Last month, Massachusetts-based millionaire gay entrepreneur Jonathan Crutchley, one of the co-founders of Manhunt, the incredibly popular gay hookup website, was identified as a Republican in a profile in Out. He'd made a donation of $2,300 to the presidential campaign of John McCain. The gays freaked out, mostly over on gay central, which is Andy Towle's website Towleroad. Right after that, Crutchley stepped down as chair of the company. (Though of course he'll still be a co-founder—and receive plenty of gay sex cash dollars. That move was just PR.)

The prevailing opinion of Towle's commenters seemed to be that the donation to McCain was bad for gay people. Go figure! But setting aside the issue of whether McCain is bad for gay people, which he probably is: what do Crutchley's business politics, as reflected in Manhunt's practices, show about what's good or bad for the gays?

Stephan Adelson joined Manhunt's parent company, Online Buddies Inc., in 2002 and worked his way up to general manager; he left a few years back to work in public health. This was actually a natural outgrowth of his work at Manhunt. I caught up with Adelson the other day, in the course of a story for the upcoming issue of The Advocate.

At Manhunt, Adelson pioneered public health measures. The company introduced HIV status self-reporting in its sex-hunting profiles, for one thing, with much trepidation. Were both founders—Crutchley and his liberal co-founder, Larry Basile—supportive? "Yes they were," Adelson said. "I do believe they are committed to serving the community in sexual health in the most logical way."

Manhunt now regularly send emails to members about local anonymous HIV testing. The site subtly allows users to register as "No PNP"—that's "no 'party and play,'" which means they don't do crystal meth—but doesn't allow them to register in the affirmative. This is intended to create a visible faction of gay men who refuse to use crystal meth. Subtle, right?

They have a fulltime employee that does outreach, answers questions for members—and the site has a pioneering partner notification program. Yes, there is actually a Department of Health Manhunt profile, which emails members to let them know if they might have been exposed to syphilis by another member who has recently tested positive. The site's staff have met repeatedly with the CDC and many state health departments.

So Manhunt, under the stewardship of both Brasile and McCain donater Crutchley, has actually been at the radical vanguard of public health work—work that health department's like New York City's are still struggling to fund or perform.

"Whether management initiated or not," said Adelson, "they had an investment in it and they had a lot to lose. They really risked the business by testing it and seeing what might happen."

But will these quiet good works outweigh the horror that the more liberal cohort of gay men feel at Crutchley's McCain donations? We'll probably never know! The more practical opportunities of Manhunt, as the largest membership website in the world to meet for nearly-instant sex, will most likely outweigh such considerations.

And as for the number of Towleroad commenters who suggested that they would put up anti-McCain propaganda in their profiles, perhaps they just hadn't gotten to it yet. A recent search of Manhunt found that no profiles in New York State contained the word "McCain." And only one in Massachusetts did—a good-looking, 6-foot, 25-year-old whose profile ended with an endorsement: "*******MCCAIN 2008*******."