BootmanLA

I can't advise you on whether to temporarily give up BB sex or not. However, I will note that I've been getting a fair amount of feedback from FTL area friends and acquaintances that monkeypox IS being discussed down there, and the community is well aware of it. As was the case with HIV in the very early days, the community is filling in with information resources where the media is letting things fall through the cracks. And so "local" information is more readily available in areas with dense populations of LGBT people, which gives FTL an advantage over Tampa/St. Pete. Unfortunately, awareness doesn't equate to vaccine availability, and that's going to be governed in part by the politics you referenced.

Because it's not that simple? Because there's a difference between, say, a president who actively is trying to undermine civil rights in this country and who appointed three justices to the Supreme Court to carry out that mission (one to a seat stolen from the previous president, one who actively lied during a deliberately botched FBI investigation into his background, and one rammed into the Court only a few weeks before said president was resoundingly rejected by the people), and a president who is facing obstruction to his entire agenda from the opposition party? I can explain the difference between being unable to overcome resistance to doing good things, on the one hand, and actively trying to harm people, on the other hand, to you. I can't understand it for you. But yes - many of us DO call out the present administration for its missteps. Here's an example. Trump weaponized the judicial appointment system beyond the SCOTUS nominations, with the GOP ignoring the home-state "blue slip" approval process for appellate court judges (who are the final arbiters of virtually all federal cases, since only a handful get to the Supreme Court). Coupled with the blockade on approving Obama appointees during his last two years, that gave Trump and the GOP a huge advantage in packing the appellate courts with right-wing judges. When Biden took office, he was in a position to at least somewhat balance that. But he's refused to encourage older federal appellate judges appointed by Democrats to step down (which would create a vacancy he could fill with a younger judge, who would serve a lot longer than the 70 or 80 year old she's replacing). He's not been in a particular rush to appoint judges in red states, which runs the risk that those seats will be open when/if the Senate changes hands to the GOP and thus blocked from getting filled. He was caught trying to cut a deal with Mitch McConnell to have the GOP stop blocking some district federal judicial appointees (they're currently blocked with unfavorable "blue slips") in exchange for agreeing to appoint a right-wing anti-abortion lawyer to a federal judgeship in Kentucky, and the Democrats have been uniformly furious with him over that. He's now committed to not nominating that person. That's just one example, but yes, we do hold Biden accountable when he's making wrong decisions about the future of the country. What we don't do is blame him for things outside his control. No president - not Biden, not Trump, not Obama, not Bush, none of them - have control, or even much influence, over gasoline prices at the pump. Yet GOP supporters invariably trot out the "Why are gas prices so high this summer?" in every Democratic administration, even though it also happens in Republican ones, because they see it as a winning issue for the economically illiterate. It's amazing how silent they've gotten now that gas pump prices have been falling steadily for five weeks. And those same economically illiterate people who are blaming him for inflation never seem to notice that inflation is, right now, a global problem, not a US problem. It's global because the factors that are driving it - chiefly labor shortages, supply chain issues, and pandemic recovery - are global issues as well, and inflation is an issue for right-wing governments, centrist governments, left-wing governments, coalition governments, and completely dysfunctional messes of governments. But the GOP again thinks it's got a winning issue by whining that a Coke that cost $1.75 last summer is now $2. You are free to blame the current administration, of course, for anything you want, including gas prices, inflation, or a toenail fungus. That doesn't actually make them responsible for any of the above, of course.

That's something you'd have to take up with him, I suspect.

If so, that's a new one on me. I'm old-school, as you know, so I come from an era when men would wear a wedding ring, if applicable (and if he chose one - I knew men who opted not to get one), and then on the other hand, one ring of another type - a class ring (high school or college), a signet ring, a fraternal/Masonic ring, or something like that. But the general gist was, one ring max per hand. Anything else was considered gaudy or froo-froo. Women had a tad more leeway in terms of a wedding band and an engagement ring both on the left, and a single "other" ring on the right. More than that was tacky. I'm as happy as anyone to toss toxic masculinity conventions aside, but it's still jarring to see guys with two, three, or four rings on a single hand.

All the same apply.

I wouldn't say "one culture in particular" as much as it's probably more common, in general, in cultural groups that practice sex shaming and repression. Because if you convince kids from an early age that we don't talk about sex openly at all, they're reluctant to tell people what's going on. And if you shame sex enough, you can also convince the kids that it's their own fault for leading the adult into this behavior. That said, some insular cultures almost expect couples to be related - cousins, for instance - in order to maintain purity of the bloodlines. Not necessarily first cousins (that is, children of siblings) but more distant ones - certainly. Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband, Prince Phillip, were cousins, as were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

I'm just going to throw out my periodic reminder that "should" is one of the most useless words in the English language, at least insofar as how many people use it. All these high and mighty princesses decreeing that a bottom "should" do this or that, just make me roll my eyes.

