No-strings sex app launches for heterosexuals who can't be bothered with online flirting

Young people looking for no-strings-attached sex who don't want to go through the rigmarole of chit-chat online are looking forward to the launch of a new app next week.

Pure, which has been described as 'bringing Seamless to the bedroom', offers sex on-demand by simply asking users their gender and the gender of their preference, whether they can host and then shows them potential partners who answer 'Okay' or 'No Way'.

Pending approval by Apple's App Store, Pure's intentionally soul-less and potentially dangerous approach to hook-ups has no profiles, no chat sessions before-hand and deletes unfulfilled requests after an hour.

No-Frill Thrills: Pure removes the need for chatting online and sets up couples for sex in their area immediately 

Markedly different from more traditional internet dating sites such as Match.Com and OkCupid, Pure is also a departure from newer apps for anonymous sex hook-ups such as Tinder and Bang With Friends.

All these apps and sites require some kind of profile and online conversation to get to know the potential date better.

Breakthrough: In January of last year, Roman Sidorenko and Alexander Kukhtenko (pictured) had an idea to break their sexual dry spells - to create 'Pure' as an app for no-thrills-not-strings attached sex

However, Pure, created by Roman Sidorenko and Alexander Kukhtenko removes all of that and simply provides two people who want to have sex based on their image online the ability to arrange a meet-up.

'People are becoming comfortable with a format of online dating that once sounded scary,' said Dan Slater, author of Love in the Time of Algorithms. 

'If these new location-based, on-the-fly apps are largely for hooking up ... perhaps more people out there are looking for quick sex than had been originally thought.'

Of course, online apps to arrange no-strings-attached sex are nothing new.

Grindr has become a staple of the gay community since its launch in 2009 and became so successful that it directly influenced Tinder and Bang With Friends for heterosexual people.

Indeed, Tinder is currently at the center of take-over rumors in Silicon Valley and Pure managed to raise $200,000 in investment funds for its launch.

'We wanted an easy way to find sex, basically,' said Sidorenko to New York Magazine.

'It’s very interesting to see what Fifty Shades of Gray did for the pleasure-products industry,' said Sidorenko. 

To much Chat? Tinder was inspired by the success of Grindr - an app that allowed the gay community to meet up for sex after finding each other online 

'When that book became a monster hit, it became okay to talk about BDSM stuff. It became okay to buy sex toys. This is the way the dating industry will be changed.'

Appealing to all genders and orientations, the appeal of Pure will be to cut down the basics of sex to the essential ingredients, such as gender, age, appearance, location and availability.

 

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A key component of Pure will be removing the hurt of rejection by showing its users only the matches who have clicked 'Okay'.

However, the art of seduction does not seem to have died a complete death.

Traditional online dating site Match.com raked in profits of $205 million last year - showing that people don't necessarily want to skip the 'getting to know you' part of a sexual relationship.

Bang with Friends has been equally successful - however, it too focuses on chatting online rather than simply meeting for sex

'These apps are tapping into this perception that people are looking for casual sex, but most people are using these apps as a gateway to something longer term,' says Lauren Kay, the founder of the Dating Ring, a start-up that pairs algorithmic date-finding with old-fashioned in-person matchmaking. 

While Pure is focusing its efforts initially on the gay market, it hopes to eventually open up the bi, straight and polyamorous markets very soon afterwards.

They will church $9.99 for a day pass - allowing users unlimited requests for 24 hours.

Eventually, Pure want to tap into the female demographic and are planning a series of marketing events in New York bars in the coming weeks.

However, Harry Reis, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Rochester says that the online dating market is presumptuous about no-strings-attached sex.

'Just because a person isn't interested in monogamy doesn't mean they're interested in having sex with anyone and anything,' he said to the New York Magazine.

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Sex charges against teacher stun students, parents

Students and parents at Corona's Centennial High School reacted with surprise and disbelief after prosecutors charged a female special education teacher with having sex with five teenage boys over the last year.

Summer Michelle Hansen, 31, was charged Tuesday with 16 felony counts involving sex acts with five teenagers younger than 18, none of whom were students in her life skills class.

“I really hope it’s not true, because that would be really sad,” Marrisa Byers, a student at the high school, told KTLA-TV. “Especially since it’s a special ed teacher, that hits a little bit harder.”

Riverside County prosecutors allege that from May 2012 to May 2013, Hansen committed sexual acts with the teenagers — who were as young as 16 — in her classroom, in a campus utility room, in her vehicle parked near a teenager's home and at the home of another teenager.

Hansen, who has taught at Centennial for nearly five years, was arrested in June after Corona police conducted an initial investigation. Detectives allege that the teacher rewarded one of the boys with sex for winning a baseball game.

She has been on administrative leave.

