[KS] response to open letter

[Stephen Epstein]

REPLY sends your message to the whole list
__________________________________________

Greetings,

Thank you for your message.  Having read your note, I can understand
your concerns about the message I posted, but from conversations with my
colleague, I can assure you that he regularly uses the term "boys" to
refer to men of age; I take it that this is quite common among openly
gay men in discussions of or within their own subculture.  You're right
that I change this to "men" in my own introduction; I don't feel
comfortable using the term myself.  I certainly would not have forwarded
the note unless I had understood him to be talking about consenting
adults.  Similarly, in the conversation in which the topic of
homosexuality in Korea came up, he spoke in very similar terms in his
assessment of the New Zealand gay scene and, as I recall, equally used
the term "availability" with specific reference to the relative openness
of men to engage in same-sex encounters here.    

If my post to the list of my colleague's remarks was ill-advised and
offensive to you (and others) I would like to submit my very sincere
apologies; the last thing I would ever want is to be supportive of an
even covertly racist agenda, and I regret my insensitive oversight in
passing on his unedited comments without full consideration of how the
presentation of his response could be regarded.  

Best, Stephen