Who believes a disgruntled client(sss) ratted out rentboy?

[+ WilliamM]

Point taken, and I am sorry. Needless to say, I can't just leave it at that.

 

I intended to rub some nerves and get a reaction, for a specific reason

 

I fundamentally agree with you. I just find quite annoying your patronizing tone of Big White Brother telling brownish people what to do and think. Your obsessive reporting of the ethnicity of every single person involved in your story is distracting of the main issue

 

Steven, I know you mean well. But, you are planning strategy on the Internet and part of that strategy includes race. Thanks for speaking up latbear4blk, I deferred to Steven because I like him. I would have posted sooner, if I had the balls.

[+ stevenkesslar]

your patronizing tone of Big White Brother

 

 

Yikes. Busted!

[Mocha]

Let's kiss and make up, Mocha. (I don't think that's illegal, at least not yet).

 

Sadly, Mocha, you are wrong on that count. I am going to keep being feisty. But don't go getting ideas. Not in bed. Everybody knows I'm not that kind of girl.

 

I agree, let's make up. We need to battle the system, not each other.

 

What you've posted so far though makes sense. However, I did find another article saying: "Among other offenses, the seven were charged with conspiring to violate the Travel Act by promoting prostitution"

I don't know what other offenses mean...but it leave a bit of doubt. You said something about we being the jury, fuck... If it goes to trial, I hope the jury acquits everyone. Not to get off subject here, and I'm going WAY off and will stop...but a jury let a man who killed a dozen people in Colorado LIVE. Another man killed 7 and he gets life too. Not saying rentboy's deal comes even 1,000 miles of that, but it just goes to show a jury can set you free.

[Mocha]

I fundamentally agree with you. I just find quite annoying your patronizing tone of Big White Brother telling brownish people what to do and think. Your obsessive reporting of the ethnicity of every single person involved in your story is distracting of the main issue. But I agree with you and call for every single person committed to civil liberties to stand for rentboy, beyond race, ethnicity, gender, political affiliation, etc, etc., etc.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Is5XrsRH4c

[+ stevenkesslar]

I agree, let's make up. We need to battle the system, not each other.

 

I don't know what other offenses mean..

 

Thanks, Mocha. You're a hell of a sweet gal yourself.

 

In terms of "other" offenses, here's some other little data points that I found interesting in the complaint, based on my "I'm not a lawyer" reading. I don't know if anybody has actually posted the Travel Act in a post yet. If you haven't read it already, here is an LII web page that details what the original 1961 law says:

 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1952

 

It does cite "prostitution" in the text of the law. I'm guessing that's why it was important for DHS to try to make homosexuality itself sound like a crime in their complaint, right down to words like "twink" and "sex sling," as the NYT so aptly editorialized. I'm not a lawyer, but I think what the Travel Act in effect does is create another alleged crime - travelling - on top of the underlying alleged crime - in this case alleged prostitution. (By the way, I've had consensual non-paid sex on my couch, and my kitchen counter. Do I now have to refer to them as a "sex couch" and a "sex counter"?)

 

Note also that the law allows for jail terms of up to 5 years in some cases, and up to 20 years in others. In the Rentboy case, they went with 5. In order to go for 20, they would have to argue a case around the phrase "commit any crime of violence to further any unlawful activity." The reason I bring that up is that it underscores that whatever Rentboy did, there is no alleged violence. Furthermore, there is no alleged victim. There is just a vast "global criminal enterprise." It's handy that we have Hillary around, since she knows all about something called a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Although this is coming from the Obama Administration, so I doubt these vague phrases refer to the same thing. I actually don't have a clue what this "global criminal enterprise" is. All I try to do is understand what the law is, and follow it, and know what the words mean.

 

Another reason the lack of alleged violence matters to me is that the whole legal foundation of the federal laws relating to prostitution, going back over a century, seems to be based in large part on protecting women and children from trafficking. That should be a crime, in part because it often does involve violence. The reason an international coalition of organizations like The Global Alliance Against Trafficking Against Women is supporting de-criminalization of prostitution is that they think it will reduce this kind of violence.

 

The best arguments against de-criminalization are being made by groups who think it is inherently immoral, or that de-criminalization will increase the number of people engaging in it. No one is arguing that de-criminalization will result in more coercion or violence against women and children. The opposite. One of the best reasons to decriminalize is to move prostitution out of venues or relationships that maximize violence, intimidation, and abuse. I'm not saying that. An international coalition is.

