Robert Todd Fulton, an event promoter and fetish wear website founder also known by his professional name, Scott Morris, died April 14 at his home in Cathedral City, California. He was 68.
According to an obituary from Avrum Goldberg, Mr. Fulton had a nearly yearlong battle with squamous cell cancer of the tongue, head, and neck.
Mr. Fulton was a deeply involved community member, activist, and event promoter for the gay community in New York City, Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, and Palm Springs, the obituary noted.
In 1998, Mr. Fulton founded San Francisco Fetish Factory, an online fetish wear website that prompted an expansion into a gay male adult video company called Factory Video Productions, in the early 2000s. Factory Video was one of the first professional/amateur adult entertainment companies owned and operated by former models and industry insiders. In 2008, due to police crackdowns on adult public play at San Francisco's Dore Alley and Folsom Street fairs, Mr. Fulton created safe spaces for adult men who have sex with men by creating CumUnion Party Events, which has grown into a global play party phenomenon in over 50 cities in seven countries, worldwide, the obituary noted.
Race Bannon, leather activist, author, sex educator, kink aficionado, and a former leather columnist for the Bay Area Reporter, said he knew Mr. Fulton.
"Scott was a trailblazer," Bannon wrote in an email. "He was steadfastly dedicated to the notion that we all have a right to exactly the kinds of consensual sexualities and sex environments we need and want. Whether through his adult content, parties, or activism within men's sexual culture, Scott always bravely lived his truth for which I always respected him."
Mr. Fulton got involved in the LGBTQ community back in the late 1960s. In 1969, immediately following the Stonewall Riots, at age 14, Mr. Fulton volunteered at the Firehouse Dances in New York City, which were fundraisers organized to support the legal fees for the Stonewall freedom fighters. In 1970, he marched proudly in the Christopher Street Freedom Day Parade, a precursor to the first LGBTQ Pride parades in the United States. Throughout the 1970s, Mr. Fulton became one of the first disco club DJs, a model, and entertainer in the adult male film industry, in which he worked throughout the early 1980s.
The obituary stated that from 1982 to 1989 Mr. Fulton was a DJ in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and won multiple awards for his creative dance sets and mixes while promoting the city's active gay nightlife. From 1989 to 1996 he became a nightclub manager and was the concept creator for the Stud Fort Lauderdale, an industrial/leather/Levi dance club. He was also the creator of the Fort Lauderdale Gay Business Association and the Gay Leathermen's Group.
In 1989, Todd was widowed from his prior partner, Bob Sweeten, who passed away due to AIDS and was diagnosed posthumously during the early days of the global pandemic.
Before being diagnosed with cancer in 2022, Mr. Fulton intended to create and promote a Men's Adult Safe Spaces Coalition to provide global advocacy and activism for the community. This was a byproduct of a need Mr. Fulton saw as a reaction to the recent COVID and mpox pandemics. In 2021 and 2022, he was an active participant and liaison to the bathhouse business community on the federal Centers for Disease Control Monkeypox Task Force. Mr. Fulton's advocacy helped to bring treatment options to gay men at the venues where they congregated and to curtail a broader potential impact from this new health crisis.
The obituary stated that Mr. Fulton had always been a fierce fighter for the disenfranchised in the gay community. He created safety and dignity for so many gay men who were estranged by their friends and families simply for living their lives authentically, and he wanted to see a world where love and acceptance were the norm.
Mr. Fulton is survived by his husband, Gordon Fulton, aka Gord Reece.
"Anyone who knew Todd and Gordon knew they were an inseparable and a formidable force — fun, outrageous, and truly devoted to one another," the obituary stated. "Gordon often retells the story of meeting Todd in 1991 as being 'picked-up by the hottest guy in the bar' and from that day on he began living his true and best life."
The family thanked everyone who has been supportive with their love, generosity, compassion, and kindness toward Mr. Fulton during this past year as they have dealt with his illness.
Mr. Fulton often said, "That through the grief, through the conflict, through the fighting, and all the adversity, I [and] our community kept on dancing."
Mr. Fulton was born December 28, 1954.
In addition to his husband of 31 years, Mr. Fulton is survived by their loving dog, Truvada (Truvy), and his sister, Jenny, and brother, Bruce.
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