Bill Weintraub

Re: thanks for changing the conversation, Bill!

10-19-2002

I thank Rick for his kind words and permission to post this email.

Rick wrote to me just as I was concluding an unpleasant correspondence with another guy who'd wanted to post on the site about a group sex experience and about his favorite sexual technique, similar to docking, which is clearly unsafe.

I wrote him as diplomatic a letter as I could, telling him that the site no longer supported group sex or promiscuity, and that we would never model unsafe sex here.

And he of course responded with a flame.

Which was pointless. Because I won't change the focus of the site to accommodate men who are still wed to that old gay male culture, in which anything goes and we're not only expected but required to tolerate self-destructive behavior which impacts the entire community.

Rick is right that what we're about here is changing the conversation -- with the intent of changing the culture of men who have sex with men:

By moving that culture away from acts rooted in self-hate towards those which recognize the intrinsic nobility and heroism of men who love men.

Guys who can't or won't see it that way -- guys who prefer to see themselves and other men as just so much meat to be ground up and consumed -- will not be happy here.

But guys like Medo, who talks about two souls in one body, or Janosh, who speaks of how God meets God, or Wayne, who talks about how he and his buddy have increased their love a thousand fold, are in the right place.

As is Rick.

We've had 30 years of promiscuity, moral relativism, and sleaze in the gay male community, and the result has been half a million dead and a lot more walking wounded.

What we need now is not more of the same, but a new direction which acknowledges the historic truth of heroic man2man love, and offers an essentially noble vision to those men who want to connect with another man without surrendering the masculine attributes which constitute the very sinews of the sacred bonds between men.

For masculinity is not a cultural artifact. Rather is it rooted in the subtle strands of DNA which shape our psyches and our souls.

And that masculinity is inextricably linked through evolution both biological and spiritual to the warrior ethos.

It is that ethos, expressed culturally but borne in our genetic code, which gives men the strength to fight and die for those they love.

Rick, stay true to your ideal of the nobility of man2man.

And watch your dreams come true.