Homeland Security Targets Gay Escort Service.- Today's NYT
Company officers arrested, charged w. major fed. crimes.
So. Back to the bad old days?
Good analysis in the comments section.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/nyregion/raid-of-rentboy-an-escort-website-angers-gay-activists.html?_r=0
>>>For some gay activists, it had shades of bathhouse raids and gay-bar roundups from decades ago. On Tuesday, federal authorities burst into the Union Square office of the gay-escort website Rentboy.com and arrested the chief executive and several employees on prostitution charges.
Rentboy, which federal authorities called the biggest male-escort website, had been around for almost two decades, allowing escorts to pay to advertise themselves. It was well known in the gay community, hosting pool parties, dances and awards shows throughout the country.
After federal authorities charged its top executives with promoting prostitution, seized the website and went after the business’s assets on Tuesday, many gay activists were infuriated. The Transgender Law Center, a civil-rights group, criticized the arrests, as did some male sex workers. Several activists said they would use the episode to renew calls to decriminalize prostitution.
“To many in our community this feels like a throwback to when the police raided gay bars in the ’50s and ’60s,” Justin Vivian Bond, a performer and an activist who is transgender, wrote in an email. “This invasion of a consensual hookup site which is run for and by members of the L.G.B.T. community feels like a real slap in the face after gentrification and the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations drove so many gay bars out of business and forced people to meet online instead of in person,” the activist added, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Danny Cruz said he had posted ads on Rentboy “to supplement income” for about seven years, starting when he moved to New York. He said he had talked regularly to the executives who were arrested, both about his business and about staying safe.
“I don’t see why the government would be interested in what two people do behind closed doors,” Mr. Cruz, who is now involved in the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Los Angeles, said.
Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which participated in the investigation, said in an email that “any insinuation that a specific population was targeted is categorically false.”
The federal complaint says that although Rentboy.com, whose headquarters are on 14th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, had a disclaimer telling visitors that they could not exchange money for sex, that was “clearly” happening. Escorts, the complaint says, posted ads including penis size, pay rate and preferred fetishes, and the site’s visitors then contacted them directly. On a separate website, DaddysReviews.com, clients would review the individual e>>>> The rest at link.
