BootmanLA

Sorry - but I call BS on the "left and right" bit. Only one side is infuriating women and frustrating men by cooking up abortion bans. Only one side is making democracy fragile by trying to limit voting and enable the overturning of elections. To mention issues not addressed in your post: Only one side is pushing for legislation to overturn same-sex marriage. Only one side is actively blocking addressing long-standing, systemic racism in this country. Only one side is actively blocking addressing climate change, which is an existential threat to our continued life on this planet. Only one side is ... I could go on and on, but the point is simple: one side wants to make the world better for people in general, and the other side wants to make the world better for themselves and their ilk only. It's a never-ending battle because those who oppose change will always oppose change and will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better future - one they're always ready, at the drop of a hat, to vote out of existence if they for one moment gain the levers of power. Are there leftist extremists? Sure, but they don't drive policy for the progressive side. The cuckoos on the right, meanwhile, dominate their party.

I agree I don't know everything. I do know - and many, many members of this forum know - that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a result of the bacteria changing, not a result of how many times someone gets infected with a particular bacterium species. More to the point: if you WERE correct, what you're saying is that you "know" your body is becoming a human petri dish for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and you just don't give a fuck about anyone else's health. That's a pretty amazing self-own.

You're the one who brought up discrimination, so it's rather cheeky for you to bring up the issue and then declare it off the table for debate. In any event, "discrimination", at its root (which is Latin), means to distinguish between - we say that someone has a discriminating eye, for instance, when he is able to detect the differences between an original painting and a good but forged copy. Any time we distinguish between two things, we are "discriminating" between them. We've extended the use of the word such that today, it primarily means to choose one thing over the other thing - but it's important to know that discrimination, by itself, is value-neutral. It's only in certain contexts, and in certain situations, and in judging certain characteristics, that discrimination becomes (by societal agreement) wrong. By which I mean: in the context of employment, in the situation of deciding to hire or fire someone, we (broadly, at least in the west) consider it wrong to make that decision based on the race, religion, sex, or national origin of the persons involved. We are fast coming to a broad consensus that making the decision based on sexual orientation is also wrong, and some (though not all) people believe the same is true when basing the decision on gender identity. By contrast: nobody bats an eye if a straight man "discriminates" against other men in the context of sex or romance or dating; his attraction is to whatever sex he finds appealing. He's "discriminating" against men, by any definition; we just recognize that he has a right to do so. Likewise, if he is only attracted to blonde hair, or large breasts, or chubby women, or green eyes, we recognize that's within his rights. (Some people might find his choices limited and limiting, but it's his call to make.) That's where one's HIV/STI status comes into play. Some HIV+ people simply do not want to risk infecting a negative person even if they are undetectable and the potential partner is on PrEP. That's their call to make. Some HIV- people simply do not want to take the risk of knowingly having sex with an HIV+ person, even if they themselves are on PrEP. And that is THEIR call to make. You or I might consider it silly or overly cautious, but we aren't the one making the decision and none of us are entitled to have sex with someone just because we want to. They're free to "discriminate" against us for any reason that they choose. I'd hope that anyone I'd hooked up with who found he had an STI within, say, three months or so (I'm not sure how far back they ask people to contact past partners) would contact me, on the off chance it had been in his system that long. I would be grateful as a spur to get checked. For HIV, if I were negative, I'd hope anyone who had bare sex with me and who was diagnosed as HIV+ later would contact me, just in case he'd had it for a long time. When I was diagnosed, I made a point of contacting every sex partner I'd had in the prior 8 years, just in case, even those where the sex was protected, just in case, because I didn't want anyone discovering he'd gotten it and not knowing it might have been me (even though I was almost invariably the/a bottom).

I have nothing against anonymous, fuck-whatever-hole-is-presented sex in such a setting, or even at most group play sessions. For that matter, I have nothing against those who do so in private sessions, either at home or in a hotel room or some other private setting. It may not always (or even often) be my style, but to each his own.

TBH, though, a lot of the people on here might as well be mute given that they don't want to have any conversation with their sexual partners whatsoever.

