The Leather Blog

I always thought that it goes without saying that if you have things on your computer that you don’t want anyone else to see, you don’t take your computer off to be fixed by strangers! But apparently a lot of people don’t think of that. They think of a respected, ah-hum (that’s the sound of the writer clearing his throat, in case you weren’t sure) store like Circuit City, and it’s well marketed computer repair department, and they think, things will be fine. A big store like Circuit City doesn’t care what’s on my computer. Of course, in the larger scheme of things, they’re probably right.

But then you have to consider exactly WHO the Geek Squad are. Not very well paid, and in many cases pimply faced kids, who are indeed the geeks who never get laid and who revel in how they’re superior to the rest of us because of their intimate knowledge of computers. They see porn and no matter what the store policy says… they check it out. If it’s any good, they copy it. If it’s really good they make a LOT of copies of it. And as they’ve shown on a couple of occasions, if it looks remotely like kiddie porn they’re fast to try to turn themselves into the caped crusaders of computers and turn your ass in.

One of my personal favorite blogs, theconsumerist.com did a three month undercover investigation of the geeks who fix your computers at Circuit City, Best Buy, and a few other chains. The results were enough to make a whore blush. Not only were most of the geeks ripping off porn right and left, they were ripping off consumers right and left by charging for unneeded repairs.

The lesson learned is this. Don’t trust a kid who looks like he should be mowing your lawn with what in many cases is hte most expensive piece of electronics you own. Not only is there a good chance that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing, there’s a very good chance he doesn’t give a shit either. When the Consumerist interviewed a former chain electronics store manager, he said that the problem is that these kids are stuck in low paying dead end jobs and know it. Clerks at Costco make more than they do. So they have a bad attitude and could give a good God damn if they get caught taking porn, or any program they want off of your computer. If they get fired, so what? It’s easy to find another job that pays the same… or maybe even better.

So be forewarned. If your computer has to be repaired, have a friend take the hard drive out first. Because the pimply faced kid who gets your computer behind closed doors may very well be looking to do far more than fix your computer! He may be even doing more than looking for porn. Especially if you keep any banking or credit information on your computer.

We get all kinds of warnings about the evils of internet scam artists trying to wreck your computer or steal your personal information by way of the world wide web. We spend tons on virus protection programs, but never think about the geek who gets his hands on your computer in your most vulnerable moment. When you’re willing to do almost anything to get it back fixed.

Think about it.

Two stories from the middle east… one from Egypt, the other from Israel.

In Egypt the police are increasing their round up of gay citizens for the crime of being HIV positive. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, this really is the 21st century.

In Israel the head of the knee jerk Ultra Orthodox Party is asserting that recent small and moderate earthquakes that have been shaking the area are proof that God is pissed at Israel for laws that legitimize sodomy. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, the last time I looked it’s the 21st century.

The two countries are ideologically on different planets, yet they share one thing. Large segments of their populations hate gays. After all, if you can’t deal with more substantive issues… drag out the gays.

In Egypt police officials have decided that being HIV positive is proof of “Habitual Debauchery”, which the Human Rights Watch says has become a euphemism for consensual homosexual acts. I suppose the entire nation of Egypt has never had a case of HIV infection from tainted blood. What has come to be important in Egypt is that if the government can’t deal with pollution, spiraling numbers of poor people, and an increasingly militant jihad movement, by God, they’ll at least get the gays.

Suspected HIV infected Egyptian men are reportedly being chained to hospital beds and forced to be tested for the deadly virus. What a great way to encourage people to be tested! Yet when the inevitable spread of the virus occurs, the government will undoubtedly be fast to shift blame elsewhere… anyone hear the first drumbeats in the distance of claims of a vast western conspiracy?

All this in a country which actually has no anti-gay legislation on it’s books. The whole issue of men loving their fellow man is dealt with under a variety of statutes covering obscenity, prostitution, and debauchery. Whatever is most convenient for the police in a given situation.

