There isn't any "clarification" left on my part to do, Keith. I'm not identifying myself in order, as Jake correctly put it, to appease the curiosity of your wounded vanity. Your performance in San Diego, your followup commentary to it, and your "association" with Scott are public record. Nor do I need to reiterate my points, all of which I stand by. But if it makes you more comfortable, I'm not alluding to any major assault against those of us working for sexual liberation. My impression in those contexts, like this context, is that you just don't "get" that this is about more than the freedom to suck cock without interference.

This string would not have been created and it would not have been joined by others if there wasn't the real experience of you, or your moderators, controlling expression in ways some of us find objectionable. (I guess you think we are suffering a collective hallucination.)

I think when you said that you don't enjoy these kinds of threads, you made adequate explanation of why it's so easy for you to dismiss what is important to the rest of us. It is pure assumption on your part that people object in great measure to the insertion of political material in the same place they look for sex -- or that they object more than many of us do, to, say advocacy in the LA room of barebacking. To generalize allowing Portland's difficulties pertinent to sex to be aired to opening the door to posts promoting "whaling measures" is just specious and pointless argumentation. We GET that it's your board, your preference and the rest of us be damned.

Perhaps instead of pursuing my identity, evading issues and defending yourself so vehemently, you could take a look at your rules and their enforcement. As I said, you have never struck me as having a committment to sexual politics that had much depth -- I think it's clear even in this particular forum it's just about sucking cock freely to you. But I never regarded you as a serious enemy of free expression either.

You've made your opinion known. Some approve, some don't. It's obvious you're not engaged in any rethinking of it and I have utterly nothing more to say on the subject.

Good words, bongo. Profound insight. I cannot say the same thing for the CFS founder.

Keith, I don't get much from your responses other than that you have gotten your panties in a bunch over side issues rather than focusing on the original issue that stirred up the conflicts in the first place. Namely, some guys who posted a thread at CFS did not like the way one of your moderators handled removing it. You never intervened or offered an explanation from what I gather. It took a challenge from one of the cruisers who initially posted the thread that was removed in order to get you to finally respond.

As this thread here progressed, your main focus became finding out the identity of one of the cruisers here and making him explain himself for what he said about you. You casually dismissed the original conflict and poo-pooed the concerns of the cruisers who questioned your actions (or lack of them). Instead, you have made battling the guy who ruffled your feathers the focus of your concerns. Again, you clearly couldn't care less about the other issues that have been raised here.

You don't see the significance of any of your reactions?

It's encouraging that you allowed this thread to progress without closing or deleting it. You have taken some real heat. I think that this is a step in the right direction. An important dialogue is taking place in which you are allowing some honest feedback. I see that as a good thing.

But, you have to take the next step. Maybe an apology is in order from you? No matter who did what initially, you are inevitably responsible as the owner of this place. If you do nothing but suggest that its your site, and you can do what you like -- then you are revealing a bias and a lack of fairness. You have the right to do this, and others have the right to observe it and denounce it.

It's that simple.

Right on bongo & jake2001! I've had the same problems with Keith only in private emails about an issue I had deleted (by his moderators) from the Southern Calif. boards....syphillis outbreaks. Keith is definitely only in this for the money...and the rest of us be damned! Those of us who refuse to be sheep thank you for your integrity & articulative responses.

Yeah, same here, and I should have said that early on. I've had a bunch of posts deleted by a moderator who then even deleted the posts questioning the propriety of the deletions. Then he retaliated by attacking me personally. When I contacted Keith, I had the same experience of defensiveness and indifference we've had here.

Keith's attitude is not a bit different from those bar owners who banished safe sex education from their venues because they didn't want to bring "down" their patrons. ("Of course, we don't disapprove of safe sex education. Why, we've given lots of money to AIDS organizations. It's just that this isn't the place.") It turned out it had much more to do with THEIR values -- economic -- than their patrons'.

Most of them woke up and maybe Keith will one day, too. It ought to be evident from the INCREASE in oppression of queer sex that the time to turn up the volume is NOW. This is not the time to compartmentalize, to Balkanize the struggle for sexual freedom.