If what you mean is "asking [about someone's STI status] is insufficient for actual complete protection" then I would agree. But the idea that it's "discrimination" to have an informed discussion about STI status and history is just bonkers. If nothing else, someone's responses to those questions may help you realize whether or not this person is a good fit for you as a sexual partner. I'd much rather have someone who says "I've had X and Y in the past, but always get treatment and generally abstain from sex until it's cleared up" than someone who says, in essence, "How dare you ask such a personal question when I'm about to do something very personal with you?" And I'd much rather hear "I had gono three weeks ago but the doctor told me with the run of antibiotics I'd be clear to fuck again by now" than "I don't bother with STIs because they just happen, you can't ask about that because it's discriminatory."

I believe this is the story you want:

I'm not sure what advice you're asking for, but I'll try to wing it. If I were you, get a copy of the results, and then approach the guys non-confrontationally. They may have gotten Chlamydia at the party from someone else; one of them may have had it already and spread it to the other via a shared bottom; or any number of other things. I'd take the approach of "I know it must have been a pain to have to deal with that, and I'm sorry, but I had a full STI screening one week after your party and I didn't have Chlamydia at that point. It's possible that someone pointed a finger at you; it's possible most of the other guests had been fucking off and on through the pandemic and you were the only "new" guy at this party and you got blamed. And you can stress that you're not upset that you were blamed, but you wanted to clear the record and suggest all the other guests get checked. (If they're having/attending sex parties regularly, they should be doing that anyway).

and First, nobody just lives in "EU". You may be in a country within the European Union, but that doesn't mean you're not in a member state within that. Knowing that location would color any advice given. Second, nanny-state as it may be at times, the European Union is so far removed from North Korea that you come across as paranoid delusional, especially considering that you want medication but consider the "medical apparatus" evil. In case you were unaware - and really, based on your posts, it's hard to tell - pharmaceutical manufacturers are part of the "medical apparatus". Sure, with the name of the medication and the dosage, you *might* - and I stress *MIGHT* - be able to line up a source for the prescription medication without actually seeing a health care professional - sorry, I mean "medical traitor of humanity". But I wouldn't count on it; those same "traitors of humanity" pretty tightly control prescription medications, even antibiotics, and for good reason. You might be able to import some illegally from another country, but then there's no actual way to trust you're getting the medication you're paying for, is there? Funny how that works; you want the right medication but you're unwilling to trust the only people you can actually count on to get you the right treatment. As they say, *sad trombone sound*.

One difference might be that in the bookstores, there's also a substantial amount of retail activity going on - people buying porn, poppers, sex toys, whatever. In the adult theaters, you're providing a specific film or films that are advertised so a reasonable argument can be made that the sex is incidental (wink wink) to the artistic endeavor presented. That's a bit of a stretch for a bathhouse, some of which have essentially no amenities. A place that charges, say, a $15 "membership" fee to join, plus $20 for a locker for x hours, or $25-30 for a room (or whatever), can't really sustain the facade of being a non-sex-trade business under any sort of "quacks like a duck" test. Sure, there might be a pool where five people might have room to actually swim at one time, or perhaps ten if they're just bobbing around; and maybe there's a "gym" with enough space for those same ten guys, at most, to work out at one time. But that wouldn't explain letting 80 or 100 people into the place at one time. To be sure: everyone knows all these places exist to provide sexual venues for people. But there's a difference when you can provide a certain amount of plausible deniability.

But neither gonorrhea nor chlamydia is a viral infection, so there is no DNA exchange and there is no "shedding virus". Both are *bacterial* infections, which operate completely differently from viruses. Bacteria are treated with antibiotics (and different bacteria are susceptible to different antibiotics - and some become resistant to some antibiotics as well). Monkeypox, however, *is* a virus (as is HIV). That isn't to say your other points about altruism and education aren't valid, of course. They are.

*some* of the bugs are changing - much of the "population" of gonorrhea bacteria are more or less unchanged and respond to treatment. But you are so, so close to "getting it". Yes, there are antibiotic-resistant strains developing out there. But they have nothing to do with whether you - personally - are a slut or chaste as a nun. While those strains mutate and develop, there's no guarantee the slut will ever encounter one, and there's no guarantee his sluthood contributed one iota to the mutations. Meanwhile, the chaste person might encounter one on his first sexual encounter in a decade. You make it sound like the slut person is incubating increasingly resistant strains and one day, one of them is not going to be treatable any more and he's hosed. That's not how it works, and to the extent you're giving that impression with your statements, you're wrong. "My doctor...knew of no other patient..." is not the same thing as "I hold the record for...". You'd think this would be obvious, given that so many members here have documented that their doctors are unaware of this development or that treatment or this other concern - doctors are human, and fallible, and none of them know everything.