 

What DHS just did actually increases the likelihood of violence. As Mocha pointed out, it's when you get to other venues like Backpage or back allies that problems are most likely to occur. We all know that. Whatever DHS thinks they know about the LGBT community, or male or female escorts, they clearly haven't figured that out. By going after whatever it is they think is happening on the Internet, I fear that DHS is making violence more likely, not less.

 

By the way, while we are on words and the law, a few other things I find interesting.

 

If you go to the Urban Dictionary definition of human trafficking - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=human+trafficking - it does state that "violence and intimidation" are "characteristic of trafficking and generally necessary to maintain victim in exploitative situation." So I think you could say trafficking is commonly understood to involve violence. Some of the LGBT leaders starting to speak out against this are pointing out that Rentboy.com promoted harm reduction. So Rentboy itself was advocating against harm and violence.

 

Words are funny things. Since the underlying crime here is alleged to be "prostitution", I thought it would be interesting to see what "rentboy" means. As DHS pointed out, it is British slang. Clearly it isn't meant to be taken literally. DHS is now in possession of lots of information on escorts and their clients, and I'm not sure you can argue a 30 or 40 or 50 year old escort, for example, is literally a "boy." I don't know that every escort uses the money they earn to pay their "rent," although I'm sure many do, and I can't see why anybody would be against that.

 

Here are the top Urban Dictionary definitions of "rentboy" - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rent+boy

 

1. "A man who sells himself for money...or crack".

2. "A male prostitute, usually servicing other men."

3. "English term for a Supporter of Chelsea Football Club."

 

None of the top 3 definitions actually involve the word "sex," which is what DHS is focused on. You have to go down the list to actually find that word in any commonly understood definition.

 

If you start with # 3 above and say that's what "rentboys" are, DHS should have been arresting football fans in a different country. DHS obviously takes "rentboy" to mean something like #1 or #2. But if it's #1, and they think it's okay to arrest a man who sells "himself," couldn't that mean he is selling his services, as opposed to the kind of actual sex slavery DHS could be fighting, but isn't? And if selling "services" is now criminal, why isn't DHS going after lawyers, or websites facilitating people to hire lawyers, for example? Definition #2 sounds the closest to what DHS is alleging, but even that gets tricky. The verb in that sentence is "servicing," as in "servicing other men." That could mean a lot of things. Which is why it's so nice that every day now the internet is exploding with more and more personal stories of how unfair this is, written and spoken by "rentboys" all over the country and the world.

 

Even the word "prostitution" is interesting. President Reagan once said this: ""It's been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." In discussions with you guys, that's why I like the word whore the best. I suppose when I use it people think it means something sexual, or negative. But, actually, to me, I means it the way President Reagan meant it, even though he never called himself a prostitute or a whore. He just implied it. I have always simply tried to be a good whore, political and otherwise. And that is not a crime, at least not to me.

 

I'm not following my own advice here. Heads we lose, hearts we win. Everything I've said in this post are arguments from the head. But that is what matters in some venues, especially in legal ones. And one of the things that bothers me most about this is that DHS is trying to use our words against us, as if they are a crime. And the alleged crime they are mostly going after here is "homosexuality" itself.

 

You don't have to take my word for it. Go to Urban Dictionary. I am cutting and pasting the 20 words most related to "rentboy," based on common understanding. If Urban Dictionary is correct, guess, what? We are all "rentboys."

 

• gay
   
  
• homosexual
   
  
• prostitute
  
• 
   
  
• whore
   
  
• hooker
   
  
• hustler
   
  
• rent
   
  
• bent
   
  
• bitch
   
  
• cakeboy
   
  
• craig
   
  
• henry v
   
  
• hypocrisy
   
  
• jonas brothers
   
  
• ma'lady
   
  
• prostitutes
   
  
• rent boys
   
  
• sex
   
  
• tranny
  
• 
   
  
• trick
  

[Zapped]

You know, without knowing any behind-the-scenes gossip, it still looks to me like the simplest explanation is that DHS people are paid in part to find assets to sieze and they did what, unfortunately, we are paying them to do.

 

We read all the time about large sums of cash being confiscated from people going through airport security simply on vague suspicion of drug trafficking. They aren't charged with a crime, they are free to go--they just don't have their life savings that for some reason they thought they could travel with without having it stolen by the feds.

 

My understanding from reading the horror stories is that it is extremely time consuming and very expensive in legal fees to get the money back. Here DHS found a pretty easy target and were able to confiscate, what, $1.4 million?

 

And, yes, this is a horrible attack on part of gay culture. No question.

 

At least a large part of it will turn out to be the money.