that CRT means teaching white students to be critical of, and ashamed of, their whiteness. "Critical", in this case, means "essential" - as in "Critical Care Unit" in a hospital, or as in "It is critical to eat food regularly if you don't want to die of starvation." And in this case, the phrase, as a whole, means that studying the role of race in American history is critical - that is, essential - to understanding almost any problem in contemporary culture - that racism, historically speaking, underlies so much of what's wrong with America. That doesn't mean "hate white people." It means "Understand what was done in the past, and how those effects linger in hundreds of ways today, often unseen," so that we can solve those problems at their root and not just at the symptomatic level. That sort of understanding, of course, would doom the prospects of the Republican Party, so it's no surprise that they're willing to malign and misrepresent CRT as a threat to children. "Think of the children!" is their go-to method of distorting reality on almost every social issue there is.

Which, specifically, "North American and European cultures" have feminized men? I'd be fascinated to know. Or do you mean any time we socialize men into not grunting, belching, farting, and otherwise being obnoxious boors means they're "feminized"?

I am not saying that circumcision prevents HIV. Please do not attribute statements to me that I did not make. Challenge what I said, not what you imagine, in your mind, that I said. To quote -with extraneous clauses omitted: "the study in question...SUGGESTS that being circumcised provides SOME additional protections over being uncircumcised" (emphasis added). I do not know how you translate "SUGGESTS" and "SOME" into "prevents". Maybe a dictionary is in order here.

I get your point to a certain degree, but your post reeks of pre-sexual revolution ideas like women not wanting to have sex outside of marriage or a committed relationship. The idea that straight men can't freely have lots of sex is by no means universal. And as for straight men not having raw sex: Dude, that's exactly why the pill was invented (and it's been around for 60 years), and even beyond that, the huge number of unintended pregnancies - whether carried to completion or not - kinda makes the point that there's an awful lot of bare sex going on with straight people. Maybe it's true that on average, a typical straight guy won't get as much random sex as a typical gay guy, but even averages can be misleading. I know a buttload of gay men who won't hop into bed (figuratively speaking) with random guys, saving sex for someone they're actually interested in dating. And I know quite a few women who have no problem sleeping with a guy at a first encounter if she finds him attractive enough.

Actions always have consequences, sometimes minor and sometimes not. If someone isn't prepared to be judged for what he's said, maybe he shouldn't say it. Because free speech (as a concept, not tied to a particular legal implementation like the inapplicable-here First Amendment) necessarily means others can speak too, including judging what the first person said or wrote. And as for "if not here, then where?" I would point out that even this site has rules, so it's not a case of "anything goes". There's a huge difference between (A) providing a site where people can discuss behavior that may be frowned upon by society at large, but which isn't harmful to anyone else and (B) providing a place for people to brag about doing truly malicious things. Celebrate being a shit person if you want, but don't demand that no one else call you out for being a shit person.

Indeed. Back in 2016, I was happy to support Hillary Clinton, even though I understand a lot of generally progressive people had issues with some aspect of her candidacy - issues that were largely ginned up by her opponents, rather than being true "issues". What I could never grasp is how so many people who ordinarily would have held their noses and voted for the Democrat anyway, failed to do so or in some cases even switched sides to vote for Mango Mussolini. I did a lot of detailed analysis of the trifecta of states she lost that are widely considered to have tipped the election to Trump (WI, MI, and PA). The biggest takeaway is that a lot of Obama support simply failed to turn out to vote for Clinton. Partly that might be that people thought she had the election in the bag. Partly it may have been old-fashioned misogyny - people have hated her since her days in Arkansas as the governor's wife - because she was an ambitious woman. But if anyone has any doubts as to how things would be different if she'd been president: We wouldn't have any of the three turds that Trump put on the Supreme Court, for one thing. I don't think even Mitch McConnell would have blocked a viable Clinton nominee for four years for Scalia's seat. Kennedy might not have resigned, but he was among the more tolerable conservative votes on the Court. And Ginsburg might well have resigned early enough that McConnell wouldn't have had to block her replacement. In other words, we might well have had Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, and at least two, maybe three other progressives/liberals on the Court instead of six conservatives and just three liberals. We wouldn't be wondering if these people were going to reverse Roe. We wouldn't be wondering if these people were going to reverse Obergefell. We wouldn't be looking at further gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We wouldn't be looking at gutting almost all firearms laws. And we almost certainly wouldn't be looking at the incredibly insane Independent State Legislature cases. How anyone can justify failing to vote against this kind of crap is beyond me.