Indeed, vaccines are in short supply. In Louisiana, for instance, we have received 1,000 doses for the entire state, and the Dept. of Health has decided to use them for people who have had actual exposure to a confirmed case, at least for now.

They are indeed. I can't say what (if anything) turquoise represents, but in the classic hankie code, navy blue meant anal sex and light blue meant oral sex. So shades of a color matter. Olive green (military) was different from hunter green (daddy/boy), which was different from kelly green (prostitution), and so on. And that's before you get into patterns, like stripes, polka dots, checks/gingham, camo, and the like. Obviously, most of these colors were never used in real life cruising situations because nobody had a chart of all the possible combos. The ones that were best known were also those used most frequently: navy (fucking), red (fisting), gray (bondage), black (SM), and yellow (WS). Those were all fairly easy to remember. And of course, at particular events, a few others might become popular, like hunter green for Daddies at a bear event. But I don't recall ever seeing the patterned hankies in use in the wild. Once the internet came along, however, and the notion of profiles took hold, people could abbreviate by writing "Into navy (left), hunter green (left), fuschia (left), gold lame (left). Google them if you're curious". My guess is that's when a lot of the esoteric things started showing on the "code list" as well.

You're absolutely right. The Senate GOP, especially if Mitch McConnell is in charge, will detonate the filibuster if they need to. They blew it up for Supreme Court nominees, because they needed to. They didn't need to for the Trump tax cuts, because tax cuts can already be enacted through reconciliation procedures that bypass the filibuster. So until now, they've had no legislative priorities that required them to end the filibuster; they're perfectly content to let it hang out there, hamstringing the Democrats. But if the GOP doesn't face major blowback from the Dobbs decision in this year's midterms, the social conservative wing may decide in 2025 that a nationwide ban on abortion can be had. and if they have the presidency, the House, and 50 votes in the Senate (plus the VP to break the tie), they'll end the filibuster immediately in order to pass it. I can't see them passing a ban on gay marriage (they'll let individual states deal with that, or not), but if SCOTUS overturns Obergefell, or even Windsor, look for them to pass more legislation removing any federal protection for same-sex marriages. Part of the problem is the imbalance between Democratic and Republican priorities. By and large, the Republicans don't want to DO anything - they want to hamstring government enough that it fails to function, which benefits them, electorally. As P.J. O'Roarke used to say, the Republicans are the party that says that government doesn't work, and then gets elected and proves it. Inertia favors them, for the most part (although it favored the opposition to Trump, because he and his team were so incompetent at implementing the things they nominally wanted). Inertia does not favor the opponents of a competent authoritarian, like DeSantis or Cruz or Hawley.

Along these lines, I'd like to throw something else out there, which probably won't be a popular opinion (but then it's mine, so it doesn't have to be shared by anyone else). I have written fiction for other sites, though nothing posted here. And there's a particular reason why not: the inevitable chorus of people who want to tell the author what he should do with his characters in subsequent chapters or posts. Feedback is a good thing, especially if it's positive. Personally, I don't even object to negative feedback, as long as it's something I can work with (constructive, rather than destructive), but not everyone wants negative feedback. But when I write a story, I generally have the plotline worked out in my head; I know where it's going, I know where it's going to end up, and what I don't want is people telling me I "should" (god, I hate that word) have them do this or that or the other. It's insulting. As many people have driven home, these are the AUTHOR'S characters; it's for him to develop them as he sees fit, and absent asking "What would you like to see Jim do next" (or whatever), I don't want that kind of feedback. It's telling me that MY idea for MY characters isn't what you want. Here's a hint: if you want a character who's going to do X, then write a fucking story of your own where your character does X. Don't tell me how I should write mine. And because this attitude - "Hot story! Jim needs to give in to his urges and do X and then do Y and then do Z!" - is so prevalent on here, I just haven't got any interest in sharing my writing. (A decision for which some of you, I'm sure, are very grateful.)

No worries on the quote - just pointing it out to clarify.

