stevenkesslar

Adam: To be even more clear, what you said above is exactly correct. This crap is not something a decent person like you should want to hear. It is none of your business. I did not make it your business. It should not be posted. It should not be commented on. It should be like shit flushed down the toilet and never seen or heard from again. Whatever my flaws, I can't feel too guilty for giving JD the benefit of the doubt and trying to be his friend and trying to help him, both to achieve goals he identified, and to heal whatever hurt is inside him that causes this crazy rage. I failed. In retrospect, it was arrogant of me to think I could help. So I can take this shit and it means nothing to me. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not losing my home. I have a lifetime of great achievements behind me, and I'm still pretty young, and I can focus on fighting for same sex marriage and defending Rentboy or whatever my little causes are. If JD thinks he is getting to me, he's not only crazy, he's wrong. But this is hurting other people. And more than anybody, it is hurting JD. If it wasn't helpful for me to nudge JD to sanity privately, this approach will NOT nudge JD to sanity. I own 12 homes, and he can't pay the rent. Suckrates is right. Every word he utters here is probably taking $1 out of his pocket. He doesn't seem to be able to do the math, but you guys can. Have mercy on him. And if you can't have mercy on him, have mercy on Dane and the others JD will abuse here because of his madness. Your message is exactly right, Adam. Can you please amplify it, and can others please join him in doing so? I beg you. Please treat this matter with mercy, not meanness. Thanks, Steven

Adam: Let me be clear. You said that JD was out of his mind. You are correct. And I appreciate your saying it. I haven't missed what you said. JD is going to spew endless loads of bile every day as long as he is allowed to. He did it before I said a word. He did it after I said a word. He will do it as long as it is allowed. It's one thing to say the psychopath is out of his mind, it's another thing to say that the psychopath who is out of his mind is freely allowed to abuse and rape, as long as he does it in the alleyway, not in plain view, although - hell, we might as well take a peak. Right now - on this website, on this thread - JD is following through on abusive threats to blackmail and extort that he has been making for over a month to another escort who is completely innocent. This is not the first time he has done this, and it won't be the last. Moving the abuse from the main stage to the alley doesn't stop it from being abuse. Anybody with a heart and decency ought to be screaming "Stop this psychopath from abusing any further!" He should not be granted a forum to abuse. Not a theater. Not an alley. Not even his own little dark corner of hell. The only thing to be "fixed" right now is to remove this thread so it can't be seen or commented on. There are a lot of decent and reputable and compassionate people - escorts and clients - watching this to see what it says about the nature of this particular community. If you want people to participate in a decent, caring community, you actually have to act like a decent, caring community. This is a little like saying that Donald Trump being the Republican nominee says nothing, really, about the Republican Party. He's just there, and it just somehow happened. If JD is allowed to use the Soapbox, the Sandbox, or any part of this website to extort and blackmail, and everybody tolerates it, it says something not only about JD, but about this community. Sorry. This is abuse. This is extortion. This is blackmail. Either you are for it, or you against it. Steven

Great. More character assassination. Thanks. According to one of JD's past rants, I'm an alcoholic and I am losing my home. So let's run with that. By your logic, perhaps what is really at the root of this is that I disembowel children, eat them, and bury their remains in my cellar, using their blood in sexual orgies with JD and Dane and other psychopathic lovers, until JD decided to do right as he is of a good sound, Christian nature just trying to heal his burdened soul, and so he set about to rat Dane and me out. His disgust at my cannibalism is what set this whole thing off. Go ahead. Speculate away, and bring this website deeper and deeper and deeper into the deepest levels of shit possible if you wish. It will be exactly what you make of it.

This is extortion and blackmail. Period. I naively made the mistake of trying to become friends with this psychopath, to my regret. In that sense, I agree with Suckrates and others that have suggested I have some responsibility for this mess. Guilty as charged. The best solution is simple: Oz can simply flush the toilet and get rid of the shit. There will be no "fixing' or "healing" of relationships with an abusive psychopath. Moving the abuse to the Sandbox simply allows a psychopath to build a huge mountain of bullshit, and the continuation of this thread and other endless rants by the same psychopath proves it. The escort that JD has been emotionally abusing, harassing, and threatening with blackmail and extortion for over a month - really for over a year - has nothing to do with this, did nothing wrong, and simply has been tolerating boatloads of unwanted and unfair email abuse. This is a horrific, horrific, horrific precedent. It is cruel, and I can't believe a decent community would stand for it. I hope this is not that kind of community.