If we define "sex" as a sexual encounter with another person, I would argue every single person who has had sex got a "hands on" introduction. Everyone who's had sex had a first time, and no matter how much porn someone has read/watched, I think it's highly likely the more experienced partner, in such cases, did some basic introduction work to the act in question.

FWIW, I don't disagree with your approach in general, @JimInWisc, and I recognize the dynamics in play that you report, @BlackDude(though I would say that those generalities do not always hold true for the Democrats). That said: elections are, in essence, a zero-sum game. In the end, one person wins, one person loses. More often than not, I'm not particularly inclined to vote for either candidate, regardless of party, but I do recognize that one of the two is going to hold that office when the dust settles. And in every case, even if I can't find a reason to vote FOR either candidate, I can almost always find a reason to vote AGAINST one of the two candidates. It's rare that both candidates are equally bad, even if neither is someone I'd pick from an open field of thousands of possibilities.

I'm not sure if you can separate party leadership - which are the elected officials who govern the party - and its funding base. The leadership accepts the policy goals of the funding base - big business and the very wealthy, basically - as policy goals for the party, whether formally and loudly or informally and quietly. But the party leadership also knows that tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the working class are not popular even with their electoral base. So the party leadership manufactures divides on social issues - as I've noted, historically race-based, but also sexual orientation-wise and now trans rights. And almost always, it's in the name of protecting the children. As in "Would you want your kids to go to school with one?" when it was black people in the 1950's and 1960's. Or "Would you want your kid taught by one?" when it was gay people in the 1970's and 1980's. And now it's "Would you want your kids to see these people in a library reading to your kids?" when it's trans people and drag performers. The specific language keeps shifting, because as Lee Atwater candidly admitted in 1981, conservatives could say "N----- N------ N------" in 1954, but not in 1968, so they had to switch to code words like "forced busing" and "state's rights". And by the time of Reagan, they had to use terms like "welfare queen" and "cutting welfare fraud", but the underlying message was always "white supremacy". But it's always safer for them to hide behind "protecting children."

Harper became Prime Minister on February 6, 2006. Same-sex marriage became legal in the province of Ontario on June 10, 2003, nearly three years earlier. You're simply misinformed about what happened under Harper. Same-sex marriages had ALREADY been legalized before his government took power. His government attempted to "reopen the question" - that is, repeal the previously enacted legislation that created same-sex marriage nationwide - and it LOST that vote. Harper may, or may not, have been personally opposed to or in favor of same-sex marriage - I don't pretend to know what he believed himself. But I do know that he had nothing to do with it being legalized either in Ontario or in the country as a whole. The calendar simply refutes the entire premise.

Not true. First, passage of the Civil Marriage Act happened AFTER courts - not Canada's parliament, not provincial government - had mandated recognition of same-sex marriage in eight of the ten provinces and one of the three territories. By the time the government "acted" same-sex marriage was already the law of the land for >90% of Canadians. The act in question merely extended the status quo to the less than 10% of Canadians who weren't already covered. Moreover: the act in question (the Civil Marriage Act) was introduced under the PREVIOUS government, a coalition headed by the Liberal Party, and it was during THAT government's leadership that the Act passed the House of Commons, the Senate, AND received royal assent - all in 2005. The Conservative government didn't take power until 2006. Under them, in fact, the CONSERVATIVE government tried to UNDO the Civil Marriage Act, and was handed a defeat in Parliament. So basically your entire statement is incorrect. Calendars are tricky things, but it's a lot easier if you just focus on the years so you can see the Act passed in 2005 and the conservative government was elected in 2006.

Another patient - this is the fifth - has had HIV eradicated from his system following a stem cell transplant - a transplant in his case necessitated by treatment for leukemia. As others have noted, while stem cell transplants aren't going to be in the works for people in general, the fact that this technique continues to work may open up some new frontiers in treatment of, and eventually curing, HIV. [think before following links] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3866819-fifth-person-cured-of-hiv-after-stem-cell-transplant-researchers-say/

I will agree with you that the party, on its own, does not do much, if anything, for people. I will, however, acknowledge that "the party" is shorthand for "Elected members of the party". If we accept that shorthand - which I think EQP would - then what the Democratic party has done FOR us, and what the Republican party has done TO us, are a lot clearer.

By "partly" I mean that I don't think the Republican party can reform itself the way you hope. I think it's an impossibility at this point.

"My" last Veep? "I" don't have a "Veep" of my own, last I checked - could someone verify that for me, please. But since the only vice-president in recent years to have served as a state governor is Mike Pence, I will kindly ask you NOT to refer to him as "my" anything. I haven't voted for or supported a Republican for ANYTHING in decades, and you really, really, SERIOUSLY need to learn to read what I write and stop inferring ignorant takes on it, because you're just embarrassing yourself at this point. But by all means, point out hypocrisy. I do as well. And feel free to call yourself gay, queer, radical queer, or a little teapot, short and stout, for all I care. You're free to self-identify as you wish. What you're not free to do is to pretend I said something that I did not, and have it go unchallenged.