“I’ve seen her around and heard she was a really nice lady. And just to hear something like that is almost heartbreaking,” student Austin Farris told KTLA.

Parents and friends, though, have rallied around Hansen and questioned the accusers' motives. Some have even claimed Hansen’s Facebook page was hacked to make it appear that she “liked” the movie “Bad Teacher.”

Prosecutors could seek up to 13 years in prison for Hansen if she is convicted of all the charges. Hansen's attorney, David Cohn, denied that Hansen broke any laws.

Hansen was scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Thursday.

Meanwhile, Shanda Barnett told KCAL-TV she intends to use the Hansen allegation to talk to her 15-year-old son, who attends the school, about the issue.

“I really think that this is too close to home,” she said.

Same-Sex Couple Marries Outside Philly Despite Ban

A suburban Philadelphia woman who tied the knot with her longtime partner Sunday with a county marriage license despite the commonwealth's ban on same-sex marriage said it was the day "that every committed couple waits for."

Dee Spagnuolo, 39, and Sasha Ballen, 38, were married at their Wynnewood home — with their three young children playing roles in the hastily arranged ceremony — after receiving a license from officials in Montgomery County.

"We're excited — we've been waiting for this day for a very long time," said Spagnuolo by phone as she sat in her kitchen with a friend doing her hair for the ceremony.

The ceremony was the latest to take place in the county where officials began issuing licenses last week — licenses that could be ruled invalid if officially challenged, although so far no such court challenges have been announced — in defiance of a 1996 state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

"It wasn't planned, it wasn't political — it was purely out of love," she said. "This is a day that every committed couple waits for."

Spagnuolo, who met Ballen 21 years ago during their first days at Bowdoin College said, she was grateful to the local officials who granted the license "for deciding that they wanted and needed to be on the right side of history."

The licenses issued Wednesday in Montgomery County are believed to be the first to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania, the only northeastern state without same-sex marriages or civil unions. State law also says same-sex marriages, even ones entered legally elsewhere, are void in Pennsylvania.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit this month asking a federal judge to overturn the law. But before resolution of the suit, officials in the affluent and increasingly Democratic county signaled that they would grant same-sex licenses.

Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman, a Republican, said Wednesday evening that a same-sex marriage license isn't legally valid in Pennsylvania, but she said it's not her place to intervene. Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane, though, has said that she will not defend the ban, leaving any defense to Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's office. A spokesman for Corbett said county office-holders are required to uphold the law but did not say if the governor would challenge the marriages.

In other states with same-sex marriage bans, licenses issued by defiant local officials have been voided by courts.

Spagnuolo cited polls indicating a steady decline in the percentage of Pennsylvania residents opposing gay marriage, and she believes acceptance has already reached a "tipping point."

"I think we, as a society, will look back at this period of time and sort of ask ourselves 'What was the issue here?' — if we're not already doing that," she said.

Spagnuolo said she believes that more and more couples coming forward to get married has helped reduce opposition as people see how ordinary they are.

"We're a pretty regular family; we live behind a white picket fence. We drive a minivan," she said. "We spend Saturdays at T-ball and gymnastics classes. There's really nothing too exciting going on here."

Another couple, Alicia Terrizzi and Loreen Bloodgood of Pottstown, married immediately after receiving a license from the county last week, exchanging vows in a park before a minister and their two young sons.

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After Rulings, Same-Sex Couples Grapple With Diverging State Laws

WASHINGTON — In the dining room of their town house here, David Huebner and John Barabino were the picture of prosperous domesticity this week. A housekeeper padded about, work on their outdoor patio continued and their 3-year-old son, Miles, napped upstairs.

But together, they put a human face on an uncomfortable truth: Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino’s union, although legal, is still not equal to that of their heterosexual friends, even after historic Supreme Court rulings to grant federal benefits to legally married gay couples and restore same-sex marriage in California.

While the plaintiff in the Defense of Marriage Act case, Edith Windsor, will get back $363,000 in federal estate taxes — “with interest,” her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said — the future is not so clear for Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino. They married in California (before the now-overturned ban) and adopted their son there. Their primary home is in Utah, which does not recognize their marriage. But they live part time in Washington, which does.

They are among thousands of legally married same-sex couples, wed in one state but living in another, caught in a confusing web of laws and regulations. It is a predicament the Obama administration is only beginning to grapple with: how to extend federal rights and benefits to same-sex couples when states, not the federal government, dictate who is married.

“The couples in those states also have skim-milk marriages,” said Ms. Kaplan, referring to a remark by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “It’s just the flip side, in the sense that they may have marriages that are recognized by federal law, but not state law.”

Taxes are a big concern. The Internal Revenue Service will determine whether Mr. Huebner, 40, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, and Mr. Barabino, 44, a former Google executive and stay-at-home father, may file jointly and claim the marriage deduction long offered to heterosexual couples. But no matter what the agency decides, they must still file separately in Utah.