I think this is an OK place to post this. However, your situation is so specialized (and involves multiple issues) and you are probably better off (MUCH better off) discussing this with your doctor. This is a time for being completely up front with him (or her) about what you're experiencing.

Seconding what others have said: it's not so much that you're calling him a liar (or even suggesting he might be) but you're asking for proof of something he can't really prove. Can he prove he's got a prescription for PrEP? Sure. Can he prove he's been sticking with it daily for an extended period of time? No. I notice, by the way, your own profile here says "Don't ask, don't tell". While that's fine as a concept if it works for you, it seems awfully hypocritical to not only ask others, but to demand proof, for something you're asking others to not discuss about you.

As I posted, I think @ellentonboy has misunderstood what his doctor is telling him.

Either you are misunderstanding your ID specialist or he's giving you bad info. For bacterial infections, the host does not become resistant to treatment; as Eros noted, it's the bacteria that infects you which can become resistant. As long as you continue to contract strains that are treatable, AND you complete treatment every time, your infections should clear up. BUT: if you continue to have sex while in treatment that isn't complete, you run the risk of infecting someone else with partially treated bacteria (and if they don't get treated, they have an infection which has already survived incomplete antibiotics). That infection could become resistant to common antibiotics and is then circulating in the same sexual pool you are. And given the way things work, odds are you will eventually contract one of these STIs that is resistant to common drugs. It's not you that's become resistant; it's the infection. And simple odds dictate that having a great deal of unprotected sex increases your chances of hitting that jackpot eventually.

That is not what the study says, and I think the OP cited it incorrectly. What it said was that for mothers with multiple male children, the odds of having a gay son rise by about 1/3 with every male child born. The rest of this post will assume (without demonstrating it) that this figure is accurate. That does not mean 33%, 66%, 99%. What it means is that if the odds of a child being male are roughly 50/50 (it's closer to 51/59 or 52/48, but male children die more often in childhood so the numbers even out eventually), and about 5% of people are gay, then there's a roughly 2.5% chance for a first pregnancy that the child will be a gay boy (because you can eliminate 50% off the bat for being girls). For the second child, it's one-third higher than that, or about 3.3% chance it'll be a gay boy. For the third child, it's 4.4% (because the odds increase by a third over what the previous odds say. But when you look at boys only, it's more dramatic. A first boy has a 5% chance of being born gay. A second boy has a third-higher chance, or 6.7% chance. A third son has an 8.9% chance, and a fourth one has nearly a 12% chance of being gay. That's a dramatic increase in odds. True. But a few points: 1) a huge portion of people cluster at one end of that spectrum (straight), at least as far as we can tell - ie there is no classic bell curve distribution or anything like that; 2) there's a much smaller, but still substantial cluster at the 'gay' end of that spectrum, with apparently fewer people along the "bi" spectrum than at either extreme (although that number may be undercounted), and 3) while it's true that individual positions fluctuate, it's largely in one direction (ie straight to bi to gay), with very few people at the gay end of the spectrum shifting back to bi and even fewer shifting to the straight region. This isn't to say you were arguing otherwise; just to clarify that things are not evenly distributed or even classically distributed along that spectrum and it's not something where people move all up and down the spectrum equally.

If I had to pick between them, Newsom obviously well before DeSantis. But I'd demand doctor's proof that there is *nothing* left behind by Newsom's ex-wife anywhere near his body.

Indeed, insult not intended. As I said, it's what your post suggests to me, not that I made a determination (aka decided that's what it is), and I take your word for it that it's not the case. And while I agree that you can't go on s search for specifically platonic friends, what one CAN do is avoid having sex with people until you get to know them better. Because he's the thing: having sex with someone is a bell you can't un-ring. If you're quick to hop into bed with anyone who has an appealing personality and for whom there's any physical attraction, you're unlikely to have anyone "just happen" to become a good friend who you haven't had sex with. Because the sex happened first. And again, not to criticize that if it works for you. But if you want friends that you haven't slept with, the key would seem to be not sleeping with everyone you like, to see if anything more serious on the friendship front can develop.

