If you were to tell the whole story it was one poster who was banned because he could not follow the VERY SIMPLE AND EASY RULES posted at the start of the message board. If i am banning anti-sullivan threads then why is this thread open. If you have any question why don't you e-mail me direct? or open your private e-mail.

__________________
Robert

Nice try, dogg. You've deleted numerous posts and threads, including those demonstrating the "odd" permission you have granted your similarly surnamed brother to engage in all manner of abusive language while censoring Jake. The eliminated threads are archived and their pattern of censorship is clear to anyone who reads them.

Now, don't worry. While I call it "censorship," nobody doubts your "right" to do this -- only the peculiar irony of it in a site devoted to sexual freedom and in a forum created for the express purpose of reducing controversy in the state forums.

The fab! piece is just the start. If you can't permit critical discourse here it should be no surprise to see it emerge in places that are more tolerant.

I wish to emphasize something.

The printed comments that I posted were taken from a newspaper that printed them. This publication has widespread syndication. I do not understand the desire to clarify anything regarding the newspaper item with me.

I thought that, while it did not shed a very flattering light on CFS's handling of the Sullivan issue in this forum, it was news that pertained to this thread. The moderator and everybody here should have the opportunity for equal time to respond.

A public forum is the place to bring up issues that come up in the news. I re-printed what I read in a newspaper. If there is an issue with this, I don't see that emailing me or discussing it with me will make much of a difference.

With all due respect, you may want to contact the newspaper and discuss your feelings about what got printed. They are the people who released the comments to the public. Why shoot the messenger?

While this one thread pertaining to Sullivan remains, another thread titled Andrew Sullivan has been completely removed. This caught my eye after the posts of FineDessert and TruckerNorm were deleted. I honestly do not see what rules were violated in any of their posts or deleted comments. So, I question how simple and easy these rules are to follow if their aplication can appear so inconsistent in only the span of one week.

This naturally has to make one wonder. After seeing what I read in fab!, I can only wonder even more. I have read explanations and posts from both sides. I honestly do not see anything in the rules that justifies deleting some of the threads and posts that I have seen removed. I also do not understand comments that rationalize banning anyone for re-editing their posts. I have done that, and I have seen others do it. But, I cannot get a clear picture since so much has been permanently erased from this forum. There is no fair way to judge.

I do know that what I have seen does not sit well with me. But, is it fair to totally blame the moderator? Any moderator on this or any other site can only do what he is allowed to do by the owner of this or any other site. So, if there is any disagreement with the way things are being handled, it should not rest totally on the moderator's shoulders. Anything that he does must be with the owner's blessing.

Fab, a bi-weekly Gay news tabloid, has a limited circulation that serves only Southern California's gay community. It's reputation and notoriety for catty, puritanical dourness speaks for itself. Fab's appeal is akin to standing in a Ralph's checkout line perusing the sensational headlines of The National Enquirer. But, hey, somebody has to prod Southern California's Starbucks intelligentsia to set their Waterman pens scribbling furiously, filling page after latte-stained page with jeremiads on our heedless assimilation into the faceless gray hordes of our breeder "heterosexual" brethren.

Someday, maybe even FAB will have a national readership.

Until then, don't waste your time or money subscribing to a tabloid whose reputation and notoriety rightly belongs on the same magazine rack along side The National Enquirer as you checkout at Ralph's Supermarket.


[ June 14, 2001: Message edited by: SunDogg ]

For the record, fab! is free and available to anyone who cares to pick up a copy. Therefore, nobody wastes any money if they read it. It offers what it offers. People can make up their own minds after reading it.

Evryone is entitled to their opinion. But, it is curious how you disown this paper. You dismiss it as being catty after flaming me twice with posts that I find catty and smugly sarcastic. lol.

You appear determined to instigate or provoke with your inflammatory comments. Am I correct?

I work in West Hollywood, so I am very familiar with Fab. It is no secret here that Fab is biased towards the liberal point-of-view in its news reporting. That is why we don't take anything too seriously that we read in Fab.

After my workout at the fitness center, I will usually go across the street and have a good cup of Caramel Groove. That is where I usually pick up a free copy of Fab. It's an entertaining newpaper despite being slanted towards our aristocratic liberals.

It is a local joke here when we refer to our aristocratic liberals driving their expensive BMW cars and living in their expensive homes, and pretending to have genuine compassion for the downtrodden middleclass that they look down upon with surly arrogance and condescention. It is a given that you will not see any balanced and objective reporting in Fab. This tabloid has a history of omitting facts when it attempts to report what it calls the news.

I can't wait to read what Fab has to say about Tom Cruise's secret gay life and his new law suit.

