"Both men knew that no fight for real justice is won easily, and that most last a lifetime or more."

Guys -- that's the truth.

Where would we be in America now if Dr. King and his brothers and sisters in the struggle had quit after one year?

Most likely we would have devolved into a series of race wars.

Very common throughout the world.

But it didn't happen here.

Instead we are today a racially integrated society.

Not perfect.

But a lot better than we would have been without Dr. King.

Not so good, I think, than we could have been had he not been murdered.

But a lot better than we would have been had he never lived and fought for us all.

What about folks like Frederic Douglass?

Suppose they had given up?

Ignoring the plight of the slaves, the reality is that the vast majority of so-called white people living in a slave society would have been doomed to brutal poverty.

Because for the cost of the two or three years' wages that a plantation owner would pay a white worker, he could *own* a Black man and woman and their children and their labor IN PERPETUITY.

Forever.

Doesn't leave the slave owner with much incentive to hire white guys -- does it?

Yet to this day there are white people in the South who display the stars and bars.

As Ed Koch famously said: DUMMIES.

It took the UK abolitionists 51 years to achieve their goal.

Then it took another 25 years for slavery to be ended in the US.

And another hundred years before America would begin to retire Jim Crow.

It takes a long time and a lot of hard, hard work to change a culture.

I know that most of you on this site think you can find a knight in shining armor and retire with him to a castle somewhere and put all this noise and tumult behind you.

You cannot.

That's the fallacy of the private solution.

There is no private solution.

There's just a lot of hard work.

Your choices are:

To participate in that hard work -- and see the beginnings of change; or,

To do nothing -- in which case nothing will change.

Let's get back to our would-be military man who turned deserter -- in time of war.

He came to this site and read all these posts and benefitted from them and added his words, I thought, to the communal wisdom.

Not, apparently and however, because he wanted to help other guys -- but because he wanted his private solution.

And when that was not quickly forthcoming -- he gave up and took his post and went home.

Which in my view was selfish and small.

But more to the point, self-defeating.

If, regardless of how you self-identify, you are a man who loves other men; and if you are, and properly so, repelled by analism --

You Cannot Escape This Fight.

Yes, you can delay and you can procrastinate, but only at the cost of delaying your own happiness, and perhaps irretrievably so.

Only those who never give up have a chance of achieving not just a societal solution but a private solution as well.

*Only* those who never give up.

You have one life on this earth.

Never give up.

Never.

One last thing:

I'm a short Jewish man.

I don't conform to American standards of beauty.

Even when I was young, I wasn't considered pretty.

No one ever confused me with Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves or any of the other icons of male beauty.

Nevertheless, I was Brett's lover.

Lot of guys vied for that honor.

But I won it.

Why?

Because I never give up.

When I met Patrick, not only was I still a short Jewish man, I was a short middle-aged Jewish man.

Yet today I'm Patrick's husband.

Why?

Because I never give up.

Guys, that's the truth.

I've never had looks and I've never had money.

You don't need either.

You need HEART.

NEVER GIVE UP.

Joel

Re: Never give up

1-18-2005

...Bill is a short Jewish man...i am a short Arab man...by all rights we ought to be the bitterest of foes...but i have a great deal of respect for Bill and the thoughts he expresses on this website...is this not the very meaning of MLK's "I have Dream" speech...that people from all walks of life...who are from rival tribes...ancient enemies...can live together...speak their minds and find peaceful solutions to even the stickiest problems...and it all comes down to...what Bill said in this post...NEVER GIVE UP...

...here are some examples of people who never gave up...

George Washington

Toussant L'overture

Che Guevarrra (please excuse the spelling)

Mahatma Ghandi

Martin Luther King Junior

Malcolm X

...i find it interesting that the people...and this is a very short list...who cause the most change in the world...are the ones who upset the status quo the most...and are the ones most feared by the establishment...