Bear in mind that 41 of the 56 (white) men who signed the Declaration of Independence noting that all men were created equal also owned slaves. I'm not inclined to put a whole lot of stock into the thought process of people who exhibit that much patently obvious cognitive dissonance. Over the years, aside from the initial set of ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) adopted as a compromise to gain ratification of the original document, there has only been one serious set of revisions (the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, all adopted in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War). Every other change has been a sort of modest tinkering around the edges; that's not to say that things like guaranteeing the right to vote if you're 18 or older, or if you're a woman, weren't significant for the affected individuals, but the reality is that none of these changes changed the fundamental nature of the federal government or its relationship to the people. The two other amendments that come closest, in my opinion, are the one authorizing an income tax and the one providing for direct election of U.S. Senators. But even that latter change pales in comparison with the impact of the existing system that allocates two senators to the 581,000 people of Wyoming and also two senators to the 39,500,000 people of California. In other words, in order to bring about a massive change in the relationship between the people and our government, we first had to fight a bloody war that killed over 600,000 people. And even then, the victors (seeking to preserve the Union) only got the changes approved by conditioning allowing the rebelling states re-entry to the nation on approval of those amendments. They would never have been ratified by the southern states other than at the literal barrels of the guns pointed at them. That's how hard it is to make a substantive change to the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, in the same timeframe that the U.S. has had its constitution, France had an absolute monarchy, the First Republic, the Directorate, the First Empire, a restored monarchy, a brief return to the First Empire, another restoration of the monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Third Republic, the Vichy-Nazi collaborationist government, the Fourth Republic, and the Fifth Republic. France has a far greater appetite for completely throwing out the current system of government for a new one than the United States ever will. Correct. An amendment to the US Constitution requires first approval by 2/3 of the US Senate AND 2/3 of the US House - the former an impossibility as long as sparsely populated states, predominately conservative, get the same senate vote as a massively populated ones - or else approval by a "constitutional convention" - which has never been called since the beginning and for which there are no precedents (who could serve, how many per state, any requirement of proportionality, etc.). Then, assuming either Congress or such a convention proposes an amendment, it must be ratified by the legislatures (not the people, directly) of 3/4 of the states, or 38 out of 50. It's barely possible to do with wildly popular ideas that face little objection. It's impossible otherwise. No, because the "right to pursue happiness" is listed in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. As such, the only thing the Declaration did was separate us from Great Britain - and realistically, it was actually the war we fought that achieved the goal, not the Declaration. It's otherwise completely non-binding, so there's nothing for the Supreme Court to interpret there. As far as actual governance is concerned, the Declaration is 100% irrelevant. Inspirational, but irrelevant. To expound on my point above about the Civil War: that's what it takes when you have a deeply divided country. It's possible, as @ErosWired and others have hinted, that demographics and time will take care of this: younger people are far more liberal than their parents, generally speaking (even with weasly Nazi sympathizers like Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk in the same age bracket), and over time, as the dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries die off, they'll be outnumbered. But that's why they're so frantic to lock in discriminatory voting regulations - to stave off those changes for another generation. And still, even if younger, more liberal voters gain control of much of the power, the malapportionment of the U.S. Senate will remain a stumbling block for advancing anything. Unless a future Democratic majority in the Senate is willing to end the filibuster, it will take 60 votes in the Senate to do anything progressive, and I'm not sure that with 2 GOP senators per conservative state that we will ever again reach that 60 vote threshold. The current impasse over passing anything of substance will remain in place, I'm afraid.

That is probably true. However, the problem in the United States is that a huge number of those people do not vote. In the 2020 election, which had record levels of turnout, still fully one-third of eligible voters did not vote. What's more, millions more have been deprived of the right to vote because of a past felony conviction (in many states, you don't regain the right to vote even after serving your sentence unless you're pardoned). Conservatives in the U.S. have spent years honing a strategy designed to limit the ability of people who lean non-conservative to vote; and even though that strategy rarely involves an outright ban (like for felons), all they have to do is make it so burdensome to vote that a lot of people give up. Conservatives skew older (often retired), so they have fewer time constraints on voting, for instance. Poorer working people, often working two or more jobs, often find it hard to get to the polls during the limited hours some states provide for casting votes on election day. Many states don't allow mail-in ballots or early voting at all. Conservative states also skew things by providing fewer voting resources in poorer communities. Go to a polling place in a well-to-do area, and you'll see three or four voting machines, or half a dozen workers with a seemingly limited supply of paper ballots if those are used. Go to a poorer location, and you'll likely find only one or two machines and they're servicing a much larger number of voters. When early voting locations are provided, they're often inconveniently located not near public transit, so they're far more useful to people with time on their hands and cars to get around than working people who have to use the bus. And so on. The biggest problem in the U.S. is that there are virtually no standards for elections that apply to everyone, so counties and states that are determined to make things harder for certain voters have lots of ways to make that happen.

