NEW YORK – Ever since Rentboy’s offices were raided and seven executives and employees arrested early Tuesday, the focus of media, analysts and onlookers has been on whether the site violated prostitution laws.
The bigger question, though, may be “Why did a gay escort website that has been ignored for 20 years suddenly become of interest to law enforcement?”
According to one attorney, the answer may be more social than legal: Within the past few years, the gay rights movement has won legal and social acceptance for the GLBT community. One of the consequences of the “mainstreaming” of any formerly discriminated-against group is increased emphasis on ensuring the group plays by the same rules that apply to everyone else.
In other words, the Rentboy case may illustrate the law of unintended consequences.
In a nutshell, Manhattan-based Rentboy.com billed itself as “the original and world’s largest male escort site.” At 6 a.m. Tuesday, agents from the Department of Homeland Security and officers of the New York Police Department conducted a joint raid on the company’s offices, seizing paper documents and computers. Authorities also seized six bank accounts containing about $1.4 million and ordered the website taken offline.
The company’s chief executive officer and six employees were arrested and have been charged with “conspiring to violate the Travel Act by promoting prostitution.” Allegedly, the conspiring netted the company $10 million in the past five years.
“As alleged, Rentboy.com attempted to present a veneer of legality, when in fact this internet brothel made millions of dollars from the promotion of illegal prostitution,” acting U.S. Attorney Kelly Currie noted in a press release her office distributed Tuesday.
Rentboy representatives deny the allegations, of course, pointing to a disclaimer on the website’s homepage: “This site may not be used for the advertising of sexual services or to engage in activities requiring the payment of money for sex or other illegal activities.”
Currie called the disclaimer “a ruse.”
A DHS spokesperson minced even fewer words.
“The facilitation and promotion of prostitution offenses across state lines and international borders is a federal crime made even more egregious when it’s blatantly advertised by a global criminal enterprise,” Glenn Sorge, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, noted in the U.S. Attorney’s press release.
But why Rentboy, when so many other similar sites exist on the web? And why now, when the company hasn’t changed its business model since its founding in 1997?
According to First Amendment and criminal attorney Joe Obenberger, two primary factors contributed to Rentboy’s legal woes: a possible tactical error on the company’s part, and a sea change in the way society and the legal system regard sexual diversity.
Running a website that sells ads to professional companions doesn’t violate the law unless the site’s operators know the advertisers are offering illegal services. Part of the case against Rentboy rests on prosecutors’ claims the site’s operators knew advertisers charged for sex. No matter how much owners and employees protest the knowledge allegation, authorities already claim to have uncovered a close affiliation between Rentboy and at least one review website where clients laid out in lurid detail exactly what services the companions offered and how well they performed. That’s the tactical error.
“When you permit intimate reviews, you open the floodgates” of legal scrutiny, Obenberger said.
The sexual diversity factor is a bit more esoteric, but essentially it involves two prongs:
1. During a period of extreme activity in the gay rights movement, no one wanted to be accused of sexual discrimination because they prosecuted members of a community receiving widespread sympathy and support in its fight for social equality. Consequently, gay businesses operating in some gray areas benefited from a prosecutorial blind eye.
2. Prior to the relatively recent passage of sexual-orientation antidiscrimination legislation and relevant case law, law enforcement agencies had no “out and proud” manpower with which to investigate alleged homosexual prostitution. Gay undercover officers stuck to their closets for fear of losing their jobs, and straight investigators weren’t about to engage in sting operations that required them to give a convincing gay performance.
With the mainstreaming of gay society and culture, both of those invisible shields have disappeared.
“This is the [unfortunate] payback for gay equality,” Obenberger said.
The unintended consequences of social equality may prove to be very bad news for the seven Rentboy defendants. If convicted of the charges against them, each could face as many as five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. That’s in addition to any forfeitures or other terms imposed on the company.