You asked, so I'll answer. Again, my basic point is this: the very act of having to go through this kind of slander and bullshit in minute detail diminishes this website. But now let's go through the slander and bullshit in minute detail and diminish this website. JD's latest extortion attempt started last month. My escort friend who is being slandered sent me this email, which he received from JD, dated July 26, so about one month ago. I redacted my friend's name and my real name: Hey Babe,How much is (Steven) behind in donations?I'll make a contribution this week and have decided to do $100.00 per weekand not per month as I want to help towards the cause and help (Steven) catch upto whatever he wasn't able to donate.It's not about me or him - it's about helping Rentboy. Alot of escorts andclients feel since (Steven) went out of his way to help makeme lose EOY and look bad on the forum,(and got back what came to him as itserves him right) I'm going to give him the opportunity to make this allright, and I'll be more then willing to do the same by helping him inmoving forward with the Rentboy fund.What (Steven's) doing in raising money for Rentboy.com is for a good cause, anddo wanna help in however way I can as I don't want to see (Steven) fail inregards to this.I hope (Steven) can convince (Daddy) to make everything right again as I'm willingto own up to my end of bargin(as you suggested) and contribute weeklytowards the cause along with contributing $50.00 a month towards Daddys andDaddys Forum.I need your help in this too, as you too need to convince Daddy ofgetting things back the way they were as I feel you have a great influencein turning this negative chaos around into a positive light just as well as(Steven) can.I think if you really want to see me succeed and are truly in support inhelp getting my EOY back and such...you'd have your talk with Daddy aswell. Shouldn't be all on (Steven) as I'm sure you can help turn this around aswell.I seriously need to get my EOY title and privileges back along with myforum privileges, and reviews put back as it has hurt my business a greatdeal.I'd sleep so much better and wouldn't be so depressed If this can happen.Please help with this if you can. PLEASE!!!I would truly and graciously appreciate it very much.Get me the information for (Steven's) donation page for Rentboy.Com and I'llplace a $100.00 donation this week.If (Steven) wants to email or contact me he's more than welcome to and we'll seewhat we can sort out.I do want to be at peace with all of this and not at war anymore as I thinkwe all have gotten even and taught one another a lesson. After a the hellthat's went on how can one not learn a lesson from this madness.Hope to hear from you soon...Hugs,JD ------------------------------------------------------------------ Does it sound to you like JD is being coerced and manipulated here? Cause it sounds to me like JD is the one initiating a scam to get his EOY title back. My friend did exactly the right thing and blocked JD and ignored the emails, as did I, until JD launched his public slander on this thread. JD followed his typical pattern, and "Babe, help me because it would be really nice if you helped me despite the fact that I've already abused you" gradually transitioned into "You fucked with me and if you don't do what I want i am going to publicly fuck with you because you deserve it." Welcome to the heart and mind of JD Daniels. The whole premise of the email and the whole set of slanderous emails is ridiculous. My friend was not on either of the two teams of people that were raising money for Rentboy last year. It's not a priority of his, which is fine. He is actually somebody that cautioned me about JD, before I met JD, and in retrospect I feel like I was a fool for not listening to him. In my defense, at that time my friend was warning me not to trust JD mostly based on his own good intuition, not the type of documented facts about ongoing harassment and extortion and lies we have now. Like many people, including Daddy and Oz, I wanted to give JD the benefit of the doubt. The internal logic of this email makes no sense and is typical JD. I was not "behind" on my donations. In classic JD style, there are all these little insinuations that a website like this one is going to be used to make somebody look bad, and unnamed people are saying bad things about me because I somehow look bad. I can post every fake email JD produced, but that theme just escalated: that I was behind on my donations, unnamed people were saying bad things about me, and eventually JD decided to throw in that apparently I was also losing my house. Needless to say, that came as a shock to me. What JD sent this other escort was written as a series of replies to emails this other escort allegedly sent from his Rentmen account, according to JD. I don't advertise on Rentmen, so honestly i don't have a clue about how Rentmen's emails or servers work. This is all like a sort of weird, distorted Hillary Clinton thing. I do know this. At least two escorts I know have recently contacted Rentmen and Rentmen has put JD on warning for falsifying emails that he wrote but that he claimed were sent by other escorts through the Rentmen servers. According to what I was told by these escorts, Rentmen did their due diligence and told the escorts the emails did NOT go through their servers. (Que the keyboard. In typical fashion, I'm sure JD will have some ridiculous explanation for that, if he is given a chance to lie more). So for about a month I was receiving pretty much daily emails from my escort friend that included verbatim copies of forged emails written by JD that supposedly came from my friend's Rentmen email account and were addressed like this: "escort@rentmen.com." (I removed the escort's actual name because this is slander and it should remain private. He is blameless). Then when the escort contacted Rentmen and they responded to JD with a warning, JD changed all the emails so they no longer read "escort@rentmen.com," they read "escort@gmail.com," consistent with the escort's own personal email address. So I have a mailbox full of letters apparently sent from my friend to JD that first all came through Rentmen, and then came through Gmail. Funny how once JD got warned by Rentmen, where all the emails were sent from magically changed to come from somewhere else. And they all prominently include language that sounds just like JD, and not at all like my friend, for example the prominent use of the word, "BABE," as you see in JD's email above. In the time we were friends I have seen JD act completely irrationally and do a lot of stupid things. Lashing out at Daddy because Daddy wouldn't give JD whatever he wanted was pretty stupid. But by far the stupidest thing JD is doing right now is poisoning the well between him and Rentmen. Every escort I know views Rentmen as their primary source of income. So if he fucks that up, he fucks up the whole show. The person who has the most to lose from JD's antics is JD. Honestly, to be brutally honest, my clients are incredibly relieved that I now having nothing to do with JD. Most of them saw my association with him as an example of white liberal naivete, and many of them are (not inappropriately) laughing their asses off at my misplaced trust. Score one for Bozo The Clown, Miami Looker, and a group that JD affectionately refers to as "JD haters." As has been pointed out before, the self serving nature of JD's sudden passion for Rentboy's defense is transparent. Last year those of us who defended Rentboy publicly and financially got a lot of shit from a lot of clients. JD saw what was happening to me and others and headed for the hills. I don't blame him for that, it was his choice. But I do blame him now for manufacturing a pack of lies to slander me and a friend of mine, fuck with Rentmen, fuck with Rentboy's legal defense, fuck with Daddy, fuck with Oz, and fuck with all of you. It's despicable, and it has nothing to do with the good of the community. To end where I started, I think the very act of having this discussion diminishes me, diminishes JD, diminishes Oz, and diminishes this community. A lot of people have endured a lot of abuse and 99 % of it has been kept private. JD chose to make this latest slander public, and I held my fire until I became the victim of this public slander. I have every right to call JD on it and ask that this slander be removed. It is sad that he wants to keep inflicting new wounds, primarily to himself, which is why I think it would be merciful for him to just do what he claims he is doing: work it out with a therapist, and get better.

Exactly. That's exactly right, and exactly how. JD and I actually have a lot in common. We bother suffer from verbal diarrhea. But I can be short and sweet. He's hurt and alienated at least dozens of people including some of the most respected escorts around and some of the most prominent posters on both of these websites. I suppose we could all suck it up and just spend months tolerating the abuse, or have a bunch of people all spend thousands on a bunch of lawyers. But I can tell you from personal experience: it ain't fun. I just don't think abusers deserve to be given a forum to abuse and slander, at least once they make it incredibly and very painfully clear that their goal is to slander and abuse.

You'd have to be way more specific, but rethink what, regarding what 4 or 5 people? I am saying that JD Daniels is a community killer and that there are dozens of people, at the very least, who think he is out of control. I can happily redact the names from dozens and dozens of private emails and messages I have received over the past year from prominent, respected members of the community that posts on both sites asking me to try to talk some reason into JD, when I was still trying to be his friend. So this isn't about 4 or 5 people, it's to my knowledge at least about dozens, and probably hundreds. I have no idea exactly how many people JD has lied to, bullied, abused, and extorted, but it's for sure a big number. You are entirely correct that none of what I mention above and the hurt caused to dozens, or more likely hundreds, has anything to do with this website. My point is simple: why should it? JD is like a fatal bacteria that infects a body and gradually destroys it. It took a lot of drama and pain and bullshit and hurt to get the bacteria excised from the community over at Daddy's, but it is gone. Do you guys really want it to now poison this website? Do you feel excited that he is using your website that you build to treat each other respectfully as a cannon from which to launch bile and slander and hate? I can't see what's in that for you, or me, or even JD.

Thank you. Let me amplify your point. Allegations of rape and threats to sue people in court have real world consequences. This is not a game. I have no idea why JD seems hellbent on destroying his own credibility, but I have no interest in seeing JD destroy himself even further on this website. Or the credibility of my friends. Or me. I have been advising the escort JD is slandering NOT to file a restraining order. I had to do that once in my life, a decade ago, against a client who went bonkers. It was emotionally draining. It is not a good place to be. And even though I am no longer JD's friend, I have no ill will for him. I truly wish this would just die. Removing this thread and removing this soapbox for JD to rant from is an excellent way to do that and is way better emotionally than forcing people to drag this out in a real court of law. Every word I am writing I am writing reluctantly as a plea to stop the madness. Let me say one other thing, about fairness and censorship. JD wants to believe I "hated" Daddy, and he is using that in his Abuse 101 toolbox and has been for months to try to create a rift that doesn't exist between Daddy and me, and to try to intimidate me. JD has no knowledge of what he is actually referring to, but let me tell the world about that, since you are right and the world likes controversy. Years ago Daddy posted a very negative review about Kristian from LA that everybody, including me, believed was fake. A controversy ensued, and I made the case that the alleged fake review should be removed, or at least flagged. I pointed out that the "flag" tool had been used against my best friend, the deceased escort Bill, years ago, when we first both appeared on Daddy's. Long story short, Daddy decided not to remove or flag the review, because even though he thought it was fake, he couldn't prove it. He essentially said he would run his website as he saw fit. That pissed me off, and I let him and other people know how I felt. In retrospect, hindsight being 20/20, I think I was burnt out, and I was scared shitless about the fact that the housing market had been pushed off a cliff. In retrospect, I think for a few years I needed to crawl under the covers and hide, and recharge. I eventually went back and saw that that controversy was pretty much the last time I posted for years. Back then, I was scared shitless about what was happening to the housing market, and I know many good people that lost their homes. What is sad and ironic about JD's slurs that I am losing my house NOW is that I feel incredibly lucky, my home value is going up like a helium balloon, and any of you that own real estate in markets like California know exactly what I am talking about. Beyond that, due to certain circumstances, my friend Oliver asked to use my home for a few years to host his party, and I felt honored. JD could not be more wrong. It's sad that he can't seem to pay his own rent, and lashes out and makes up lies and blames it on persecution, just like everything else, but that is so ........ well, 2015. I've been done with that bullshit for a year. Back to Daddy, looking back on that period what seems obvious to me is that you had a community of fair-minded people trying to be fair to Kristian. Some said give Kristian the benefit of the doubt, some said don't. It was an honest disagreement, and I think I just used whatever I felt to take a much needed break. Several years ago I sat for an hour with Daddy and Oz at a party at Oliver's house. I think everybody knows there is a history and they are not the best of friends. What I admired is how respectful each of these two men was to each other. I know Daddy much better than Oz, but I have to believe they are both good men trying to build a website that fosters and supports a community of people like ..... well, us. I have to believe they are both doing their best to run an honest and fair website, with fair and honest reviews. Many people I know post on both sites. This whole JD thing did have the ironic effect of bringing me much closer to Daddy. In a nutshell, it is 100 % clear to me that Daddy reached out to JD and tried to help him, and JD ultimately responded by trying to tear Daddy down. It made me respect Daddy more, and lose all respect for JD. This madness is a community killer. JD is a community killer. I am not a fan of censorship, but I am a fan of fairness. I don't think it's fair to a community to let one sick man with a well documented history of abuse continuously try to tear it apart simply to give his own ego and pocketbook what it needs.

