General News Craigslist Shuts Down “Personals” Section

Craigslist was a pretty icky place. I'm actually curious though, are there any legitimate sites for LGBT people to look for love? I don't necessarily mean one of those crazy apps either.

 

Happy to hear this, I think there are better options for love.

 

While I understand the need to combat sex trafficking, I don’t agree with this bill. It penalizes a provider of a platform for the potential actions of users, and this smacks of “big government” at a time when, during a Republican administration, we are supposedly trying to limit government. I also find it somewhat punitive and judgmental of people who don’t date or find sex traditionally. It just strikes me as overbearing.

However, I don’t know the full extent of the sex trafficking problem, so this bill may have some legitimate purpose. I just don’t like the broadness and its limiting effect on sexual freedom that is legitimate and legal.

Patrick

 

Great response; thanks Chip. Totally agree.

 

I once did an experiment with Craigslist by posting an ad with a made-up email address on both the M4M and M4W sections. It turned out that the M4W section was overrun by spam bots who would blow up your email.

Anyway, I highly doubt that this will stand up in court. The US Supreme Court in 2002 struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 for being too broad and over-reaching into the legally-protected business of the porn industry. As usual, this is just something that the politicians are doing to create positive soundbytes for themselves around election time.

 

I echo pretty much everything Chip has said. There need to be regulations and deterrents in place to prevent sex trafficking and exploitation. Portland Oregon is very close to me and it's known as the sex trafficking capitol of the U.S. I've had friends in my town narrowly avoid kidnappers when walking around in the middle of the day. It's a scary world out there and we ought to be doing more about it.

 

This is all part of a concerning pattern. Teenagers are being put on the sex offender registry for, essentially, consensual acts that Baby Boomers (who are now legislators) did with reckless abandon. The United States Congress recently passed (and the president signed) a bill calling for mandatory federal prison terms--that apply to teenagers, let me repeat, teenagers--for what commonly is called "sexting," or sending nude pictures to each other. Statistics vary, but it would not be inaccurate to say that a large segment of the teenage population has done this. The Department of Justice reports that the single, most frequent age that a person in the United States is placed on the sex offender registry is fourteen--14! Does any civilized country actually believe this is justice? The prison terms for teenage "sexting," thanks to the Congress, range to 35 years and treat such behavior the same as producing odious "child pornography." I think most of us know what "child pornography" is, and many of us wouldn't agree that "sexting" between two teenagers qualifies, but our leaders want to think of it as the same. And on the subject of conflating the word "trafficking" and "prostitution," a Massachusetts group named "Demand Abolition" has been pushing the conflation of "prostitution" and "trafficking," in an attempt to label all commercial sex as "trafficking." This clearly is not the truth, and it has in some states (such as Washington) led to ordinary customers of prostitutes being charged under pimping statutes. All fueled by money from grants from "Demand Abolition."

And now, under the pretense of preventing "trafficking," the administration essentially has passed legislation (FOSTA, e.g.) that effectively censors sites whereby individuals look for noncommercial sex "hookups." How long will it be until the "Moral Majority" starts suing those apps that some people have on their phones? Assuming of course that they do not shut down due to the "censorship."

When the present administration came into power, one of the users on here, a gentleman whose handle sounded like "OldDog1953" or some such, predicted that they would be coming for the gays and lesbians. Some people laughed at this prediction but the gentleman, being in-the-closet and apparently having lived through the McCarthy witch hunt, said he was getting off of the internet (I don't know if he did or not), because of a fear of persecution. After more than a year, I have concluded that he is right about the government's motivation. I too am old enough to recognize this re-run. For those of you who are younger, I'd suggest you go out and find an old copy of the book, "The Boys of Boise," if you want to find out what lurks in both the recent past and the not too distant future.

All of these events are simply a reprise of the centuries-old, anti-sex agenda of the United States culture. Many people have been persecuted or even murdered as a result of it. No one should accept or promote the use of vague, inaccurate, and misleading words to cover-up a bipartisan moral crusade against sexual minorities. I know it's all PC to use the proper code phrases and jingos, but this plays into the hands of our adversaries just as much as it appears--erroneously I think--to empower us.

Furthermore, we now have the absurd situation wherein a broad coalition of religious nuts has gathered together to put you in jail for your private sexual thoughts, while at the same time making excuses for an executive branch headed by an individual who essentially is an unregistered sex offender. It is the essence of a repressive regime, when ordinary people spend decades in prison for offenses that are common behavior, while the ruling class does whatever it wishes.

Everyone is against "human trafficking." Everyone is against "child pornography." What we also should be against is the use of those phrases to justify violations of human rights and persecution of people, by redefining ordinary everyday behaviors to be those two things.