Rentboy.com finale

[BasketBaller]

Puritanism: behavior based on a nagging suspicion that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying something.

[Kevin Slater]

Putting together a short piece about this for my next podcast ep. Any former rentboy advertisers wanna chat with me about the sentencing and the case in general?

 

Happy to, and you may want to reach out to Abel Rey.

 

Kevin Slater

[+ stevenkesslar]

At the sentencing, Hurant said he had rationalized his behavior based on his belief that sex work shouldn’t be illegal, but had now outgrown that view. “Though I disagree with the law, I realize that I broke it,” he said.

 

In an unusual back-and-forth, before imposing sentence [judge] Brodie challenged Hurant to tell her why six months was unfair, promising that no matter what he said she wouldn’t go higher.

 

When Hurant said his life was shattered even without prison, Brodie said that happened to all defendants. He said he forfeited more than $1 million, but she said they were criminal profits. When he said a U.S. prison term wouldn’t send a message to foreign websites, the judge said that wasn’t necessarily true.

 

“I did the best I could doing good things for people,” Hurant finally offered. “I did not spend 20 years believing I was running a criminal racket.”

 

“You didn’t want to accept it but you knew people using your site were advertising sex,” Brodie responded. “Although you won’t acknowledge it, you were making a considerable amount of money.”

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/rentboy-com-owner-jeffrey-hurant-gets-6-months-in-prison-1.13908325

 

That's a very interesting exchange based on all the discussions that have occurred on this site, both relating to Rentboy and about escorting in general. And I guess in a nutshell I want to hand it to Jeffrey for going out with dignity.

 

There's at least two ways I can interpret that interchange. Assuming the judge was being honest, and she would not go higher than six months, the question it made me wonder is, are there words that he could have spoken to persuade her to go lower?

 

Maybe the answer was no. Maybe the judge's intent was simply to extract a clear mea culpa out of Hurant. If that was what she wanted, she didn't really get it.

 

Maybe the answer is yes. What the judge focused on is her perception of things she felt Hurant would not accept or acknowledge. If Hurant could have talked the judge out of a prison sentence, the only thing I can imagine he could have said, based on the judge's specific comments, is a clear confession that he actually felt what he did was wrong, or harmful, and that he's learned his lesson and he just really fucked up.

 

If anything, he said the opposite: I still don't agree with the law, but I realize that I broke it. There's a certain amount of dogged resistance in that.

 

It's total speculation to wonder what the judge may have had in mind, or whether she was willing to consider any alternative.

 

But like I said, I have to hand it Jeffrey Hurant. As the article says, he never was accused of or proven to have been engaged in things that were harmful: serious crimes involving minors, or human trafficking. So it comes down to a stigma, a subjective judgment, and laws that many of us don't feel are really fair.

 

And that's what Jeffrey said. I just don't agree with the law.

 

Kudos to him.

[+ stevenkesslar]

"Judge Brodie was clearly sympathetic to Mr. Hurant, saying she had trouble sleeping while considering his sentence. And she began an unusual conversation with him after his statement, asking why she should not sentence him to prison.

 

Mr. Hurant seemed perplexed by the question, but eventually said, “I did my best to run a company that was doing good for people, not as a criminal racket.”

 

Judge Brodie seemed to agree, and to find irony in the situation. “The very thing that was illegal,” she said, “it also did a lot of good.”

 

That's from the New York Times article edjames posted in the thread in The Lounge. It goes a little further about what was actually going on in the judge's mind - the part about having trouble sleeping.

 

It captures the sadness of this perfectly.