...we have a word in Arabic that i'd like to share with all of you...it is Sabr...and it best translates as "active patience"...what does this mean...it means exactly what Bill has exemplified over the years...and what that military dude he spoke of did not demonstrate...active patience means doing and waiting at the same time...do what needs to be done...and know that the results will come in time...it is the basis of the concept of Faith...saying have faith is the same as saying have active patience...be preapred to act...for only through action does change come...and change comes at its own pace...here is an Arabic saying...if you want God to watch your camel...tie it to a post first...do something...dont just sit there...do something...even if it is just posting on this site...do something...i beleive the Talmud has an expression that goes like this...IF NOT NOW, WHEN?...if you are not going to do something today...then when are you going to do it...when will you go get that car loan...when will you go back to school...when will you ask that woman to marry you...when will you start a new business...if not now...if not today...active patience...do something...set the plan in motion...and you will see results...

it comes down to what is presented on this site as the concept of "reciprocal altruism"...why do we post...why do we come to this site...why do we donate money to this cause...is it for ourselves...how can it be...i dont need to post my life story...i already know my life story...i dont need to come to this site to be with myself...i dont need to donate money to this cause to spend it on myself...we do these things to serve others...because in serving them...we ultimately serve ourselves...and the same is true of the rest...we help each other because we know others will help us...it is the basis of the social contract...the basis of all societies...

BE PATIENT BROTHERS...but...DO SOMETHING WHILE YOU ARE BEING PATIENT...BE ACTIVE...and...THE RESULTS WILL COME...

AVE FRATRES

JOEL

cockster

1-18-2005

Re: Never give up

Re: Sabr - Active patience

How amazing that a word in a posting can stimulate such active thought? Notice that I have not posted or contributed to the discussion on this site for some time. I have, however, been active in the meantime, working on my sites, publishing cocktocock books ... learning that Sabr ... was the way to achieve my goal ... to disseminate the word of cocktocock as a viabiable sexual praxis for gay men.

More than the encouraging emails from my readers ... more than the vapour qudos that being a published writer gives ... the simple notion of Sabr ... active patience ... has refilled my energy tanks to continue to talk about loving sex, intiamacy ... that does not involve anal sex.

Cocktocock ... especially is a threatening word ... Frottage ... has no metonymic profundity as yet. Cocktocock means something to all men ... they get a shiver in the genitals when they hear it. Even if that shiver is not a pleasant one.

Bill, over many years, has held the notion of Sabr more consistently than most I have encountered in life or on the web. Yes I have met Bill in the flesh, however briefly.

This 'activism' cannot survive indefinitely without input from men who feed off of it. I am one of the men who has donated to the site. I will donate again. Similarly, my own work has an end point ... cocktocock erotic fiction ... in a subsidised fashion is too much for one man to support.

Constantly I am told by the owners of free gay websites and other vested interests of the gay media that gay men ... men ... are disinteressted in cocktocock ... frot ... non anal gay sex as a permanent objective sex life. (I accept that they are disinterested in men who don't "proclaim" themselves gay)

Yet, from my own experience, I know that with the growing knowledge of a non anal, fully satisfying sex life .... more and more men are taking notice ... naming their pleasure.

Give what you can ... I do ... it is not thrown away ... the internet is not a void ... as I know only too well. In later years, I know I will be writing about how the Internet helped me 'solidify' m,y wonts and concerns.

That's Bill, he's doing it now ... here and now.

Keep saying it ... cocktocock ... frot ... give something ... keep this forum alive.

Much love

Mart

Bill Weintraub

Re: Never give up

1-25-2005

Thank you Joel and Mart.

I appreciate your kind words.

However, I'm an activist.

I'm not particularly patient, nor do I think patience is necessarily a virtue.

I originally wrote a long response to your posts detailing what I do as an activist, talking about my contacts with other Frot men, with scientists and other people in NGOs and FBOs and with advisors to the Congress and the Bush admin.

Those people would tell you that I'm not a patient man.

I push our case and I push hard.

Because the stakes are very great.

The problem is that most of the guys in here -- not Mart and Joel -- but most of you are far too patient.

You put up with a system which you should find abhorrent.

I look at my dead lover's picture nowadays and I think that the net result of AIDS will have been to make the world a more comfortable place for buttfuckers.

Is that why all those guys died?

And are you willing to leave it at that?

If so, you're even more morally bankrupt than the butt boyz.

In some ways more culpable because the blinders have been long lifted from your eyes and you know there's a far better way to go.

But you won't spread the word.

You complain -- a lot.

But you won't do anything.

Which is why I get so fed up and disgusted with you.

I'm not the only one who's disgusted.

Larry Kramer gave a long, chastising speech on November 7 2004 in which he spoke of gay men murdering each other through anal penetration.

Unfortunately, however, Larry's solution is the condom.

Which has failed.

And given that there's a truly genital and safe alternative, is a piss-poor solution in any case.

Larry knows me and he's known of my Frot advocacy since I started.