I ignored this post and all JD's other posts until now because I was hoping he would not follow through on what he has been threatening to do for weeks: use emails he faked that supposedly came from an escort's Rentmen email account to slander my friend and me to try to get to Daddy and try to redeem himself. Suckrates is right: in trying to get his worthless EOY title back, JD is simply demonstrating how unethical he is. Give it up, JD. JD's confusion stated in his own words above should tell you everything you need to know about the ethical swamp that exists in his mind. He is comparing his own crass efforts to promote himself and lie, blackmail, and bully himself into being Escort of the Year with a very different community effort that engaged dozens of good hearted people in an effort to strengthen and fund a website that provides a community forum, primarily for Gay men who want to explore their sexuality freely, in a way that promotes respect, not shame. Of course JD is confused about why he got "beheaded." He doesn't know the difference between selfishness and self-interest. The best phrase that sums up a community that operates on self interest is this: "I am my brother's keeper." Every major religion in the world has a parable like the Good Samaritan that encourages ethical people to act is if what is being done by them was being done to them. That is what JD doesn't get. He is good at being selfish. Beyond that, he has a very hard time seeing what the world looks like beyond his own lonely, angry, raging soul. I truly feel sorry for him.

You are right about that, Suckrates. JD won't stop. I have lots of abusive texts and voicemails to prove it. My escort friend has just gone through months of emotional abuse. Another escort friend feels like JD single-handedly is trying to destroy his career by alleging a rape that never occurred. None of that is subjective. People who actually rape go to jail. Slander and abuse and lies are not subjective. JD uses this made up shit to hurt people. It actually does really hurt people. And I have no doubt if empowered to he will use it to take my friend to small claims court, which is what he is specifically asking for advice on. That will further hurt my friend. For real. It all fits into JD's Abuse 101 toolbox because he'll then delude himself into thinking that somebody here told him he is being persecuted and therefore he has no choice but to do the right thing and sue my friend because JD himself manufactured a bunch of bullshit. If one person is abusing a lot of people, one solution can in fact be that all the people being abused can be told to be silent and tolerate the abuse. If that is your advice, Suckrates, maybe you really are a Dame, or actually a nun, because that is how the Catholic Church operated for decades. The simpler way to stop an abuser is simply to prevent him from using public forums of decent people to abuse decent people. There are clear legal and ethical standards for abuse, slander, and extortion, and JD has crossed way over that line many, many times. I am glad you privately suggested to Oz that he not let JD use this website to do that. I appreciate that. I have been monitoring this site for months, including earlier attacks on me, and I figured the correct approach is to play this like Oz: to be fair and see if, given a chance, JD will stop abusing. He hasn't. He just found a new place to abuse. Beyond that, I miss you and your wicked funny posts.

I could not agree more. JD has been circulating slanderous emails privately for over a month and threatening to use this site to blackmail and advance his selfish interests. It is wrong. You are right, Lucky. I have the right to defend myself from slander, but I agree with you completely, Lucky. It would be unnecessary to defend myself if this site could not be used by JD to slander. That's all JD has done since he arrived here. This entire thread is slander and needs to be removed. JD is no good for this community, or any community. Without going into private details, Lucky, I know you are a good man who has contributed greatly to the LGBTQ community. I feel I have to. I don't feel this community deserves this. Please, Oz, don't make me use your website to defend myself from outrageous slanders that JD will use to divide yet another community, hoping desperately to advance his cause. Lucky is right. Nobody has anything to gain by this kind of divisive bullshit.

Oz: I plead with you to stop this madness. JD has no compassion. He will hurt anyone to get what he wants. I know that, because I was the victim of his abuse last year, and I have an old iPhone full of abusive unwanted texts and voicemails to prove it. Thankfully, my new iPhone allows me to block him. I won't speak to him, other than to publicly rebut slanders about me and others I care about. My escort friend JD refers to above has been going through emotional hell for a few months as JD has privately threatened and harassed him. My friend has not responded to JD, but he was smart enough to reach out to other escorts and community members for help because he knew this was coming, and because we all know that compassion or decency never gets in the way of JD Daniels trying to get what he wants. It hurts to be abused. I have seen other escorts who worked for years to build a reputation become the target of JD's slanders, because they would not give JD what he wants. He will threaten to sue you. He will threaten that some anonymous and probably nonexistent DA is going to come sweeping down and arrest you and shut down your website. He will claim you raped him. He will manufacture lies to try to turn your clients against you. He will extort. He will lie. He will blackmail. If you want to know that escorts are human beings, look into the hearts of escorts who reached out to JD, tried to help him, and got dumped on by him in this way. He will stop at nothing, unless the community itself stops him. Please Oz, I beg you. We live in a decent community. I am a community organizer and i have spent years fighting for things with all my heart, like same sex marriage, and like defending Rentboy. JD Daniels is a community destroyer, who looks out for one person - himself - and feeds on the innocence and naivete of people's best intentions. Please eliminate this slanderous thread and stop this madness. Steven

