Gay Publisher's criminal past comes back to haunt him

[booley]

I know this guy.

Not personally. But I have met him. I live in Saint Louis where his magazine began. And I never liked him. He has always rather self righteously criticized the Saint Louis PRIDE organization (in one case for one of the board members having a criminal past ). And he just never made a good impression on me.

And I think this guy is being treated unfairly.

Balk said the convictions recently reported by WGMD Radio in Rehoboth Beach, Del., are “old news,” but that the magazine is now facing a financial crisis as a result.

He said the magazine’s parent company, Out in America, is trying to undo its recent acquisition of EXP, and hasn't’t paid EXP employees or contractors since June 15.
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Balk, 48, spent seven years in jail in Missouri after being convicted in 1988 of sodomy and 11 counts of deviant sexual assault.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Balk confessed to engaging in sex with five teenage males, ages 13 to 15. The paper said the youths met Balk in 1983 when he managed a miniature golf course in St. Louis.

Balk was released from prison in March 1995. Missouri Department of Corrections spokesperson Brian Hauswirth said Balk spent another three years on conditional release, during which Balk attended a “sex offender program.”
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Gaffney said his listeners have a right to know about the publisher of a magazine that prints “hard-core, graphic sexual descriptions” and “borderline pedophilia” material.
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http://www.washblade.com/2006/7-13/news/localnews/expbalk.cfm

Now if anyone thinks I am trying to defend what Balk did 20 years ago, I'm not. If you think I have any interest or intent of defending or justifying having sex with a minor, i am not. But what Balk did 20 years ago is also not my point.

My point is Mr. Balk Served His Time, has NOT re-offended since and gotten his life back together since then. Isn't that exactly what we expect and encourage convicts to do when they get released from prison?

Again, while I do not personally like Mr. Balk, even i can see he's getting a raw deal.

But besides Mr. Balk's personal problems, there is another issue as well. I have one other point to make.

While Mr. Gaffney used Balk's past to help smear him, it was the content of his magazine that really got Gaffney into a snit.

I mean, what exactly is "borderline pedophilia material" anyway? And what constitutes"hard core graphic sexual depictions" to this guy?

Like i said, I live in Saint Louis. I have read EXP for years. It's a bar mag. so it has stuff about the bars. And it's a gay rag. So it has stuff about gay people. It tries to be more with re-printed news and columns on sex and politics. But primarily it's a bar mag of the kind you find in thousands of cities all over the US.

Now I don't know if EXP's format is radically different in Delaware then it is here in Saint Louis but having read EXP for all this time, the most I have seen are countless shirtless and scantily clad men and scores of drag queens from the numerous bar pics and ads it posts. Maybe I'm old fashioned but graphic hardcore to me requires at least showing genitalia (which to my knowledge EXP has never done) if not outright penetration. (also never done by EXP to my knowledge but FOX NEWS did show this once)

And about the only minors I can spot are people of questionable age in a grainy Gay Days at Six Flags ad. Sure, they have their mouths open as they ride that roller coaster but I think you have to be pretty hard up to put any kind of sexual overtones to that.

In fact the closest I can think to anything graphic are the columns where columnists talk about sex. And that's not to strange for columns on sex advice and health to do. How do you talk about safe sex and not be explicit?

In fact, I can't even figure out Mr. Gaffney's claim that EXP is being handed out in the street. Like i said, it's a bar mag geared towards the gay community. The establishments where it's distributed are bars pr adult establishments. If you got minors coming in there, you have bigger problems then some magazine.

About the only time I have seen EXP handed out in the street is during the once a year Pride Fest and from the look of their booth, the kids were far more interested in the Growing American Youth booth and the toy Booth down the way then in getting a bar mag.

In short, the EXP that Mr. Gaffney describes doesn't fit with the EXP I have read for years and the EXP that is sitting right now on my desk as I write this. If anyone in Delaware would like to send me a copy of their EXP so i can compare, i would appreciate it..

Till then I can only conclude that Mr. Gaffney's real problem is the idea of sex. Not pedophilia which is absent from the mag. Not truly graphic sexual depictions which aren't really graphic. But that there are gay people thinking about and -GASP!-having sex.

And indeed, this seems to be the way more and more (dare I say it) homophobes are couching their intolerance in. It's not that they hate gay people, they claim, it's just that any material with gay material is too "graphic" or "sexy". That too be acceptable, gay people need to de-sex themselves. And to make this worse is I have seen too many gay people who go along with this idea, that we would have gay rights if not for gay sex. Sure, we can have sex, but lets not mention the fact that we do. Children might find out and as we all know, Children (especially teenagers) all live in blissful ignorance for all eternity, never considering what those extra bits down there might be for. They must never find out that Daddy and Daddy do what Mommies and Daddies do when the kids aren't around.

Which is odd because i always thought gay rights was about equal rights. Straight people certainly don't de-sex themselves. They don't have to contend with the idea that if they heterosexual, then ALL they are is defined by the fact that they sleep with the opposite gender. Nor should they.

And nor should we.

Ok, end rant...

[benburch]

1. "Borderline Pedophilia"

You mean 19 year old guys? Last I heard they were as much adults as I am.

[Jamastiene]

3. Their refusal to crack open a dictionary astounds me.

Why they do it, I don't know, but they always find a way to equate gays with child molestors. They will ignore the statistics every time. They will through reason out the window and distort an already ignorant public opinion. It never fails. That old saying should say "...death, taxes, and homophobia, the only guarantees you have in life."

[xchrom]

2. this s the assault you can expect now from the religous right.

they will dig up every individual report and every study that will help in their demonizing lgbtq folk.

it's the cornertone of their war.

of course rehabilitation is the goal.

he has NOT reoffended and for him personally -- that is the only point.

commit the offense again -- and suffer the consequences.

that's all.

but notice the catholic church as an example simply spends no time talking about their continued problems with pedophilia and instead focuses and gay folk, marriage and adoption.

[Ayesha]

4. This guy gives gay people a bad name

and nobody should buy or support his magazine, IMO. If we are to shed the unfounded equation of homosexuality with pedophilia, I believe it is essential for us to soundly reject and eject pedophiles from our community. I am a proud lesbian with ZERO tolerance for someone who at 30 years old molested 13 and 15 year olds. My best friend was repeatedly molested by a famous person he respected during his teen years, and even now at almost 50 years old it still contributes to dysfunction in his relationships. Wounds like that never totally heal. This guy's victims have to pay for the rest of their lives for what was done to them, while he gets to pretend to be an upstanding member of the community? Not if I have anything to say about it!

[booley]

5. So are we supposed to make these guys Un-gay?

FirstI think you missed that part where i said I was not going ot defend this guy's actions 20 years ago.

I mean, i could, i could go into whether your friend's experince was the same as these guys and if they had the same trauma . (while I do not condone having sex with a minor, not even a teenager, lots of teenagers boys who had sex with oldermen DON'T spend the rest of thier years traumatized. Obviously not ev ery case is exactly the same)

But since that would lead to constant moralizing on both sides (of the kind that typically destroys rational discussion) I wil reitterate my two points...

1. This guy served his time and has not re-offended. and if that doesnt' mean anything then why bother rehabilitating people in the first place? Why not, as so many conservatives want, lock them al up and throw away the key on the very first offense? And why stop at one kind of crime? Why not make it all kinds of crimes?
and
2. The conviction was just icing to MR. Gaffney. as far as he is concerned anything gay is also pedophilia whether it has anything underage or not. and we should nopt encourage that.