But he's never spoken of it publicly.

For whatever reason, Larry and men like him are willing to let a lie remain at the core of gay life.

I'm not.

There are two truths about anal penetration:

1. It's not sex.

2. It's not safe.

And no one -- including Larry Kramer -- can change that.

An anus is not a vagina.

It's not a genital organ, it wasn't designed to be penetrated, and it can't be penetrated safely.

That's the truth.

You can, temporarily and sometimes, reduce the risk.

But you can't make it safe.

And no sooner have you guarded against one pathogen -- eg, HIV; than another one -- eg, HPV -- gets into your butt and takes up residence.

And even if you could, which you cannot, given the anatomical realities, make it totally safe -- you still couldn't make it sex.

Fucking an asshole does not now and never will turn it into a genital organ.

CockToCock is sex: true genital-genital sex.

CockToCock is safe.

Anal is neither.

That's the truth.

And being patient in the face of the buttfuck lie is NOT a virtue.

Recently a 24 year old who's posted on this board a number of times -- good posts -- posted in Frot Club about wanting to meet other Frot guys his age in his city.

I wrote him a long letter sympathizing and suggesting that he become more *active* in that town.

I told him that's a good way to meet other men, far better than posting in Frot Club -- which is without question so; and I said I could suggest some projects and invited him to come up with his own.

His response was -- silence.

Well, I could say "Fuck you" to him, but that would be superfluous.

Because he's already fucked himself, hasn't he?

You're only 24 for 365 days, and then it's past.

And it won't come again.

You have one sweet life on this earth and that's it.

When I was 24 I was already an activist.

And it was through that activism that I met Brett -- and a host of other people.

It wasn't through sitting patiently or otherwise in my room.

Once again, there's far too much patience among you.

And too little anger, and even less action.

That won't cut it.

Let's get real.

At this point:

We get about a million visitors per year to our Heroic Homosex, FrotMen, and Man2Man Alliance sites, and without question we're having an impact.

The term Frot is all over the web -- that meme has legs Mart.

As do cocktocock and dick2dick.

HOWEVER -- we could have a much a greater impact if we could reach more people.

Which we could if you guys would DONATE.

We are a social ministry and this is first and foremost a question of bringing in the sheep.

Most Frot men believe they're alone -- the last of the unicorns, as a recent post said.

Not true.

But we have to be able to reach them.

That's entirely in your hands.

If 100 of you would pledge and see through a donation of $5 per month for a year, we'd have the funds we need to start advertising.

In this instance, the problem isn't Jerry Falwell or Tom DeLay or Gary Bauer or James Dobson or the Bush admin or even the buttfuck boyz.

The problem is YOU.

YOU are the PROBLEM.

Anal is a lie and you know it.

Yet you sit on your hands.

So: I'm an activist.

And I make do, of necessity, with whatever's to hand.

At the moment what I've got is the analist "left"; the "religious" right; and "you."

I put "left" in quotation marks because the analists aren't radicals or revolutionaries, they're defenders of the status quo.

I put "religious" in quotation marks because the right isn't motivated by Faith, but by hate and the lust for power.

And I put "you" in quotation marks because for practical purposes, most of "you" don't exist.

You don't do anything.

Figure it out guys:

I act, therefore I am.

You don't, therefore you aren't.

Joel referred to Hillel, a first century BC rabbi.

Here's what Hillel said:

"If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?"

The answer is NOBODY.

If you don't care about yourself, why would anyone else?

Aside from the occasional saint, and saints are very rare.

"And if I'm not for others, what am I?"

The answer is NOTHING.

Because human life runs on reciprocal altruism. And when you refuse to help others, you're no longer part of the human community.

"And if not now, when?"

The answer is NEVER.

You'll put it off till you're out of time.

You can live in the realm of NOBODY, NOTHING, and NEVER;

and you can call it wisdom or patience or anything else;

but all it is really, is the VOID.

A great emptiness in your heart.

Does anyone remember Roger Vadim's Barbarella?

The evil city in that movie is guarded by ominous figures called The Leathermen.

They look fierce.

But when they get hit, they disintegrate.

Because they're HOLLOW.

They're EMPTY INSIDE.

Too many of you are as well.

So, guys, you can act or you can do nothing.

But don't kid yourselves that the two are equal.

Sure, there are times in life when we need to be patient.

This is not one of them.

We have the numbers and we have the truth.

There is no excuse for your failure to act.

DONATE.