Mmmmkay, I'm done. I think.

[This message has been edited by bongo (edited January 18, 2001).]

Bongo:

So I'm gathering you don't really know what you're writing about with all those assertions you made earlier about me? That you weren't in San Diego at Sex Panic to witness anything? Can't imagine what foolishness I engaged in since I was pretty much an observer. I would occasionally perk up to urge activists to focus on the sex panic rather than nationalizing health care, but that was about it.

As for Scott, you obviously didn't know him personally or understand Steam the way you imply you did. I feel that I can speak with some authority about Steam since I edited every single word that appeared in that publication. And I know exactly how complicated Scott was as a person, including his politics.

I also know the fundamental reason he started Steam: for business purposes, he needed a tax write-off. The politics that flowed came after that fact so please don't tell me about how I just don't get it. I helped created it so I certainly got it.

Meanwhile, Bongo can continue to whine about how he is being censored. All the more remarkable since of course if that were really the case no one would have ever read a word he wrote here.

My apologies to those who resent that I have taken a role in this thread to defend myself. It has fortunately been rather rare that people have used my free website to attack me personally. Maybe my skin isn't thick enough.

Keith

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Cruisemaster
cruisingforsex.com

LOL...Nice try, Keith. You still avoid the issues. The only reason we're reading what we're reading is because you and your mods were effectively called for once on the issue and it's contained in the way YOU want it contained. That you don't get how backward it is to marginalize a city's particular sex politics in the back of the board because it turns you or a few other people off to read it in the city's own room is astounding.

If you just set aside the issue of my attendance in San Diego -- I was there -- and my friendship with Scott, you'd have nothing to talk about, would you? You're just using your objections in that respect to cover your ass elsewhere in the way anyone uses a smokescreen. I wish I had not raised the two points because they've become your excuse to avoid the issues and I'm not willing to disclose my identity to someone who has no interest in conversation.

Lemme get real clear for you, Keith. Put San Diego and Scott aside. MMkay? Your mods kill posts with your approval. They do it rather frequently. You have the idea that everyone shares YOUR sentiment that politics should not be injected at the same place cruising takes places. Some of us think this policy is backward and that its enforcement represents censorship and is in fact damaging. You say no. We say yes. You won't leave it there. Fine. You're not interested in rethinking anything -- fine-- but PLEASE SPARE US your obnoxiously circular logic that because you haven't killed this string our complaints about OUR OWN EXPERIENCE have no basis. (In the same way, you earlier argued that because you are private you have the "right" to censor and it's therefore "right" in itself.) There is a word for that kind of thinking. I won't bother to share it with you.

I'll continue to read CFS but with the same attitude I've read it for a year or longer -- that it's kind of sexy but also an example of how the very people who claim to be working for sexual liberation often work against it.

Now, I REALLY am done. Have a nice blow job.

Keith. As this website has proven time and time again, you can't please everyone ... especially those who come to this site, have free access to use it, and then they still bite the hand that feeds them. You can't please some of the malcontents that migrate to this free access site.

My best wishes for you and your continued success in 2001 with CFS. The moderators do a fine job given the fact they are volunteers and do exercise a great amount of restraint and patience. If CFS had competition, Bongo would not be here. Go figure.

Hello, will you wise up?

This is the internet, not pay teevee. This is not a porn site. Nobody of note -- Squirt, PlanetOut, Gay.com or any of the big personal ad services -- charges for discussion and hookups. So, can your silly argument. One can just as well argue -- and many do -- that the free use of the internet by people like Keith SHOULD require greater regulation.

I'm not for that, but get a damn clue. This is not Catholic Social Services and we're not getting a handout. It's a cruise board that is also a portal to paid services. Or haven't you noticed?

Christ.



[This message has been edited by bongo (edited January 18, 2001).]