This is a pack of lies and slander that is consistent with the pattern of extortion, bullying, manipulation, and blackmailing that got JD banned from "the other site" and made him unwelcome there. JD is an unethical, manipulative liar. He is a community destroyer. He makes up reviews, he makes up rapes and spends over a year privately discrediting a well respected escort, he makes up emails escorts don't write him, he makes up fictitious "deals" to get back the respect and titles he lost because of his bullying, lies, and extortion. Sorry, JD, but you won't win respect back by harassing, blackmailing, and extorting some of the most respected escorts, clients, and websites in this community. Is there no limit to how low you are willing to go, and bring us, to promote yourself? Are you now committed to poisining Oz's website, too? Do you care about anybody but yourself? Oz, this guy is a pathological liar and narcissist who seriously needs help with his mental health issues. He follows the classic pattern of abuser - claiming he is getting therapy and asking for forgiveness and understanding, so he can get close to you and abuse again. I am not losing my home. It is a lie JD manufactured to pull me into his latest drama queen campaign of slander and hurt. My escort friend he is referring to is not writing him the emails JD is in fact writing himself. JD is now in trouble with Rentmen because he forged a whole series of emails that supposedly came from another escort's Rentmen account with the @rentmen.com sign off. Except JD is stupid and sloppy. After he got called on it by Rentmen, the emails supposedly being sent to him all mysteriously changed from @rentmen.com to @gmail.com, because JD finally figured out maybe he could get in trouble by abusing Rentmen's email system and servers. The guy can't even figure out how to successfully extort people. This is ridiculous and all it does is what JD excels at: damage vulnerable people like my friend, with good hearts, and damage a community. Now JD will respond by - fill in the blank - claiming that "x" unnamed members of the community are on his side and he has "x" unnaned witnesses who saw the emails arrive in his email and another preposterous set of lies to try to cover up his laughable bullshit. This "can I ask for advice" bullshit is the same crap he pulled at the other site that got him banned, and is part of his toolbox of abuse and harassment to force people to cow to him. JD is an abuser. JD is an abuser. JD is an abuser. I tried very hard to be JD's friend for a few month's last year because he asked for my help. What many respected people who tried to help JD learned is what you get for doing that is drama, lies, and abuse. I have not spoken to him for a year. I concluded he is an immoral, dishonest, and manipulative. He is the kind of person who will ask for advice about whether I think it is okay to extort the wife of a dead celebrity client who hired him. He is the kind of person who lies and makes up a whole crock of shit about how some client gave him a tip of tens of thousands of dollars, and then a few months latter is spending hours on the phone while we are driving back from Las Vegas alternating between calling a friend and begging him to pay his rent, since I refused to help him, and verbally berating me for having the audacity to suggest that if he is going to bother to ask for Daddy's advice, he ought to actually try listening to it. He is financially and psychologically unstable. JD listens to nothing but his own evil heart. I stopped caring a year ago. I don't care whether the "tip" he got is one he just made up, or really did exist and was money he extorted from somebody before he blew it. I have caught him in countless lies, and I have been the victim of his abuse. He is immoral and will stop at nothing to tear people, communities, and websites down. What I find particularly disgusting is this. JD did not give a penny to the Rentboy defense fund until a few weeks ago. A team of escorts came together last year to help Rentboy, and JD told me repeatedly that he was told by "VIP clients" that he should stay away from it because it might hurt him. The man is a pussy with the moral conviction of an ant. All he managed to do is spend a year privately trying to discredit and slander one of the key fundraisers for allegedly raping him. He used my participation in the Rentboy fundraising to try to privately slander and blackmail me months ago, and I told him to go fuck himself. In the last few months he has mounted a campaign of slander and harassment that boils down to completely manufacturing emails claiming that in return for giving donations to Rentboy's legal defense on my fundraising page Daddy will give JD his EOY title back. It is a ridiculous boatload of bullshit that boils down to one transparent thing: JD is even willing to drag Jeffrey and Rentboy's legal defense into his endless, unethical attempts to promote himself. He is depraved. He is immoral. He is wrong. Oz, do you really want your website to degenerate into a forum for a thug who thrives on character assassination and lies like what JD wrote above, and a bunch of responses like this? JD will now do what he is good at: generate lots of new lies and slanders to fight back to defend his earlier slanders. It is an endless mountain of shit that just keeps building higher and higher and smelling worse and worse, even bigger than Jon Stewart's famous "Bullshit Mountain." If you let JD continue with this nonsense I'm happy to post away every detail I know about what a lying scumbag he is, and let the world know just how dark the heart of JD Daniels is, just how cruel he is, and just what a monster he is. I'm happy to redact the fake emails he's been sending around and point out why they are profoundly bullshit and why they were all written by JD. In case anybody hasn't noticed, JD writes for shit, and the same incomprehensible phrases he often uses are loaded in the fake emails he wrote he alleges my friend sent. But guess what? NOBODY FUCKING CARES OR WANTS TO BE DRAGGED INTO A PILE OF STINKING SHIT. I don't see how it serves anybody's interest, especially JD's. Of all the people JD has hurt since I met him last year, the person who he seems to hurt the most, and the most often, is himself, with incredible transparent bullshit like this, that has destroyed the reputation he never had. This thread is nothing but slander against me and SHOULD BE REMOVED IMMEDIATELY. Please put this immoral son of a bitch out of his misery before he uses your website like a knife to hurt many other good people, Oz. JD is now proposing to sue an escort in small claims court who is a dear friend of mine and who has a heart of gold and who everybody admires, and he is using your website to slander him. People getting JD's venomous private emails with my real name are emailing me and they know who this other escort is. Is this the kind of venom and slander YOU want to be part of Oz? Because this unethical piece of shit JD will gladly drag you into his sewer if you let him. Please don't. Please throw this whole stinking piece of slander in the shitbin where it belongs.

Thanks for the compliments. Its obviously an issue I care about. I won't be writing anything, and I won't be at the center of any debate about strategy. If the goal is to reach out to the middle and move people, people in my profession are not the best voices. :-) I'm good at being discreet, and at working behind the scenes. Or you could just say I will cum at you from behind. :-) But the strategy is emerging, and it is thrilling to me. As my posts should make clear, I keep being pissed off by the many people who think that the No on 8 campaign fucked up, and we (the part of the LGBT community that is politically active) will keep fucking up. We ran a campaign that has lost in every state it has been tried, and we almost won. What's so bad about that? If people somehow think that because one poll on one date guarantees victory, they are basically naive, just like believing another poll on another day guarantees we will always lose. As the first part of this post points out, the long-term trend is that these days about 45 percent of Californians seem to be solid supporters of marriage equality for gays and lesbians. Thats a big improvement from just a few years ago, and I personally feel like all the hard work of the No on 8 staff and volunteers, and all the money we spent, produced at least that much. I'm frustrated too that it didn't produce victory, and we should learn from the mistakes or shortcomings of the past. The biggest part of that is we were not grassroots enough, partly because we had about 4 months to run a campaign. Now we have over a year, and there seems to be a commitment to do thorough, statewide, deep grassroots organizing, and try to match if not beat the churches on their strongest point. I was part of the first Northern California door-to-door canvass this past weekend, and everything suggests that it is going to be a success. I have never seen as many people so eager to volunteer, and now there is a structure to put people into. I also think the part about our messages is going to be the hardest part. Almost everyone I know that is gay and lesbian feels that this campaign should be more affirmative about the fact that this is about GAY and LESBIAN marriage. The No on 8 campaign was based on what middle-of-the-road focus groups said, and it does not surprise me that people who support notions like "marriage equality" or "fairness" will not vote for "gay and lesbian marriage which will send the wrong message to kids." I'm not saying that we should run another campaign that feels closeted. But just like coming out of the closet individually, we are going to have to be cautious and thoughtful about how we do this. The good news is that at least based on one day's experience, having a real gay or a real lesbian at your door is not a big turn off to undecided voters, or people who opposed us last time. Whether we can convert people remains to be seen, but the strategy of going to people at their doors, talking to them, and persuading them, is always a good one. That's a big part of why the Yes on 8 folks beat us last time. If we match their game, and their money, we have every reason to think we can win. Ultimately, I think the right's biggest strength can be turned into their biggest weakness. Their ace in the hole is that they can always go to the voters and scare them, knowing that every time they win. They are good at building armies and messages to do that. The first time we beat them at their own game, I think the facade will crumble. Last time we came close. In the big scheme of things, we don't really have that much farther to go. Not over the rainbow, just over the bridge to the burbs. :-)

I'm obviously too logical. I liked Spock. And it shows he has a horny side too.