That is true. However, the Supreme Court's decision leaves it up to states, and there are some states where abortion is now absolutely illegal under state law; and quite a few more where rape and incest exceptions do not exist. NOT, I would note, because a majority of people in those states have indicated such a preference, but because antiquated laws from the days when women had zero agency over their own bodies and it was considered legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife, from days when married women could not transact commercial business without the consent and approval of their husbands, and so forth. Or because a male-dominated GOP-led legislature rammed those laws through and there's no provision for undoing them unless the legislature repeals them. The first is only true in part. A surgical abortion is certainly more expensive than, say, a box of condoms. But condoms plus another form of birth control can STILL fail. Also - again, thanks to the GOP - companies (which are on paper simply legal fictions, but thanks to the Supreme Court can have "religious convictions" somehow) can opt out of providing birth control coverage for their employees on company health plans - even if there's no workaround like requiring the plan to provide it at no cost. Here in Louisiana, I remember that for more than a decade, the legislature refused to authorize the state employee health plans to cover prescription birth control - even though the plans' own actuaries testified that the costs of unwanted pregnancy care far, far outweighed the nominal cost of the prescriptions. As for the second part, that's just bullshit. Absolute bullshit. A study done covering 1998-2010 showed that for the 16.1 million abortions during that period, there were 108 women who died, for a rate of 0.7 per 100,000 abortions. By contrast, the mortality rate for live births was over 20 per 100,000. Carrying a pregnancy to term is FAR more hazardous to a woman's life than an early term abortion - by a factor of 30.

I'd hesitate to call this "paranoid" but honestly, the chances of an HIV infection from something like this are exceedingly slim.

I absolutely agree that focusing on Thomas's race is reprehensible. His legal thoughts are garbage whether they are the product of a black man's mind or a white man's mind, so his race has nothing to do with it. That said, I do think noting the difference in race between him and his wife IS relevant, because the Supreme Court's Loving decision was just as much judicial activism as anything else the right routinely decries. The supporters of laws against mixed marriages pointed out, at the time, that blacks and whites WERE treated equally under the law - neither could marry someone of the opposite race, so there was no unequal treatment, which is all the 14th Amendment requires. To that, the justices who struck down those laws in 1967 said, in essence, "Bullshit". The right to marry the person of one's choice was fundamental, they said, despite that right not being spelled out in the Constitution. And given the fundamental nature of that right, any infringement (like telling a black man he can't marry a white woman) is subject to the strictest of scrutiny: such laws are only permissible if the state has a compelling interest in achieving some goal, and this restriction is the narrowest way to achieve that goal. If the goal can be achieved by a less intrusive means, then the law must fall. If only the Obergefell court made the same pronouncement regarding same-sex marriages, our rights would be in less danger. But as I've pointed out earlier, Obergefell (and Griswold, and Lawrence) are all predicated on a different legal theory (substantive due process) and Thomas openly rejects that legal theory in its entirety. There's some evidence that Alito would likewise be happy to ditch it. Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh haven't addressed that, but they were happy to kill Roe, which was also based on substantive due process. So even despite the protests in the Dobbs opinion that those cases aren't implicated, you can read that as "not implicated yet, because a challenge to those cases is not before us." Those cases will come. And you can't say that "it's settled law" because Roe and Casey were settled law, too. Casey specifically said that states could not ban abortion pre-viability (among other things). Then state after state started passing laws that clearly violated that standard - so-called "heartbeat" bills, for instance - and the Court, generally, just kept refusing to take up challenges to those laws, holding out for the day when they had 5 solid votes to end a federal right to an abortion, period. And when they had them, they did. Anyone who thinks that this will stop with abortion is either willfully obtuse or just not very bright.

You quoted this from me, but it wasn't me who wrote it - it was AlwaysOpen. Nonetheless, what I imagine is that someone would take the still-rolled condom, puncture a hole through the tip (thus creating a donut-shaped piece of latex, essentially), and then threading the not-yet-closed glowstick bracelet through the donut hole before joining the ends around the wrist. His notion seems to be that a punctured condom suggests that one does not want a condom. My notion is that wearing the condom, even damaged, suggests that one does.

