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Huh. Well this isn’t how I intended to celebrate my 2,000th post . . .

A week ago on Monday, WordPress, my blog’s host, suspended my account without warning. I found out about it the same way many of you did: when I tried visiting the site I got a message from WordPress saying the blog had been suspended for violating the company’s Terms of Service.

Much like when I was a child being scolded over some unknown infraction and my parents would say, “You know what you did!” as an explanation, WordPress was less than forthcoming about why my blog had been suspended. Several emails later I was told it was due to my having posted pornographic content. Since my blog was marked as mature to allow for nudity – and that was a regular feature on my blog for the last 2+ years – I questioned the decision and finally was told it was due to my last Stay In Bed Sunday post where the photo of a hottie’s penis exceeded WordPress’ limit on cock size.

Unlike Supreme Court Justice Stewart who said pornography is hard to define but, “I know it when I see it,” WordPress relies on a mathematical formula to know what is and is not pornographic. In WordPress’ world if the genitalia shown is 65% or greater than the immediately surrounding area it is deemed to be porn. I can only guess that someone with a small penis must have come up with that rule. But then 65% is an odd number even as a percentage. So that had to be a decision made by committee. A committee of men with small penises.

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No problemo. Okay, small problemo. In suspending my blog WordPress also made it impossible for me to export my image files to a new home. Several more emails later I managed to convince a tech that part of that 65% no-no was foreskin and shouldn’t really count. I think he appreciated my argument that that was a discriminatory policy against uncut men. Or it could have been I lucked out and reached the one tech at WordPress who didn’t have a small penis. In any case, he agreed to unsuspend my blog for a few days to allow me the time to export my blog’s content to its new home. If you managed to click through to my blog during the later part of the week and got a striped down version, that’s why.

I don’t think the powers that be at WordPress are homophobic; I’m sure their love affair with small genitalia extends to vagina too. Not that I want to find out. But I will note that prohibiting a gay man from blogging on Halloween probably should qualify as a hate crime. While I may disagree with their opinion of what is and isn’t pornographic, I can’t fault a company who holds true to its corporate moral compass. When for $1 per month they are willing to take you by the hand and lead you to where you can see said pornography, their pillar of morality gets a bit crumbly. WordPress couldn’t handle what they considered a prodigious piece of manhood on their server, but for $13 was more than happy to redirect all of my blog’s old links to their new home. So any bookmarks you may have still will work. A least for a year. Though you may want to update those before next November.

I no longer believe in cosmic brownie points. As an official pornographer – and I am having business cards printed – the universe should condemn me. Instead, the angels descended and gave my blog a new home. I’d barely discovered my blog had been suspended before I received an email from Surfcrest, the new owner of Sawatdee Gay Thailand, offering me room on their server to host my blog. And Elephantspike jumped right in and handled all of the tech stuff, proving not only is he a nice guy but a geek extraordinaire. I’m sure I will be thanking them appropriately in the not too distant future with some incredibly snarky comment. Spike did 99.95% of the work in getting my blog back up and running again. Not to mention a lot of hand-holding through the process. It’s been a busy week. For him. Still, I really thought I’d use the blog being down as an excuse for a vacation from blogging for a while and thanks to his proficiency, I’m back already. So okay, maybe that karma thing really does work.

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On the plus side, no longer being hosted by WordPress is a good thing. In the past they’ve deleted links I published in my End of the Week posts, content they disapproved of. And they prohibit even the simplest java scripts from running on blogs they host, which means bloggers can not use the millions of widgets and plug-ins available to everyone outside of the WordPress family. Design and layout-wise, things I’ve wanted to do with the blog in the past have not been possible. Now that’s no longer a problem. So expect some cool bells and whistles (but not annoying ones) to pop up over the next month or two. And lots of pornographic content too, of course.

What at first appeared to be a major blow to my blog’s future turned out to be a blessing in disguise. So for those of you who have dropped me a note pointing out that WordPress’ actions had to have stemmed from a complaint – possibly made by my ‘competition’ – at worst then I owe that person a big thanks. I’m pleased to have my blog’s new hosting home and to be the first blogger in SGT’s new family. And now I gotta go work on the aforementioned snarky post about Surfcrest and Elephantspike ‘cuz in my book it’s not enough to just be a pornographer, you need to be an asshole too.

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