I saw a couple headlines like the one above, claiming that support for same sex marraige is now on the decline, so I figured it was worth looking into. Its now clear that at least two statewide organizations in California - EQCA and the Courage Campaign - plan to go out and talk to voters in areas where opposition to same sex marraige is strong. I am delighted they are doing it, and I plan to spend a lot of time helping. So I figured it was worth knowing in advance whether or not things have somehow changed, and we are about to spend a huge amount of time on a massive wasted effort that will just leave the LGBT community feeling more discouraged. Before I get into lots of possibly confusing numbers, I'll start by making the points I want to make. The thing that most annoys me about what a lot of gays and lesbians think right now is that because we were ahead in the polls before the election, we were supposed to have defeated Prop 8, and we only lost because the No on 8 campaign was terribly fucked up. One conclusion this is leading to is that we have to run a very grassroots campaign next time, which makes a huge amount of sense. The other conclusion it is leading to in some quarters is we have to run a much more "in your face" campaign, making gays and lesbians more visible, and possibly using tactics like civil disobedience. Its far from clear to me that any of that makes any sense. The thing that makes the most sense to me is that the gay and lesbian community now has an opportunity to get very sophisticated about three magic words: polling, backlash, and messaging. First, here's a lot of results from various polls. The latest Gallup Poll is being used by the right to suggest that they are winning, and that support for same sex marriage is on the decline. A May 2009 Gallup poll shows that Americans oppose same sex marraige 57 to 40, the strongest level of opposition since 2005, when it was 59/37 against. In 2007, Americans were against same sex marriage 53/46, so the right's claim is that more Americans are actually turning toward a "traditional" definition of marriage. Even in Ground Zero, California, a new Survey USA poll shows opposition to same sex marraige at 53/45, which is worse than the 52/48 margin we lost by last November. It also shows that by a margin of 56 to 40, Californians "agree with the court's ruling upholding Prop 8." What all this ignores is that polls change on a dime, and polls change depending on who is running them and what specific words you use. Right wingers who take the above poll results to mean they are wining are stupid. Or, to be polite and smug about it, they are politically unsophisticated. That's cool, because we did the same thing. Last May, right after the CA Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, the LGBT community made the same mistake. A poll in May 2008, right after the Court's ruling, showed that 51 percent of Californians supported legal same sex marriage, and only 42 percent opposed it, the "first time ever" that a majority supported same sex marriage. The prior poll in 2006 showed Californians opposed to same sex marriage, with 44 percent for and 50 percent against. Many people ignored the words "FIRST TIME EVER" and decided it was okay to be complacent, because we were going to win anyway. To me, thats like saying that since you don't have to wear a rubber when you kiss, its okay to have anal sex without one. Well, as soon as you change one thing, everything else changes. In the case of No on 8, we were doing great, as long as the Court was on our side and there was no opposition. The first time the right ran an ad positioning the campaign as a handful of activist judges and a gadfly Mayor shoving laws down people's throats (why is it always about shoving something inside a body cavity?) all that wonderful support just disappeared. Taking a poll as anything other than a snapshot never makes sense. Rasmussen polls showed Obama's approval rating the day he was inaugurated as 69 percent approve, 28 percent disapprove. From that, you could conclude that Obama is going to be the most popular President ever. Except right after the election his approval margin was 52/44, and as of May 28 it is 56/43. Add John McCain or Republicans in Congress, and real issues like bank bailouts and health care, and a lot of that support disappears. My interpretation of the poll results above, showing that a majority of Americans as well as a majority of Californians now oppose same sex marraige, is that this is as bad as it gets. We just had a stinging slap in the face, and the Court just ruled against what we wanted. The fact that 40 percent of Americans and 45 percent of Californians are solidly for same sex marriage at one of our worst moments shows that we are moving closer and closer to having permanent majority support for gays and lesbians simply being a normal part of society. In fact, some other polls just taken reach the same conclusion: support for same sex marriage is growing. A CBS News poll in April 2009 asked people which they support most: same sex marriage, civil unions, or no legal recognition. Support for same sex marriage grew from 33 percent in March 2009 to 42 percent in April 2009. That's one month! Opposition to any legal recognition declined from 35 percent in March 2009 to 28 percent in April 2009. As various states embrace gay marriage, the hardcore opposition seems to be breaking apart. A Field poll in California found the same thing here. In March 2009, 45 percent of Californians supported same sex marriage, 34 percent supported civil unions, and 19 percent opposed any legal recognition. Thats way up from February 2006, when 36 percent supported gay marriage, 33 percent supported civil unions, and 27 percent opposed any legal recognition. These polls also reinforce the idea that all polls are just snapshots, and events in just one month can change the way people feel dramatically. To me, that reinforces the idea that the real goal should be to build long term, permanent majority support, and the best places to do that are in the states, like California, where we already have the strongest support anyway. Assuming that we are going to ask voters to say "YES" to marriage equality in 2010, starting with somewhere in the ballpark of 45 percent rock hard (oops, there we go again) support is not a bad thing. The polls also suggest that there is a tipping point, and that as more states embrace gay marraige, opposition will erode and we will pave the way for marriage equality and more importantly TOTAL equality at the national level, which to me is the real prize to be won. Along the way, we should count on the fact that there will be backlash. That may be what some of these polls are picking up. If there is a 2 percent spike for proponents of discrimination against gays, thats not a big deal. What I found interesting about the Survey USA poll of Californians is that people in my state oppose gay marriage 53/45 (on the day the poll was taken, right after the court said it was okay to think that way), but by a larger margin of 56 to 40 "agree with the court's ruling upholding Prop 8." I am totally reading into these numbers, but they support my gut feeling that having the CA Supreme Court throw out Prop 8 would have been a kiss of death. It would have gotten right back into the argument about activist judges and extremist homos trying to undermine democracy (and of course recruit straight children) that the right used so effectively last Fall. By taking our lumps this week, and keeping the focus on a conversation about how you ensure equality in a democracy, and how you legally support loving relationships and families regardless of who is in love with who, we are taking the high ground that will lead to victory, sooner rather than later. To me, one particularly optimistic poll result is from a New Jersey poll. This month, 49 percent of New Jersey is for same sex marriage, and 43 percent is against. (That compares to 50 percent opposed and 44 percent for in December 2006). When you break that down another way, 42 percent prefer the idea of same sex marriage, 30 percent prefer civil unions, and 20 percent are against any legal recognition. Here's the really good news: by a 60 to 32 percent margin, people in New Jersey are for adoption of children by same sex couples. When you get beyond the fight over words themselves - "marriage" versus "civil union" - it appears that the basic idea that gays and lesbians should be allowed to have normal relationships and normal families, including with children, is an idea that already may have broad majority support. (There are outliers, like Arkansas, that voted to ban same sex adoption last Fall). To me, this is part of why marriage equality is worth fighting for, even if you would be very happy with civil unions that provide full federal rights. By fighting for marriage equality, we are fighting for equality period. All the arguments we have to make and hearts we have to move in order to win marriage equality carry over to every other aspect of gay and lesbian life, relating to how we raise families, and where we live and work. Even right wingers are essentially arguing, "We don't want to take their rights away, we just want to protect marriage." To me, the first half of that sentence shows we have already won an incredible victory with the silent majority who more and more sees us as normal, and may no longer support the mean-spirited efforts to eliminate rights that we had to focus on for decades. As we continue to win, we should count on the fact that there will be a backlash against us, and that we have some control over how powerful it is and what course it takes. To bring in Obama again, another thing that really annoys me now is all the liberals who spent money and time getting him elected, and now feel he is selling them out. From their perspective, he is as bad as Bush when it comes to a whole bunch of issues, from terrorism to gay marriage rights to not fighting for a single payer health care system. What's really clear to me is that all you have to do is take a list of the biggest hot button issues of the last 25 years, where Democrats got creamed (Dukakis and the ACLU, Clinton and gays in the military, Kerry and Swift Boats), all issues that helped Republicans kick Democrats asses, and that is where you will always find Obama 'hiding" in the center. Sometimes this hurts. My personal holy grail is gun control. I love traveling to Mexico, and it is absolutely clear that we are feeding the drug war not only by consuming Mexican drugs, but by arming Mexican warlords who then go kill Mexicans, including some innocent bystanders, even an occassional American. I don't see how it would hurt hunters in Minnesota to make it hard for the bad guys to get assault weapons in Texas or New Mexico. And it would potentially save thousands of lives. But Obama appears to be committed to observing and learning the lessons from past Democratic defeats, and right now that means he is not going to come on heavy and strong on gun control. California is reknowned for having a politically looney fringe, and its interesting having moved here in 2002 to be coming to grips with that. (My organizing days, which were grounded in Alinsky methods, started in Chicago, so Obama's methods feel much closer to home for me). There are a bunch of people here who seem to want to do the very thing that guaranteed defeat in 2008 - race into an election that we are not fully prepared for with the smug certainty that somehow, since this is California, we are different and we will win. To me, this includes the idea that we should be as "in your face" as possible, holding hands to block traffic and proclaiming how nice it would be if every girl could just grow up to be married to a lesbian President of the United States. The best thing about what happened this week in California is that it should serve as a huge reality check that will not be forgotten for a very long time. Earth to California: middle America doesn't like "in your face" politics. Notice how a black man got elected President, with very little public discussion about race (except for Rev. Wright, which hurt Obama) either during or after the election. Get a clue. Maybe escorts have a natural advantage in understanding the politics of this issue, since we have to understand the rules of discretion, but I just don't see how using the "in your face" tactics of identity politics would have helped Obama last year, or could possibly help us next year. That leads to my final point, which is about messaging. I don't think we fully understand what message we now want to send to middle America, which is also why it makes sense to go door to door and talk to people, and listen. It is clear that the message of "whether you like it or not" is a horrible one. When the right aired Mayor Newsom saying that last Fall, support for marraige equality plummeted. I am hugely relieved that I don't have to carry the burden of being against democracy into the next election, which is how a "win" would have been portrayed - telling the voters to go get fucked. I hope we figure out a way to communicate that we believe that people are fair, and if given the opportunity to vote without scare tactics, they will vote for the right thing. Obama is a master at that. (Incidentally, every poll I've seen shows that blacks oppose same sex marraige more than whites, and it is entirely due to their religious beliefs, not their ideology. The three things that drove the Yes on 8 vote were being Republican, being conservative, or going to church. Few blacks are conservative Republicans. I think its a blessing that a liberal black man who African Americans listen to and who is good at depolarizing happens to be President when this is likely to come to a head nationally). My guess is that "be for gay marriage or you're a bigot" won't work either. Dozens of states have now voted against same sex marriage, and those people don't want to see themselves as bigots, or be called bigots. The only state that voted NOT to ban same sex marriage, and then reversed it, was Arizona. I met a lesbian couple from Arizona outside the court a few days ago, and their perception was that they won the first election because the gay/lesbian part of it was soft pedalled. The right came back and won by putting gays and lesbians back in the forefront, once again claiming that the rest of society needed protection from you know who and you know what. The No on 8 campaign has been broadly and intensely criticized for hiding the faces and voices of gays and lesbians last year. Many people I talk to, maybe most people, feel that if we had just put the stories of gays and lesbians out there, we would have won. I'm not so sure. I was in Florida last Winter, and I met the gay owner of a men's clothing store. (Okay, I'll admit it, I saw all kinds of tight fitting clothes I just HAD to have). He felt they got creamed last year (not literally) and it was because the election was perceived as a referendum on gay marriage. 62 percent voted NO, consistent with what polling on basic views of same sex marriage by Floridians showed at the time. What I keep wondering is: if every state that has voted on the question has banned same sex marriage, and if California voted 52/48, which is about as close as we have gotten in a real election, why was the No on 8 campaign so bad? And is changing the issue from "gay marriage" to "marraige equality" or "fairness" such a bad thing? On this one, I don't feel I have a clue what the answer is, other than that if you get beyond the snapshots and look at the long-term trends, there is simply not a majority in America, or California, that supports same sex marriage for sure yet. You could argue that we should not even think about going back to the ballot for a long time. I'm a perpetual optimist, and I'm insatiable, for politics as well as sex, so I'm always ready for more. Its just that -unlike with sex - shoving it in someone's face may not be hot, it may just be hot button. What messages do people hear think would work?