Should one die in Washington, the other would receive Social Security benefits because of the court’s decision, legal experts said. But in Utah, the surviving spouse would get nothing since federal law dictates payments based on the “state of domicile,” not the “state of celebration.” Only Congress can change that.

“There are two standards,” Mr. Huebner said. Given their residence in two states, “for us, it’s even more complicated.”

Eliminating these cross-border inequities and making same-sex marriage the law of the land is the next frontier for gay rights advocates. A day after the ruling, Chad H. Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, appeared at a gay community center in Utah — where gay couples cannot adopt and even domestic partnerships are banned — to draw a pointed distinction with California, where gay men and lesbians will be able to begin marrying again soon.

“We cannot tolerate the persistence of two Americas when it comes to equality,” Mr. Griffin said.

If the prospect of “two Americas” is a problem for Mr. Griffin, it also troubles Brian S. Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative advocacy group. In an interview, he vowed to “roll back gay marriage” wherever it exists, adding, “Ultimately, as Lincoln said, we can’t have a country half slave and half free.”

There are an estimated 650,000 same-sex couples in the United States, and 114,000 of them are legally married, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. It will be easy for the federal government to extend more than 1,000 benefits to those living in states where they wed. For the rest, the path is murkier.

After their daughter, Soleil, was born six years ago, Mindy Stokes and Katie Rathmell left Florida for a friendlier climate in Oregon, where they registered as domestic partners. Last year, same-sex marriage became legal in neighboring Washington State. Two weeks ago, they drove across the Columbia River from their home in Astoria, crossed the border and had a wedding.

Ms. Rathmell, a research associate for an oceanography group at Oregon Health and Science University, provides the family’s health insurance but has been paying taxes on the benefit for Ms. Stokes and their daughter. The couple is hoping that will change soon. Even if it does, they still expect to pay more for other coverage, like car insurance. Without an Oregon marriage certificate, they do not get a marriage discount.

“I have rights to visit Katie in the hospital, and we can leave property to each other, I think,” Ms. Stokes said. “But it’s so complicated and convoluted. It would be much easier and cheaper if it just passed nationwide.”

Angela Hughey and Sheri Owens, who married in California but live in Arizona, were so eager for the court’s decision that they contacted the I.R.S. in March and received instructions on how to file a request to amend past returns. But Ms. Hughey, whose business, One Community, caters to gay professionals, said that taxes were hardly her chief concern. Arizona is one of 29 states that still allow discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“You’re talking about a community that is treated with great disrespect and disregard,” she said.

Advocates are hoping that Wednesday’s rulings will create new momentum for other gay rights advances, like passing a federal law barring employment discrimination. As for marriage, their goal is to build “a critical mass of states and a critical mass of public support that together create a climate for the Supreme Court to finish the job,” said Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, an advocacy group.

In the meantime, the maze of laws has created a boon for lawyers who advise same-sex couples on matters like adoption and estate planning. Among them is Laura Milliken Gray of Salt Lake City, who said she goes through “all kinds of gyrations” for couples who “want to achieve family equality that their straight brothers and sisters have.”

Ms. Gray advised one client, Craig Crawford, who sells computer networks in Salt Lake City, that he would have to write all possible heirs — his parents, siblings and their children — out of his will to ensure that his property could be left to his husband, who is technically not next of kin under Utah law. Mr. Crawford was stunned.

“When you have to write your mother’s name down and disown her,” he said, “that is really harsh.”

Same-sex couples have long made decisions about where to live, work and raise children based on the legal climate. That is true of Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino, who met in San Francisco when Mr. Huebner was teaching there and Mr. Barabino was working for Google.

Through two moves — one to Washington, where Mr. Huebner taught briefly at the University of Maryland, and then to Salt Lake City — they kept their home in San Francisco. Once living in Utah, their California residency became important, Mr. Huebner said, because they needed access to the California courts to adopt a child.

When they moved to Utah, Mr. Huebner said, “it wasn’t important that the state doesn’t recognize our marriage,” because neither did the federal government. But with the court decision, he is beginning to wonder. “If by choosing to live in Utah we are choosing not to have federal rights,” he said, “it changes my decision matrix.”

When the rulings came down on Wednesday, the couple took Miles to the Supreme Court to watch history being made. There, they met up with friends who have a baby and a 3-year-old. While the toddlers romped on a lawn across the street from the court, the parents checked their cellphones for news. A cheer went up from the crowd when the Defense of Marriage decision was announced.

“We’re married!” Mr. Barabino said, cradling Miles in his arms. “It’s crazy. Because of the soil that we’re standing on now, because we stand in D.C., we’re married. When we stand in Utah, we are not.”

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