Oh, and did I mention the anal exams? If you have a loose ass you’re guilty of being gay right off the bat. Not that anyone who limits his sexual pleasure to oral sexuality should take any comfort in that in an Islamic republic…

Gays do indeed have it better in Israel, where gay rights were first recognised in 1988. But the rights they have are under constant threat from a hoard of fundamentalist loons who make our own right wing look like a bastion of reason. Because of the bizarre split of multiple political parties in Israel, the ultra orthodox are able to exert political influence that belies their actual numbers. In particular, from a group called the Shas Party… the political home of the Jewish far right.

Before we address the gay issue and Shas, be aware that the Ultra Orthodox are on the most militant wing of the Jewish political spectrum. These are the people who want no negotiated peace with the Palestinians, because God gave them Israel, and be damned if the Palestinians were living in what was then called Palestine peacefully alongside Jews for untold generations before World War Two. They support all the illegal Jewish settlements that squatted on Palestinian land after the partition. It’s all legal because God gave them Israel. God also apparently gave them the right to be exempt from having to fight their battles too, because the ultra orthos are exempt from military service as long as they’re studying the Torah… and they manage to keep studying until they’re past the age to be drafted. This in a nation that has the largest percentage of women in the military on earth. Ah yes, God is good.

The Ultra Ortho’s also have a direct cell phone to God and aren’t shy of telling more secular Jews how they should run their lives. El Al, the national airline, isn’t allowed to fly on Saturday, the Jewish Holy Day. It used to, but that was before the Orthos started exerting their political power. And of course, that little voice on the phone tells them that gays are bad too.

So bad that God is causing earthquakes to show his disapproval of the advances that gays are receiving. There were two in Israel last week, as well as four late last year, and the Ultra Orthos want to make sure the whole nation of Israel knows that they were caused by Israel allowing rights for it’s gay citizens. Now, this is just a thought, mind you. But if God is indeed causing the earthquakes… couldn’t he just as possibly be showing how pissed he is at a bunch of wackos saying evil things about fellow beings that God also created in his image? Just a thought…..

Shas head Schlomo (I can’t go there… I know Schlomo is an old line Jewish name… but the jokes almost write themselves) Benizri, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, actually showed his vast knowledge of earth sciences and geology by asserting that the body should stop passing legislation encouraging homosexuality, because it encouraged earthquakes.

An interesting historical footnote. Back in the Dark Ages, when Europe was stagnated in a period of superstition and stagnation following the fall of the Roman Empire, the Islamic middle east was a bright light of art, science, and discovery. Sadly, subsequent rulers and religious fundamentalism destroyed what had been built, and the area fell farther and farther behind western civilization and Islamic science was replaced with superstition. Good old Schlomo seems to be doing his best to put Israel on a level playing field with the surrounding Islamic nations.

For all our problems, it’s still good to be gay in the US of A! (or most of it, anyway!)

You gotta love our well paid representatives on Capitol Hill… they can never seem to find the time to act on the issues we really care about, but they’ve always got time to state the obvious!

Those of us who were following the antics of Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig always thought that when he failed to resign his seat in the Senate he was giving the Democratic Party that proverbial gift that keeps on giving. Who knew that for the first time in a generation the races to pick the presidential nominees of both parties would prove to be so entertaining that they sucked the air out of any other news coming out of Washington?

And so, the other day in an atmosphere of “lets just get this damn case out of our hair”, and, amid virtually no coverage from the mainstream media, the Senate Ethics Committee found the family values senator guilty of acting improperly over the whole mess leading from his efforts to pick up an undercover police detective for a quickie in a Minneapolis airport mens room. The whole sorry mess is over as far as the United States Senate is concerned. The punishment? A letter of admonition. No wonder the whole issue of ethics has brought so little concern from our congressional representatives.