I didn't say or mean to imply that we shouldn't try to win these fights in courts. We should. I love gay lawyers. My point, which the last year makes obvious, is that we can't count completely on the Courts, either because they may not support us anyway, and even if they do the voters may be able to override them. I wish California's constitution was more like Iowa's, in terms of protecting minorities like us and making it difficult to enshrine discrimination in a constitution. We should use whatever tactics work, and usually that means a combination of working the courts, the legislature, and the street. By the time we get finished in California, we'll probably have won and lost gay marraige half a dozen times in one venue or another. I hope this does NOT go the Supreme Court anytime soon. My worst fear is that there is a majority on the current US Court that could vote to take marraige away. At some point it may look like the last refuge of the right wing religious zealots. Hopefully a lot of states will enact gay marraige and the conservatives on the court will be constricted by their own state's rights rhetoric. Eventually a different court may finalize the contract, much as they did on civil rights, but that is a long way off. And I don't think that what the Court did puts us in a bad position. Quite the opposite. One way or the other, everyone knew this was going back to the ballot, whatever the Court decided to do. The fact that we lost, I think, helkps us in two ways. Most important, there is not an ounce of complacency in California anymore. I spent most of the day yesterday shoving a clipboard in people's hand and telling them to sign (I'm used to shoving things inside people and telling them what to do with it, but usually not this way). I don't think I have ever had such an easy time recruiting volunteers. Last Summer, as StuCotts said, there was this smug sense of inevitability that we were going to win, because the polls said so. Now, the sense out there is that it is inevitable that we have to organize and fight hard to win this thing, and we may have to win it several times. The other gift the Court gave us was shame. It is possible to overwork it, but a lot will be said in the next year about how shamelful it is that we're the state that voted to make discrimination legal and constitutional. And on an even simpler level, we're the state that voted against love and loving people. Who really wants to own that? I'm sure the right will work their "protect marraige" bullshit to death, and we will have to be thoughtful about how we convince swing voters that we are somehow not out to get them or their children. But I think that is better than having to play defense, like we did last year. There would have been a furor about pro-gay judges that helped a political extremists derail democracy, which is exactly the way they are trying to paint Obama as well. Now we get to go on the offense and craft messages that present us as a normal part of society that just wants the same things and the same rights as everybody else. We got 48 percent last time, and even without doing anything different, demography will get us to 50 soon anyway. But its already obvious that a lot of things will be done different next time. This is very winnable. Honestly, I really have to hand it to the judges here, who are almost all Republican. They did something incredibly activist, and got away with it. Had they thrown out Prop 8, they would have faced an immediate recall election, which would have created a huge distraction about the anti-democratic tendencies of gays (which would have been made to sound even worse than our sexual tendencies.) I wish we would have defeated Prop 8 last fall, but given the fact that we lost, I think this could hardly have played out better. By legalizing gay marraige, which the Republican Court did not have to do, they opened the door wide. Their decision directly contributed to the Iowa decision. It created momentum that was going our way. I don't think what happened yesterday stopped that. What happened yesetrday will be felt as a huge slap in the face, and in slapping us down I think they set up a really good fight. They are being derided as "spineless" and "prejudiced." My favorite line about organizing is Alinsky's - "the action is in the reaction." they gave us a whole lot to react to, and we will be doing that, hopefully wisely, for a very long time.

