stevenkesslar

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