[ June 14, 2001: Message edited by: WeHoHombre ]

do you guys really care about Andrew's apparent inability to manage his own fear, rather than toss it at others in an obvious attempt to divert attention from his own behavior? That's what religious leaders do ALL THE TIME!!! They want us to manage their sexuality by condemning us and blaming us when something seems awry...US=gay men. I LOVE that Andrew's getting screwed raw! Hell, I'd pound his butt for hours, if I had the chance...then, maybe he'd let me talk him down from his moral highground, flip me over, and do 'it' to me!! Signorile's an idiot for buying into the crap that makes this story sensational! Somebody SLAP HIM!!! Meanwhile, must we attack eachother over, yet another, ridiculously pathetic story about a gay man having sex!? Take the rubber off him and ride, Andrew, RIDE!!!

Nice piece of hyperthyroidal invective, Unfortunately the simple truth is that fab!,as a parody of tabloid journalism, allows discourse that cruisingforsex won't. I think your irony meter needs readjusting.

Anyway, to read people on cruisingforsex -- a place that helps us hapless homos find unguarded toilets for sexual activities -- excoriate the latte-swilling readers of fab! for their BMWs and pens is the funniest thing I've read today!

[ June 14, 2001: Message edited by: bongo ]

[ June 14, 2001: Message edited by: Horndogg ]

I find the irony delicious too.

For a fresh perspective on my favorite gay journalist and sometime political pundit, Andrew Sullivan, freelance journalist Norah Vincent offers another perspective in her timely news story in The Los Angeles Times.

On Tuesday of this week, Vincent's article Sex: the Public Versus the Private tells us that there are at least two circumstances under which journalists have both a right and an obligation to publish details about a public person's private life; first, if the behaviors or events in question are illegal or immoral; and second, if it can be shown that the subject lied publicly about them.

Vincent tells us that anything a journalist writes about any person, public or private, must have a verifiable basis in fact. This goes without having to be said. However, if you glance through various newspapers and online outlets these days, you might be persuaded few people agree about what is fair game for news and commentary. How true that holds for gossip tabloids serving the gay ghetto.

Signorile, back on May 25th, set out to expose Sullivan as a hypocrite. Andrew Sullivan calls himself a Liberal; that is, a Liberal in the Classical context. But, in the gay ghetto, where anyone to the right of Leon Trotsky is branded a reactionary, Sullivan is demonized as a conservative. Sullivan has written in passionate support of gay marriage and commitment and has been very critical of the subculture of the gay ghetto. Thus, in the grand tradition of setting up straw men, Signorile has deluded himself and duped a few others into thinking he has unmasked Sullivan as a Mr. Goodie Two Shoes pervert. In fact, all Signorile has done is sling mud at a self-declared enemy.

Vincent puts Signorile's case to the journalism criteria above. Did Sullivan do anything illegal? No. What's more, he did nothing morally reprehensible,
since he both disclosed his own HIV status and sought others who shared that same status. Unprotected sex between two consenting adults who are both HIV positive is not a crime. Unprotected sex is a crime when a perpetrator has a sexually transmitted disease and fails to inform his partner of it. Sullivan did neither. And so, by our first criterion, his escapades are emphatically --- none of our business!

What about lying? Again, Sullivan is innocent. He has always been candid in print about his sex life, and when confronted with Signorile's accusations -- which to anyone would feel unjustifiably intrusive -- Sullivan admitted the truth, which is more than we can say for our immediate past president. So much for our second criterion.

It is strange that Signorile chided Sullivan for his judgmental attitude toward Bill Clinton during the impeachment hearings. There is a fundamental distinction here that Bill Clinton's apologists and Sullivan's foes, often the same people, conveniently miss. Most people didn't think Clinton should have been impeached because he lied about it to the media. None of these is an impeachable offense. Rather, they thought Clinton should have been impeached because he broke the law. He commited perjury. It didn't matter what he'd lied about. It was the fact he'd done it under oath. Ordinary people go to jail for perjury. Clinton should have, too.

When Clinton lied to the media about Monica Lewinsky, he didn't break the law, but in this case, our second rule applies. Because public and private citizens should be accountable as journalists for the truth of what they say, Clinton's public lie justified subsequent exposure of the facts, however personal those facts were. If, however, Clinton had merely said "no comment" or if he had made it clear that he would not answer questions about his personal life except under lawful subpeona, then reporters would have no right to pry. They would have pried anyway, but we're talking about how journalists should behave, not how they do behave.

Andrew Sullivan, like Bill Clinton, has made a lot of enemies. But, unlike Bill Clinton, he has done nothing wrong. He has been more forthright than most politicians, and he took no oath of office. Sullivan's private foibles, if they can be called such, are not ours to address.

As I succinctly pointed out in an earlier posting of mine, the issue was never really about Andrew Sullivan per se. The subtext of my posting was to point out how Sexual McCarthyism has become the standard for what passes as journalism in the gay ghetto tabloid press these days.

Norah Vincent's timely Los Angeles Times article earlier this week (June 12) underscores why Signorile's practice of Sexual McCarthyism plagues the gay tabloid press. It is fitting such tabloids are viewed with deep suspicion and contempt as we do the same for The National Enquirer.