I partly agree. But I think there are a few problems prohibiting the R's fixing their problems. First, there's a hard core of support for Mango Mussolini that will not turn out to vote if he's pushed out of the running - ESPECIALLY if he continues ranting that he's been cheated by machines or mail-in vote fraud or stuffed ballot boxes or whatever. Call that chunk of the R electorate the "Trump Chumps". They didn't vote before 2016 and probably won't vote if he's not on the ballot. Second, there's a divide between those in the party who think the problem is their positions - a minority within the R's - and those who think the problem is just Trump being Trump. These latter ones are the ones who try to placate Trump while also boosting DeSantis, Haley, or whomever - hoping another far-right candidate without Trump's criminal baggage will be able to defeat a Democrat. The former - those who recognize the party has lost its collective mind - aren't in sufficient number to see that a more moderate nominee gets the nod. The base is composed of far-right fascist types - who earnestly push for extreme positions - and the Trump Chumps, who don't have much of an opinion on anything except that Trump is their guy, regardless of what his positions are. What that tells me is that no one but Trump is going to unify that base; anyone else taking the lead is going to see a big chunk of the base stay home - the millions of older, first-time voters in 2016 and 2020 who voted for Trump and only Trump. That's why I think the party has to die in order for a new party to arise on the right. The Whigs had to die after the 1852 election debacle which they lost, 254-42 in the electoral college, in order for their remnants, the Free Soil Party, and others to create the new Republican Party. We're coming up, I think, on something similar - not necessarily by 2024, but in my lifetime.

Because you keep seeing things I'm not saying instead of what I actually write. I never even HINTED that the GOP has ever done anything for gay people. I don't think it has. But you seem determined to paint anyone who disagrees with your radical views as a sellout, a quisling, a collaborator with the enemy. And to be CLEAR, since that seems to be an issue here: I am not suggesting we work with the GOP in any way, shape or form. I'm pointing out (like many others have) that just because the GOP party platform - for the institution - is anti-gay does not automatically translate to "All Republicans Hate Gays". It's equally possible - in my view, much more likely - that the majority of the GOP members doesn't "HATE" gays, but they're willing to tolerate the party's anti-gay stance in order to achieve their other goals. Whether it's because they believe the anti-gay stuff doesn't hurt them or their families directly (so why care about it?), or whatever, ACCEPTANCE of something does not equal SUPPORT of something. As many of my pro-choice friends point out, they themselves are not "pro-abortion" - they would never have one themselves. But they accept that abortions will occur, and don't see it as their place to dictate to others that the governmental position should be what they themselves believe. I know a number of Republicans who feel the same way about gay issues - they would never discriminate against a gay person themselves, but they accept that others do, and don't see it as their place to dictate to others that the governmental position should be what they themselves believe. That's not necessarily hate. It may be hate on the part of those *actively pushing* the policy, but not necessarily on the part of everyone who accepts the policy for their group.

With all due respect, Jim, I don't think the GOP can ever come back to the center. The base of the party is now what the GOP caters to - they sowed the wind, and now reap the whirlwind - and I don't think it can be rehabilitated. About the only thing I think that will work is a long series of crushing defeats in national elections, which will cause the party implode so that a new center-right party might emerge. As it stands, because of our party primary system - where in most states, the GOP party candidate with the most votes in the primary wins, even if they lack a majority - means that the most extreme candidate wins. Not only is the "base" of the party the largest contingent within it, but they're also considerably more likely to vote in primaries than moderates are. And with Emperor Angry Dorito's iron grip on most of the party's testicles, people who buck his populistic bullshit get spurned by the party almost immediately. Ask Liz Cheney - Liz Fucking Cheney, daughter of one of the most powerful and right-wing VP's we've ever had - how opposing Trump works out. In the Democratic party, while we have that same issue in a few jurisdictions, our "base" is fairly diverse. It's church-going Black Americans, secular Jews, higher-educated Whites, LGBT people and their allies, and so forth - with no one group's issues dominating things the way the GOP base's cultural issues dominate theirs. So we get a handful of far-left people and a lot more center-left ones.