My gut feeling is that there's a separation in most people between "the kind of people I'm physically attracted to/want to have sex with" and "the kind of people I like to be friends/have fun with." Either, or both, could be focused on one sex or both sexes; and I think the things that motivate each could be different. In fact, I would guess that your dislike of women who use feminine wiles may well be tied to your being gay. Most of us probably don't relish being hit on by people we don't find attractive in the slightest, and for a purely gay man, I'd think women all fall squarely into that group. But that doesn't mean the dislike of women is as innate as the attraction to men; rather, it could be that it's more "How the fuck does she not know I don't give a damn about her tits and snatch?" that produces that reaction. As evidenced by the fact that you do get along with women who don't try that sort of manipulation.

Of course, it may not be an "either-or" situation. Perhaps there's a set of genes in our chromosomes, somewhere, that if activated (or deactivated, if active is the default) "flip" one's sexual orientation. And even then, it might be there's a spectrum of flipping; if there are, say, 10 genes that govern sexual orientation, one flipping might result in some vague bi-curiosity, while 8 or 9 or 10 flipping might result in an overtly gay person. It's also possible that, for instance, the default is a gene (or set of genes) that makes one attracted to men. Female fetuses, developing normally don't have any change to those genes, but most male fetuses undergo something that turns them all off. (We know that male genitalia develop in response to a gene in the Y chromosome, and it's possible that the orientation gene also normally responds to something like that.) So the answer could be that something (maternal hormones?) in utero either blocks that gene in male fetuses (creating a gay boy) or activates the gene in a female fetus, which producers a lesbian girl. But in any event: that's an environmental cause - the release of a hormone that alters development - which nonetheless wouldn't necessarily affect every fetus a woman carries. One of the studies previously cited found that if a woman carried three male fetuses, the odds were far higher that a fourth male would turn out gay. One scientist hypothesizes that the mother's body keeps a tally of what it's produced, in some form, and producing a male offspring who's unlikely to father his own children (who'd need to be cared for) might help the familial unit because he'd be able to contribute to the raising of his siblings' children. We aren't so removed from a time when that would have provided a distinct evolutionary advantage, and it may have persisted simply because there's no corresponding evolutionary pressure to change that.

This is not to suggest that the data pointing to a gestational determination of sexual orientation are wrong - far from it. However, I would caution anyone against drawing the conclusion "I was born gay" based on "I have always known it" or "As long as I can remember". I daresay none of us remembers the first year of our lives at all, and for most people, the earliest memory that "sticks" is somewhere between two and three, sometimes later. So a post-birth environmental cause is not incongruent with "as long as I can remember". Moreover, the plural of anecdote, as I've pointed out many times here, is not "data". That said, there does seem to be good data suggesting that many aspects of one's sexual development occur in utero and are not strictly genetic in nature. Under ideal circumstances, of course, any human with the XX chromosomal pair should develop as a female, and any human with the XY chromosomal pair should develop as a male. But aside from chromosomal discrepancies - individuals with something other than an XX or XY chromosomes for the 23rd pair - there are also issues where hormonal changes in the mother while carrying the fetus can cause changes to its development. Flipping a few genes somewhere - probably, but not guaranteed, on the Y chromosome - may be one of the things that causes homosexuality. If that is in fact the case, then "born this way" would seem to apply.

You observe, apparently, what goes on in one small section of the site (the Backroom's "Chemsex" section) and consider that "what goes on here and what is promoted". Navel gazing is never the path to enlightenment.

Several of them should already be impeached for giving misleading testimony (if not actual perjury) during their confirmation hearings. We see how far that's going. My point is that what we "need" and what we're likely to get, at any given point, are likely to diverge widely. I am now nearing 60, and I do not expect to see a non-conservative-dominated Supreme Court in my remaining lifetime, given the incredibly young ages at which the GOP has been putting their obedient lackeys on the Court.

I agree that's what such a provision *should* mean. I'm just saying I cannot confidently predict what the current conservative majority of the Supreme Court would rule, especially given their willingness to toss precedent. If five of them really, really wanted DeSantis to be able to run, and he made it clear he wanted to keep serving as governor "just in case he lost", I could easily see them re-casting what the Florida law says as "effectively" a requirement to be a candidate (by effectively penalizing him unless he meets that requirement they imposed). I don't think it's a valid argument but then I don't have a vote on the Supreme Court. That said, unless elections are "aligned" - that is, one's re-election for current office is scheduled at the same time as the election for the office you're seeking - people run for office all the time while continuing to hold another office. And in fact, as I recall, when Al Gore ran for president in 2000, Joe Lieberman simultaneously (and successfully) ran for re-election to the US Senate at the same time he ran for vice-president on Gore's ticket.