Actually, the main thing that drew the ire of the Senate ethics panel was that Craig used cash from his campaign funds to pay for the lawyers that he hired as he tried to weasel his way out of the guilty plea that he originally filed to make his arrest in the sex sting go away. It wasn’t as if he needed the money for a reelection campaign… running for a new term of office became pretty much a moot point as soon as Craig’s arrest became the fodder of comedians everywhere. His “wide stance” in the bathroom stall became a national joke that the Republicans of Idaho failed to join in on. First he said he’d resign, and the Republican party breathed a collective sigh or relief. Then he changed his mind, and said he’d stay in the Senate until the end of his term in January… as the penultimate Capitol Hill limp, er, lame duck.

So Craig has stayed on in the aftermath of his arrest, although he’s been stripped of all his GOP leadership posts in the committees and subcommittees to which he’s been assigned. A reminder to all his fellow Senators of what can happen to them if they get too frisky at the wrong time. Either the man has iron balls or he’s totally clueless… it’s hard to tell.

In the Senate, the only shoe that’s been waiting to fall in the entire sordid mess was the actions of the Senate Ethics Committee, chaired by Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California. In an opening attempt at credibility, the six member panel stated in it’s letter of admonishment that it believed that Craig was soliciting sex and knew what he was pleading guilty to when he made his plea. They added that when Craig gave the arresting police his US Senate business card that he was attempting to intimidate them. (We have to suppose that it would have been more ethical to claim to be a simple family values crusader from Idaho and discretely failing to mention that he belonged to the powerful national legislative body.)

Most of the letter, however, dealt with money issues. The Ethics Committee didn’t say that it was actually illegal for Craig to use over $200,000 from his campaign funds for his legal defense and the help of some public relations flacks. But they did say that his failure to ask the Ethics Committee for permission to do so FIRST showed that he was trying to circumvent the rules of the Senate. Craig was warned not to pay any more legal bills from campaign money without getting their permission first. One must assume that to do so would earn Craig another dreaded letter of admonition.

Craig issued a statement saying that he disagreed with the committees ruling.

The ruling of the Ethics panel cannot be appealed. And so the matter is officially closed in Washington. In Minnesota there’s still the matter of Craig’s appeal of his original guilty plea for solicitation.

The mens room it all happened in remains the newest tourist hot spot in Minneapolis.

And across the nation scores of taxpayers are contemplating what a grand thing it is to be a United States Senator.

Maybe the reason the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald so famously said there were no second acts in American lives was not that they weren’t there… it’s just that when they happen they’re so frequently overlooked.

Who into great moments of fundamentalist embarrassment can forget the Rev. Ted Haggard, the charismatic Bible pounding pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado who was outed in November 2006 by a male prostitute? There was such sweet comeuppance in that story of a man who condemned gayness and drug use from the pulpit but who strayed for years to the apartment of a Denver male escort to snort meth, suck dick, and fuck… at $200 a visit. Such feet of clay on a man of God who made it his business to be a key supporter and advocate for a measure on the Colorado ballot to restrict marriage to partnerships between a man and a woman only.

The problem was, his outspokenness on the gay marriage issue pissed off the man whose dick he’d been playing with for three years, Mike Jones. Instead of blowing the Rev. Haggard, Jones blew the whistle on him on a Denver talk show and made national news.

The good members of the New Life Church immediately came to Haggard’s defense against the blasphemous charges. Associate Pastor Rob Brendle immediately asserted that Haggard was as far from a Homosexual as you could get. The only problem was that he hadn’t yet talked to Haggard when he said it. Haggard admitted to being a john, although he insisted that he only bought meth once and threw it away.

The smirks and howls of laughter from the unchurched rocked the nation. Whether that was from the admission of a Man of God that he really did love men, or that he would go to the trouble of buying meth only to throw it away, is unclear.

So the church that Haggard built from scratch in a tiny basement into the biggest mega church in all of Colorado fired him… that’s gratitude for you. Haggard went into a program of “spiritual restoration” in Phoenix to make him straight… or as he put it “Let Jesus put me back together again.”

The only time he was heard from after that was last fall, when he reappeared at the New Life Church begging for money. Haggard’s story was that he was moving his family into a Phoenix halfway house to minister to ex-cons, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and “other broken people”. He wanted money to help out with the move. When the local media found out about it, a major stink was raised… it seems that the Haggards still owned a half million dollar house in Colorado Springs.