You keep goin', bongo! That lame excuse of "this is a free site" shit is typical of irresponsible, uneducated, follow-the-leader mentalities. Did it ever occur to anyone that along with the growth and breadth of ANY website comes a level of responsibility and integrity to the community to which that website serves????? But that statement in itself is probably too deep for the likes of Keith & his mods.
Oh, and Keith, please keep rambling about that oh-so-important San Diego crap because it is SOOOO on topic. Even politicians dodge the issues better than you!

*(sighing)*

Keith, this is only going to get worse the more you obsess on defending your vanity in order to avoid dealing with those cruisers who posted the thread that was deleted. Examine the order of your prioroties, please. The people who claim that they feel slighted by the actions you defend (having a thread deleted here by one of your moderators) come second to preserving your vanity. Either you really don't give a shit, or you are totally clueless as to how you are coming across right now.

The operative word here is clueless. Bongo suggested that you were clueless in how he saw you come across at some function. I was not there. So, I cannot form any conclusions on that incident. But, your posts in this thread do not disprove a tendency towards cluelessness on your part.

As far as the guys here who defend your right to do what you want go, they may have more at stake than the obvious. I don't recall that anyone in this thread denied your right to do what you care to do at your own club. It is your actions and the values that motivates them which is being challenged. The cruisers who defend bias and selectivism and sex devoid of political discussion (or any reference to those damn radicals and liberals) may have a lot to lose if all of the above is allowed to have freer reign around here. Maybe they need a playground in which sex is leered at and profited by instead of openly discussed or seriously promoted as a means of challenging fucked-up systems of repressiveness.

Now, I get it. This is a (wink! wink!) dirty place that doesn't really take gay sexual behavior seriously. It tiptoes around it. But, it is really about how naughty and bad it is even while the cash flows in endlessly. Making it "serious" and open would take away all the fun. The majority of people get off on the shame aspect of all of this. Screw liberation and free speech and all that other globbal-dee-gook.

Is that what this is all about, Alfie?

Got it.

<Y-A-W-N> ....

Repressed queers from the Left Coast - Unite!

Meanwhile.... Anybody got any spare electricity for environmentally-challenged folks on the West (Left) Coast?

Maybe "WEHO" residents will have a SoCal Telethon to raise some bucks to keep the utility companies from going bankrupt...right Bongo?

HUH?

????????????????????????????????????????????

Is this guy trying to say that there is some liberal or left front based in one certain area?

TO QUOTE ME;
"The cruisers who defend bias and selectivism and sex devoid of political discussion (or any reference to those damn radicals and liberals) may have a lot to lose if all of the above is allowed to have freer reign around here. Maybe they need a playground in which sex is leered at and profited by instead of openly discussed or seriously promoted as a means of challenging fucked-up systems of repressiveness."

RESPONSE TO BONGO;

SunDogg
Cruiser posted January 19, 2001 10:31 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....
Repressed queers from the Left Coast - Unite!

Meanwhile.... Anybody got any spare electricity for environmentally-challenged folks on the West (Left) Coast?

Maybe "WEHO" residents will have a SoCal Telethon to raise some bucks to keep the utility companies from going bankrupt...right Bongo?

--------------------------------------------

I think that this guy's response to bongo proves my original point about "cluelessness" that I outlined in another post. Exactly what is the point that you are trying to make with your comments to bongo? Frankly, I don't see the message or pertinance of your post.

In the meantime, I think that everything that can be said has been said to Keith regarding the original post here. I am putting my posting to rest in this thread.



[This message has been edited by Jake2001 (edited January 20, 2001).]

GENTLEMEN: Early on in this thread I made a suggestion to Mr. Keith that maybe it would be better if he moved this topic to another forum, Coming back a few weeks later I see that not only did he move it, but he started a whole new forum. So he can't be as bad as some of you are trying to make him out to be,He works hard keeping CrusingforSex going, WOULD YOU DO THE SAME?

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The Older the Violin, the sweeter the music
6'2" Br/Blue 6.5-7" uncut

Did you completely miss the point?

No, i would not do the same. I'd leave the posts where they originated and understand that my personal feelings about politics and my dick don't apply to everyone else.