Injustice is always wrong. Well-made points.

D.A.D.

Like anyone, I am not into the entire alphabet soup of more esoteric sexual behavior, so I choose not to engage in those acts I don’t like. Safe, sane and consensual is the name of the game, and even the kinkiest S&M is often the safest form of sexual activity you can have. Without getting graphic, I would say at least 50% of my own experiences had exactly 0 chance of passing anything but the common cold (unless you believe HIV can be passed through kissing).

Certainly the focus on barebacking is a huge concern in the gay community, as is the use of “party” drugs like GHB and crystal. Every subculture, after all, has its own problems (as an Irish-American, I tell you legions about the larger scale negative effects of alcoholism). But given that we have an administration that refuses to even acknowledge men have sex with other men, much less lead a public health campaign (a la the Clinton years, when the HIV infection rate was actually declining) to curb unsafe sex, can we really be surprised. There are minimal safe sex messages for anyone out there, but HIV is just as big a problem, if not more, than it was in the 90s, when the safer sex messages were ubiquitous. “Abstinence until marriage” is not a good way to get a healthy message about sex to those who are barred from marriage, and the gay community cannot counteract that problem alone, even with all we did to stem the nightmare of HIV in the 80s.

That’s all well and good, Dr. Throckmorton, but why is this man so utterly fixated on that kind of behavior when it’s homosexuals doing it? That’s my first reaction.

I’m old enough to recall a time when I had to go to seedy adult bookstores if I wanted to buy a copy of the Advocate or our local gay paper, the Washington Blade. So ask me how I know that heterosexuals can be every bit as extreme as anything LaBarbera and his kind throw out there about gays. I didn’t particularly want to, but I’d pretty much seen it all by the time I was 25 and almost all of what I saw was between heterosexuals. Would you agree that if I went around waving that stuff in people’s faces over and over and over again as though it were some sort of proof of the innate depravity of heterosexuals, that it would be evidence that I have…issues?

I’m no mental health professional. I’m just a middle aged gay man who as a kid was forced into dealing with XXX “adult” commercial culture just to pick up a goddamned copy of The Washington Blade. And the first thing that leaps out at Me whenever I see someone like Mr. LaBarbera babbling on and on and on about extreme behavior among homosexuals and nary a peep about the far more widespread heterosexual version of that story, is that they’re hatemongering. Which is pretty obvious so it’s not like I’m going to take any credit for making a profound observation here. If LaBarbera hasn’t seen heterosexuals doing exactly these same things it’s because he hasn’t looked. And I wouldn’t blame him for not looking either, except he can’t seem to get enough of it when it’s homosexuals doing it. That’s the first thing I notice.

Besen’s right…at least partly…LaBarbera needs to deal with his own issues first. But I don’t think sex is LaBarbera’s problem. Why is it important to him, that people’s immediate reaction to homosexuals must be one of disgust and revulsion? I don’t think it’s a secret sexual urge he’s satisfying when he visits and revisits and revisits Mr. Leather every year. He seems to have a positively desperate need to see cheapness and squalor and depravity associated with homosexuality. That’s what he can’t get enough of. It isn’t sex, it’s disgust that’s turning him on.

As for condemning the perversion, we do: Yours.

Of course it’s unhealthy, but it’s consenting adults doing it in private. People smoking cigarettes is unhealthy too, but I don’t see you doing undercover exposes of tobacco companies. You’ve been going to these events for, what, 15 years now?! Is there really that much different from year to year? At some point your fixation on extreme gay male sex practices becomes at least as unhealthy as anything going on at IML.

I have developed my own totally unique strategy for dealing with my belief that S&M isn’t very healthy. Bear with me now, because admittedly it’s kinda out there. You ready? Here it is… I don’t go to S&M events. I know it seems crazy, but give it a try some time.

Oh, and incidentally, since you’ve posted pictures of these “incredibly gross and heinous acts” online where anyone including children can view them, you’re actually doing more to promote unhealthy sexual practices than IML is, who at least had the decency to do it in private with the whole hotel reserved and off limits to kids. Shame on you.

I view condemnation and judgment as God’s business and prefer to let God tend to it in God’s own way.

The pathos in the point is that while the meek are daily burned from their homes and starved to death in the wilderness and the poor in spirit are daily murdered by unjust rulers, “Christians” like Pervo Pete think their greatest service to God is to attend Leather Balls.

Sadly, its true that attention is the Holy Grail to these unenlightened “Christian” activists and I have to hand it to Pete, he certainly knows where he can get his bread-stick buttered.

How many times do you need to go to IML to do research. You’d think your first trip would do the trick. Why the need to keep going back?