I just got back from the Supreme Court building, and people are pissed, but not surprised. Some of us are recruiting volunteers to go door to door and start a massive voter education campaign, since this is definitely headed back to the ballot, and others are getting arrested as I write this because they are into the civil disobedience thing. It takes all kinds...gotta love democracy. There will be a lot of legal hair splitting. The Supreme Court, as expected, upheld the 18,000 same sex "marraiges," and decided that same sex couples have all the same rights as last year, except the word "marraige" can not be used to describe their relationship. So now we apparently will have same sex "things" in California, or whatever they are supposed to be called, which are legally the same as straight "marraiges," except they are not married. Am I the only one that finds that confusing, not to mention insulting? Legally, it creates a confusing mess, but it does guarantee that the next ballot fight will be focused on marraige equality, not a recall of pro-gay judges. Honestly, I kind of applaud their political savvy. These judges were mostly appointed by Republicans, and they committed the travesty of opening the door to gay marraige, which influenced the Iowa court's decision, and by all appearances they figured out a way to do that did without committing political suicide. In addition to the judges themselves, here's my own take on the other two big winners. Winner Number 1 is...............IOWA! In fact, protestors were chanting "Iowa" when they learned about the court's decision. First Iowa gave us whites for Obama, and now they give us farmers for gay rights. What's next? Ultimately, this is going to be a federal issue, even if it is being fought state by state. I have a client in Iowa who is a devoted political centrist, and he loves to tease me about all the political looniness that comes out of California, which is supposedly the nation's trendsetter. So in the long run, it might be a good thing that heartland states like Iowa and Maine are taking the lead in what is really a battle for the hearts and minds of middle Americans. Winner Number 2 is ............. GAYS! There are some big silver linings in this cloud. First, the Court didn't take any actual rights away, they just upheld what the voters did, which is take away the word "marraige." So no one is suddenly a lot worse off. Second, their decision definitely won't be perceived that way. It will be perceived as an attack on gays, and equality, which is should be. It will force gays and lesbians to organize in a way that would not have happened if the Court threw out Prop 8. Lots of people have complaints about the way the No on 8 campaign was run last Fall, but the fact is we almost won on an issue that has never been won at the ballot box. Ultimately, the only way to make sure we get to keep our rights, and we are treated equally, is to convince the voters of that. And the groundwork for that is being laid, and has been for months. Organizers are being hired, volunteers are being recruited, and precints and parts of the state that were ignored last time around, arguably because there wasn't enough time, are now going to get a lot of attention. There were lessons to be learned from last year's defeat, and we seem to be learning them. It took Harvey Milk three times to win. Hopefully, we'll do it in two. I don't like losing, and to me the biggest danger is always complacency. If the Court threw out Prop 8, there would have been a huge backlash, and we would have been portrayed as being against democracy, and many people would have just assumed, like they did last Fall, that it was all going to be okay, because after all, this is CALIFORNIA!!!!!! This is exactly the kind of slap in the face that will prevent anyone from being delusional, or complacent. Some people will be out in the streets protesting, and hopefully many will be out on the blocks canvassing voters, or on the phones calling voters, but all in all its the most vibrant and interesting political environment the gay community has seen in a long time. If there is a loser, it is going to be organized religion. Last year, the Catholic Church pretty much snuck up from behind. (Maybe those of us who are used to taking it from behind just weren't on guard enough). :-) The Mormon Church got a long of deserved attention, but the Archbishop of San Francisco was the one that recruited them. Next time, that won't be so easy. I was interviewed by one of the TV stations because I was getting people to sign up as volunteers, and I said something about this being like the "civil rights" movement, and the cameraman, who was black, came up to me privately afterward and told me that a lot of black people don't like having our struggle compared to the "civil rights" movement, especially black churchgoers. So I described the various political campaigns for black elected officials I had volunteered on, and told him that I saw all of this as part of the same struggle for equality, and asked him what words he thought we should use, if not "civil rights." His response was dead right: "I wish I could tell you, but there definitely needs to be a conversation." As far as the African American church goes, that conversation has already started, and my guess is it will go relatively well. I don't think most black people have a deep emotional commitment to hypocrisy, let alone hate, and they certainly have an experience with a struggle for freedom that we can connect ours to, if we take the time to do so. The Catholic church, which is my own background, is gonna be a whole different story. They are in for a very rocky ride. The success of the Catholic church in America absolutely depends on deep, multiple layers of hypocrisy. I have had priests who are clients. I have had priests who are fuck buddies. My best guess is 1 out of 3 priests are gay. The instituition can not survive without gays, who officiate many of their Masses, and yet it is completely ideologically committed to attacking gays. Its even against rubbers! Even if we are polite, and don't start outting gay priests (who in my experience at least have the sense to use rubbers, despite what the Pope says), something has gotta give, and I don't see how the Catholic church is gonna square their rhetoric around it. Either Jesus is about love, or he is about discrimination. It will be fun to call that question, and watch the nelly priests squirm, or the old priests drone on about "sin." So save your money for the gay rights struggles that are on the way, whether it is defending the Court's decision in Iowa, or going back to the ballot in California, or whatever else is happening in the other states. And save your prayers, if you like to pray, for the sad and sorry Catholics that are headed into a moral and political buzzsaw. After their last big public relations disaster, which was presenting themselves to the nation as pedophiles, its really the last thing they need. And for the 18,000 California couples who fell in love and got married and get to stay married.....GOD BLESS YOU!

Actually, what has been surprising to me is how normal, as opposed to extreme, the gay community has turned out to be. About five or six years ago, a client of mine introduced me to a political activist he thought I might want to become friends with, who was working on the issue of gay marraige himself. I had lunch with the guy, and he basically told me, if I remember right, that most gays didn't really care that much about marraige, and that he didn't expect there would be gay marraige anytime soon, and that he personally didn't care if he had the right to get married, since he had never been in an ongoing relationship with a man for more than several months. My how times have changed. All the same-sex couples that have been quietly building lives and families together for years or even decades are now coming out of the woodwork, and it is anything but extreme. The extreme face of the gay community used to be the naked weirdos in the Gay Pride parades, or maybe the muscled up and drugged up circuit boys on South Beach. These days the face of the gay community is becoming a gay or lesbian couple with a kid who just want a normal life. It has been an amazing, and rapid, transition. I've had a line about gay marraige for years: the debate that will be fought and won in my lifetime is whether gays should have the same right to get married as straights. But the debate that will never happen, but would actually be more interesting, is which is better: gay or straight long-term relationships. What I mean by that is that straight relationships have thousands of years of backing from every tradition in the world, from the Bible to the Koran to the laws of every country and the feelings of your whole family. Included in this is lots of DON'TS - like don't have sex with your neighbor's wife, and especially not the neighbor's hot college jock son. Gay relationships are more about the subjective decisions of two people who want to make a relationship work, and they have had very little traditional or legal backing. They also usually have a lot more freedom, and the idea of being able to have sex with others without destroying years of emotional commitment is not so uncommon. In some ways, that makes them better I think. Its about what two intelligent, consenting adults decide to do, not what the Bible or the law says. What seems clear is that the gay and lesbian community is flocking to traditional marraige in droves, and it has in fact become THE symbol for gay equality today, which is why I feel so strongly about it. Why shouldn't we be equal? As Wanda Sykes said, if you don't support same sex marraige, great. Then don't marry someone of the same sex. What amazes me, and pisses me off, is the idea that somehow all the gays and lesbians in the world who want their dream of a sweet little home and family in a sweet little suburb are taking something away from the rest of the world, and somehow the world needs to be "protected" from these extreme gays and lesbians and their "radical" agenda. I don't agree with Tom Isern either, but his statements are interesting and they do make it clear that the gay community is flocking to conformity, not extremity. The one other point that has to be said is that this is also a practical issue about rights, as well as symbols. One of my best friends is a retired escort from another country, who now has a loving partner, and if that partner was a woman, he would have the same rights as my sister-in-law, who is Canadian. He doesn't. My sister-in-law got a green card because she married my brother. My friend can't marry his partner. Fortunately, he was able to claim political asylum, but it was a complicated way around what is essentially discrimination. I think almost everyone now agrees that blacks who wanted to own houses didn't want to take anything away from whites, and women who wanted to vote didn't want to take anything away from men. Now we have to convince straights that we don't want to take anything away from them, we just want to be equal. The exciting action today is going to be in California, but eventually this will land on Obama's desk. He is not into identity politics. As America's first black President, he really can't be. In some ways I think that will help matters, because when push comes to shove (and we will definitely have to push), he will likely support equality for gays, because those are the people that helped him win in swing states like Florida and Virginia, wheras the religious right has not been bending over backwards to help Obama. In my experience, the only time religious people bend over backward is in private, when they hire people like me to explore their secret, dirty fantasies. Talk about extreme! With luck, Obama will use his considerable verbal skills to frame the issue of gay marraige in a way that gets beyond identity politics, and just makes it clear that all people really want is the totally normal ability to be an equal, loving human being.