It's true that there are racial disparities in views on same-sex marriage - the acceptance/approval level is higher among whites than blacks, although the gap is narrowing. I don't mean to suggest that we have a perfect balance of those things here in the U.S., nor that we have more than any other country, nor that we apply them equally to all people here in the U.S. - and thank you for the reminder to acknowledge that. What I'm getting at, though, is that compared with more openly totalitarian states, the ability to write about and broadcast about gay people and gay issues without being shut down by the government does make a difference, even if we aren't the "freeest" of the free. I think another factor, that I didn't address (because it didn't occur to me) is our system of government, where the executive and legislative functions are split. That produces big fights (especially if the president and the majority of one or both chambers of Congress are of different parties), which makes every contested issue seem like a big fucking deal. In parliamentary systems, where the prime minister has an automatic majority (either of his own party, or his party in a coalition), what leadership wants, it usually gets, at least until the coalition falls apart or he loses the confidence of his party. So things like same-sex marriage tend to be adopted rather swiftly once the leadership decides that's what's going to happen - and so it seems like less of a "big deal" than here. I don't know about you, but as I see it, civil libertarians and like-minded people have been warning about this for decades. Rational people have been worried about abortion rights since at least the Reagan administration, as Republican presidents kept appointing justices who voted against striking down abortion bans. Remember that in many ways Casey v. Planned Parenthood (in 1992) was a more important abortion rights case than Roe v. Wade was in 1972. Casey upheld the core idea that abortion was a right - and yet despite that having been precedent for nearly 20 years at that point, four of the nine justices dissented, including Rehnquist, the chief justice, and both Scalia and Thomas, both of whom were relatively young at the time (56 and 44, respectively). At that point it was clear: get enough conservative justices on the court in place of some of the liberals, and they'd have no problems ignoring precedent and just ruling for the right wing. And from that point on, every justice appointed by a Republican had to conform to the anti-abortion mandate of the GOP, regardless of the law. Many of us were screaming loudly about this in 2016, when we already had one empty Court seat (because Mitch McConnell refused to allow the president to fill it) and at least one more expected to open up in the next term (nobody really expected Ginsburg to live and serve another four years). But too many people were all "butter emails". As for the sexualized media thing: we've been fighting anti-porn laws ever since federal restrictions on non-obscene materials were struck down as a violation of the First Amendment. Communications Decency Act (1996), anyone? Morality in Media? The Meese Commission? The PROTECT Act decision (2008)? None of this is new. What's new is that people whose heads were apparently buried in the sand or up their butts finally noticed what was going on around them.

But your phrasing is addressed to "you" (others), not "I". If you'd said "If I am not part of the solution, I am part of the problem", you'd be speaking for yourself.

The story you want is "Dad's Pool Party". That said, this kind of thing is ridiculously easy to find. You know there was a character named "Axel"; just search for that word in the Search field at the top of this forum, and it comes right up.

are you suggesting you want to restore your foreskin so you can increase your risk of contracting HIV? Because the study in question - though its limitations are substantial, and there are contradictory studies out there as well - suggests that being circumcised provides some additional protection over being uncircumcised.

The point is that he did NOT do the 2-1-1 regime for "on demand" use. That calls for 2 pills anywhere from 2 to 24 hours before sex, followed by additional pills 24 and 48 hours after the sex. It works presumably because the level of medication in the person's system is double what it would normally be at the time of potential infection, and the two additional days afterward maintain a high level until the chances of HIV taking hold end. He took 2 tablets more than 24 hours in advance of sex, meaning that the amount in his system was less than the minimum required for effective on-demand dosing. And because he'd only been on the medication for five days - with a missed day among those, although there was also a double-dose day - his system hadn't achieved the "baseline" level of medication provided by daily dosing, either. He didn't have zero protection, granted. But based on what he described, with the number of doses he took so far, he was probably about 75% protected. Assuming the top was, in the OP's words, "toxic" and on a "med holiday" for six months, that's certainly potentially sufficient to infect someone, even one with that level of protection. If the strain the top had was PrEP-resistant, that makes it even more possible. On the flip side, even a bottom not on PrEP who takes a load from an HIV positive top who is detectable is not guaranteed to get infected. Even more importantly, the OP was looking for guidance as to his proper course of action RIGHT NOW, when he's not sure if he might have been infected or not. Telling him "not to worry" and to just go on taking PrEP 2-1-1 before sex in the future is downright irresponsible. If he IS infected - and he won't know for a few weeks when the testing would be able to detect it - then continuing to take PrEP, which won't eradicate the virus already in him, may result in a strain that is resistant to some of the drugs needed to treat it. I'm hoping that he actually got PEP the day after his sexual encounter, which would have a much greater chance of protecting him than assuming he is okay and just going back to taking PrEP. But if he did not get PEP within the suggested timeframe, and he really does want to remain HIV-negative, your approach is risky at best.