[ June 14, 2001: Message edited by: SunDogg ]

[ June 15, 2001: Message edited by: Horndogg ]

"As I succinctly pointed out in an earlier posting of mine, the issue was never really about Andrew Sullivan per se. The subtext of my posting was to point out how Sexual McCarthyism has become the standard for what passes as journalism in the gay ghetto tabloid press these days. "

Please, doggy. The only reason you can make that claim is that the "other doggy" reopened my original string on Sullivan afer bolting it closed. Then you were able to edit and delete posts in which you ranted from a very different perspective -- specifically that the allegations were untrue to begin with. Once you'd done your revisions but still were losing the argument, the entire string was deleted. Now you claim you had a perspective from the beginning you didn't. More of Chairman Mao's revisionistic method.

And I see that the "other doggy" already eliminated on this string a copy of a much more reasonable essay from The Nation, in which Sullivan AND Signorile are both taken to task. But such complexity is too daunting in a universe of black and white, I suppose. Specifically, the piece was about sex-phobia. It's another piece of wonderful irony -- I hope the media folks are noticing -- that it was deleted.

I have not witnessed Andrew Sullivan admit to anything significant in print regarding this issue. I also do not agree with SunDawg's comments about Bill Clinton. What happened to him was not about breaking the law. Similarly, what I see happening in here does not seem to be about breaking any rules.

Perjury - giving a false statement either in writing or orally; violation of an oath; a willful falsehood; a lie.

Ordinary private citizens have gone to jail for perjury, a criminal act at both the state and federal levels of government.

Bill Clinton broke the law by committing the crime of perjury. He was subpeonaed by a Federal Court to give a sworn statement in the form of a written deposition in the civil suit filed by Paula Jones. The deposition Clinton gave in writing in that civil suit contained perjured statements made by Bill Clinton. The Federal Judge in that case later determined, as a matter of law, that Bill Clinton had indeed provided perjured statements in his deposition. Bill Clinton was subsequently fined thousands of dollars for providing perjured statements in his deposition.

In law, it does not matter what is lied about. It is the fact that he lied while under oath to tell the truth. A sworn deposition compels a person to affirm the truthfulness of their statements under the penalties of perjury for giving willful false statements.

When you signed your tax return for 2000, you signed your name on your tax return. You signed that tax return, under penalties of perjury, by declaring your tax return and accompanying schedules and statements was examined by you and to the best of your knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete.

The President is expected to set the moral tone for the nation, including exemplary honesty, religious faith, and integrity. The question of Bill Clinton's moral leadership assumed greater importance as both the media and the public examined the private life of Bill Clinton with closer scrutiny. As many people correctly concluded, Bill Clinton's moral leadership was seriously flawed by his lack of honesty and personal integrity.

There is an old saying, "You cannot see the forest for all the trees."

I think that when you get caught up in the fundamentals of anything, you are inviting trouble. Even lawyers consider the context of situations when viewing circumstantial evidence. The balance of law is contingent on how fairly it is applied. This is determined by many factors including the context of the situation and the level of the threat the alleged crime poses to society.

A law on a piece of paper is only a patch of words. It takes human beings to manipulate it into action. Therefore, applying laws as fundamental givens in every situation regardless of the context of the situation can be deadly.

If we are to follow a rules are rules mentality, we must rationalize that a man stealing a slice of pizza out of hunger is just as much a criminal as a man who kills for sheer pleasure. Both have broken the law. Both have violated the clearly spelled out rules. Both are criminals by fundamental definition of the law. But, both men present entirely different situations.

Similarly, a man who lies when asked about his private sex life while being investigated has broken the law. A man who lies about government actions that can impact global relations has also broken the law. Which one is the greater threat?

Finally, rules are made by men. Men can be wrong. They can be biased. Sometimes laws need to be reevaluated based on their ineffectiveness and selective application. The law and rules can be just as unfair as the men who apply them. This is why men get wrongly sent to prison and murderers sometimes go free.

You cannot ignore bias, prejudice, manipulation, and unfairness even when it comes to laws and rules.

The way that the law was used to incriminate Bill Clinton made us a laughing stock in just about every country outside of the U.S.A. Diplomats, government officials, and prime ministers offered their support and sympathy to Clinton during the Starr trials. They also siezed upon the opportunity to use the trial as an example of the Puritanical and backward ways of Americans when dealing with sex. If anything, the Clinton episode brought a huge wave of compassion for him and a bitter rejection of American moralizing from most of Europe.

It was by no means a victory or a shining moment in American history. People outside the US were either laughing or disgusted that a man like the President could be seriously investigated and charged for lying about consensual sex with another adult.

Clinton can hold his head high abroad. But, the way America reacted to him and the entire trial has made many people outside the US even more hostile towards Americans.

This is nothing to boast about.

[ June 15, 2001: Message edited by: MAC62 ]