Sheesh! I want a weekend with Andre. I NEVER get to have any fun!

Yeah, you got my point. I like to put my tongue in all sorts of places, and the comment about not allowing photos with cocks and asses was definitely tongue in cheek. As the photo below of me makes clear, this site does allow them, which was my point. Personally, I'm very glad to have my cock back, since somebody else somewhere else took it away a few years back. Anybody involved in escorting, whether its as an escort, or someone who hires them, or someone who runs a site that reviews them, is taking a calculated risk. All our asses are on the line. As Lucky pointed out in quoting me, one of the reasons I have placed such value on an escort review site, as opposed to the many sites that just have the hot and horny photos, is that it definitely has the effect of protecting EVERYBODY from bad situations - bad hires, bad clients, bad laws, whatever. So if somebody decides to censor explicit photos because they don't want to risk running afoul of the law, I'm sympathetic. Having said that, just about every escort site out there, including this one, shows pictures with cocks and asses, and I am not aware that any of those sites have run into any problems. What put me over the edge is that someone would censor photos everybody wants to see, because they don't want to accept any risk, but they won't censor "information" everyone thinks is false, even if it puts others at risk, and they will censor contributors who don't speak in a way that is considered polite, even if the people who are being censored consider it hurtful. None of this is black and white, but it seemed like a situation where the calculation of risk was very one-sided. In a situation that does not seem fair, and is unalterable, there's good reason to just be quiet. But that's just my opinion. From the perspective of someone who is always right, I'm sure everything they do is fair, and there is really no reason to try to change their mind, right Lucky? After all, since you like to hold people accountable to what they said, heres what you said in "that gawdawful threat" [sic] that summed it up perfectly: "And with all love and respect to you too, Daddy, I think your reply is beneath you. You of all people should be willing to first protect the integrity of your reviews. Having butted heads with you before, I know this is the end of the line on this subject. But I don't have to like it, no matter how many colors you've got." Sorry if I did not publicly agree at the time, but you really hit the nail on the head, especially about it being the end of the line. I can tolerate a lot of things, but not a lack of integrity, especially if that is the very value your site is supposed to add. (I do, however, love butting heads, or butts, or heads, or any combination therof). You asked the question, so theres your answer. Anyway, in the spirit of Conway's post, I agree the best thing to do is value the unique things that THIS site offers, and support and build on its strengths, rather than using it to compare it to something else. You could argue that running an escort review site is a thankless task. To use your image, MsGuy, maybe the person doing it feels he is just constantly putting himself up on that cross, and getting nailed, with very little to show for it. Yet another reason to not spend much time and energy criticising any other site. I just wanted to feel comfortable this one is not run the same way. In that regard, Conway and Tampa Yankee said exactly what I was hoping to hear. Thanks again guys. Now on to bigger, better, and sexier things. I just had a delicious hour of sex with a hot stud (speaking of putting my tongue all sorts of places), and tomorrow is the Day of Decision. I'll be down at the California Supreme Court and City Hall, recruiting innocents. Organize here, orgasm there. There's just so many fun things to do! Steven

Couldn't agree with you more, Conway. The last private email I exchanged with Daddy had only four words, and it captures my philosophy on the subject: "Best of lucky Daddy." In terms of a specific discussion about Daddy, since somebody mentioned the guy by name, thats really about all I have to say. I don't want to start a bitch and moan session, let alone a bitch and moan site. TY's comments are totally right on: personality should be factored out of things, whether its my personality, Daddy's, or anybody else's. Thats generally what happens when people are treated like adults, and expected to act like adults. That also is the answer to your question Lucky. Everything you quoted me as saying about the integrity of the other site stands. There are lots of great escorts, clients and posters on that other site who have all kinds of interesting and intelligent things to say, many of whom I am learning have similarly interesting things to say on this site as well. You are a perfect example of that. I did not see a reason for my feelings about the integrity of the site administrator to get in the way of all the great things about the site itself. Why rain on everybody else's parade, or try to tear down something that so many people value? That's certainly not an escort thing to do. We're HAPPY people. I think I am a man of my word. As your long quote of my statements reflects, I promised Daddy I would be quiet, and I have been. I do think Daddy knows best. It should not be a surprise that often times Daddy is right, and his children are wrong. That often happens in families. In a situation like that, OF COURSE Daddy is a fair minded judge. If you were a Daddy, you wouldn't want your children to feel any differently, would you? Hell, I'm sure it even works that way in the Obama family. You think those sweet kids ever question the judgment of the leader of the free world? Mostly, I will always think of Daddy as simply being Daddy. And for those people who want a Daddy, and need a Daddy.....well, there he is, for everyone to know and love. Finally, I used to think that the idea of having multiple escort review sites was confusing. There was an efficiency to having one site that everyone went to called "Hooboy's reviews." Having said that, given the way things have played out and the various feelings that are out there about various site administrators, including my own, perhaps it best serves the interests of the community of escorts, and the people who hire them, to have a couple sites. Hopefully this raises, rather than lowers, the standard for everyone, including moi. Thanks for demonstrating thoughtfulness, as well as sexiness. Steven

If you want people to post more reviews, here's my suggestions: 1. Don't post negative reviews that are fake, or at least flag them so readers know they are likely fake. If a lot of frequent contributors, (lets say 18 reviewers and escorts, with a total of 31, 721 posts) say a review is fake, and offer ideas about how to deal with it, don't insult them by refering to their contributions as "that gawdawful threat" [sic] like some other site administrator does. 2. Don't post fake positive reviews of escorts that don't exist, like some other site does. It confuses clients who try to hire them. 3. Don't ban people who have over 1000 posts because you don't like the way they express their opinions. We're all grown ups. It would be especially bad to refuse to censor a review that is fake, and then censor a frequent contributor who is real because he has the nerve to criticize you. 4. Don't remove all cocks and asses from escort's photos, because you don't want to take the risk of getting nailed for a law that is unenforced, even though you are perfectly happy to let escorts, who you think of as your children, twist in the wind while anonymous posters trash them with fake reviews. In other words, don't be a hypocritical wuss when it comes to risk. 5. Most important, don't act like a child with a bad temper, who lashes out at people you think of as your children. It sets a really bad tone. In my humble opinion, all of these things could have a chilling effect on people's interest and willingness to participate in your site. I happen to know another site where lots of my clients and frequent contributors pretty much don't like the administrator, and think he is whiny and isn't very bright, but everyone is afraid to say anything, because they fear they might get banned. I actually decided to stop posting on that site, because I think the guy running it lacks respect for his contributors. If I ran my escort business that way, I don't think I would have been around for 9 years and I don't think I would have gotten over 80 more or less flawless reviews. I think honest perspectives, intelligent debate, and respect for people who take the time to contribute to a site are always a good policy. If you have that, you don't need gimmicks and contests. If this kind of honesty is not appropriate on this site either, and if I am not supposed to be critical as well as funny or thoughtful, please let me know, and I'll silence myself before I offend you too. If candid discussion is appropriate, then I guess the prize is we all get to be grown ups participating in an intelligent, lively, funny, and appreciated blog site about the things that make us all hot and horny. There was this guy named Hooboy who created a site that did that, and I sure do miss it. Thanks, Steven