I never used the word "automatically" and I'm not saying the latter is invariably the result of the former. Since you're a legal purist, I would point out that this is not, in fact, "theft" - which has a legal definition. (That definition may technically vary, from state to state, but I guarantee that none of those state definitions includes "writing a piece of fiction for a website that includes a copyright violation". If you're going to be a stickler for the absolutes of copyright law, you should be a stickler for absolutes in legal meanings, period. Which is one reason I suggested that anyone "continuing" someone else's story do so in a separate thread. That way, if the original author resurfaces after eight or nine years and suddenly has a burning desire to resurrect characters he abandoned nearly a decade prior, there's nothing in his thread polluting his artistic vision. I write snarkily, but the point is the same: If Member 1 writes a story about Joe and Bob and their antics, even if someone else writes a new thread about Joe and Bob and those characters so strongly resemble his own that a DNA test wouldn't distinguish them, the ethics of the situation aren't as clear-cut as you seem to think. Please notify me when you find a "credible writer" publishing pozzing fiction on BZ. I'll order takeout for the (very) long wait we'll have until then. I agree. But yet, the world continues to spin on its axis, and night follows day every every 23 hours and 56 minutes, despite this outrage. Look: I get it, you're a published author, and this idea - that someone, somewhere, might be misappropriating fictional characters they didn't create - how dare they! And from a purist perspective, sure, you're right. But of all the things a person can get riled up about, I personally wouldn't put this in the top, say, 50 thousand. Your mileage may vary.

Everything you write is certainly accurate insofar as legal issues are concerned. I was writing more about what's ethically dubious vs. what's more ethically defensible. If we focused on legality, virtually every piece of "fan fic" would be (is) a violation of copyright law, except for characters in the public domain (for example, Sherlock Holmes, or the pre-Disney Winnie the Pooh). Practically speaking, however, even the legal copyright would probably go unenforced in practical terms, even if the case against an infringement were iron-clad, if the infringer didn't respond to legal threats. Because those legal threats, in the context of a BZ story, are probably hollow; I can't envision anyone posting in BZ fiction forums willing to go to federal court to vindicate copyright over a sex story involving gay bareback sex, much less a story from the Gifting/Breeding/Stealthing or similar sections. As I said, that's not to "OK" the practice of jumping off from someone else's story. My point is that it's probably impractical to plan on enforcing a copyright. except insofar as the moderating staff here removing the infringing files.

I'm sorry, but I just noticed this post. So you're not okay with a condom-covered real cock in your ass, but you're perfectly OK with a rubber (or silicone, or whatever) fake one? Like everyone else chiming in, I prefer a bare cock myself. And if someone has an actual allergy to latex - which occurs, though it's rare - I can understand the need to forego latex. Even for those who are not actually allergic to latex, a sensitivity to latex can develop - it used to be a problem for health care workers using latex gloves - and thus make things decided less pleasant. But there are also latex-free condoms, including polyisoprene ones, which can be stretchier than latex and still offer HIV/STI protection, and those neither trigger an allergic reaction nor cause the sensitivity issue of actual latex. This is not to suggest that everyone (or anyone in particular) should use them. But honestly, if you're willing to shove a silicone dildo into your butt, it seems a little bit "twee" to me to then say a condom-covered cock is "unnatural".

It's probably accurate to describe gay men in that fashion, but that doesn't convey anything about how Monkeypox is being spread (or how other STI's are spread). Without putting too fine a point on it, you can be gay (ie a man who loves other men) and still be a virgin and not at risk for receiving or transmitting any STI at all. It's only when we become sexually active people that STI's are a relevant concern.

Agreed - but I would add this: I'd start the new story line in a separate topic/folder, with perhaps a link back to the inspiration. Something like: "Some years ago X member wrote a fiction piece called [insert link to the story here]." Then as appropriate, continue with one of the following: 1. "The author is no longer a member of BZ and has not posted any updates to this story in X years." 2. "The author is not interested in continuing this story, but has consented to let me develop the plotline further." 3. "Efforts to reach the author have been unsuccessful; I'm going to develop this storyline myself, so please understand this is not the original author's plot." And in any event, I'd be prepared to request deletion of the topic IF the original author resurfaces and objects to what you're doing with his characters. Alternatively, you could simply redevelop the story as you would have written it - not simply changing the names and some of the dialogue, but actually rewriting the story from scratch - and then continuing it. You could note "Inspired by the story [Name of story] written by member X" at the beginning of your own thread.

Actually, I think a lot of people would miss the symbolism of the "puncture" in the condom and just assume displaying a condom meant you wanted protected sex.

My two cents: This is exactly why for so many people, sex and friendship/other relationships can be totally separate things. There are guys I don't particularly like, but with whom the sex was actually pretty damned good, and so (sensibly, IMO) I look at those cases as pure sex and nothing else. I'm not looking to even eat a fast food meal with them - even that much socializing would annoy the fuck out of me - but yeah, within the very circumscribed sphere of having sex, I have (and would). That doesn't mean someone who's great in bed automatically gets a pass on anything else. If he's a Republican, for instance, it's not happening. But simply disliking someone's personality? I can work around that for sex. Earplugs, if necessary.