So now comes the second act. Haggard has left the program in Phoenix that was supposed to spiritually restore him. The officials of the program say that Haggard is not yet walking the straight and narrow life and that more work is needed. They were fast to make the announcement as soon as he left. Nothing has been heard from Haggard himself. In the black and white world of the fundies, it seems that simple bisexuality is not an option.

Which leaves us with two questions:

Did Rev. Ted’s fall from grace come when he first tasted dick, or when he decided hop up in a pulpit and make a career out of speaking out against the evils of homosexuality?

Did Jesus fail to fix him, or decide that he was never broken in the first place?

Those of you far removed from the Castro are probably not aware that a movie is being shot here on the life of pioneer gay rights activist Harvey Milk. Businesses along the main two blocks of Castro Street have been taking down their signs and window displays to recreate what the blocks looked like 30 years ago at the dawn of the gay pride movement. The neighborhood even had a different name. It was then known as Eureka Valley, and it was also known to be the home largely to middle class Irish Americans who weren’t always that friendly to the new gay inhabitants. In the middle of it Harvey Milk opened up Castro Camera. And for the brief time of the movie shoot Castro Camera lives again as the owners of the lotion and shampoo store that is there now agreed to give up their space to recreate Harvey’s store. Perhaps most noticeably to most, the giant tan Castro Theater sign has been recreated in it’s 70’s gaudy red and blue. It’s a major improvement over the current drab paint job that many of us hope they decide to keep.

This past weekend the Candlelight March that occurred when Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated was recreated. I participated in it, and it was an amazing experience that I just had to share.

A call went out for volunteers to march briefly up Market Street, late on a Friday night, unpaid, and , oh, by the way, please remember to wear 70’s like clothes and bring your own candles. Bring your own candles? What kind of low budget operation was this???

When you stop to think about it, 1,500 candles is an expense to be avoided if you can.  It turned out that they had candles on hand anyway for anyone who showed up without one.

A candle, however, was a small price to pay, for getting to feel, somewhat vicariously, like a part of history.  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Roll back 30 years for a moment. 30 years ago I was working as a morning newsman on a radio station in the Tampa Bay area.  I remember reading the stories about the murder of Harvey Milk with a serious lump in my throat that was probably easy to hear.    When the news went out about what happened to Harvey, the gay communities in several other cities also had candlelight marches. That’s something that isn’t as well remembered. Compared to the estimated 10,000 in San Francisco’s march, they weren’t all that big, but they were just as heartfelt. And I was one of the something like 100 who marched in red neck Tampa from the University of Tampa across the Kennedy Boulevard bridge to City Hall and stood there on the steps until our candles burned out.

This last weekend by shear dumb luck, while being lined up for the march, I wound up standing by a pick up truck filled with water bottles that the production company was handing out to anyone who was thirsty. It turned out that this was also where one of the producers, Dan Jinks, would address the crowd and give us our instructions. He also had a couple of surprises for us.

Cleve Jones came down to talk to the marchers. One of Harvey’s great friends and a fellow father of the gay rights movement, Cleve, in later sadder days, founded the Aids Quilt Project. He told us about Harvey and the early days of Gay Pride and what that original march of 10,000 people was like… gay and straight, of all ages and all races… down this same stretch of street 30 years earlier. He asked for a show of hands of how many were there who had been there 30 years before, and while it wasn’t a huge number, many were indeed back to relive history and walk to remember Harvey once more.

Another friend of Harvey’s also spoke. Gilbert Baker was there in a dark formal suit, a top hat, a sparkling tie, and sequined high top sneakers. The only one in formal attire. Gilbert was the creator of the Gay Pride flag that we take so much for granted and gave us the whole rainbow theme for so much of what we do. He was obviously thrilled that so many people cared and came out.

A kid who didn’t look 30 was introduced to the crowd. Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the script for the movie. While growing up as a gay kid in a conservative Mormon family in San Antonio Texas, he was told about a quote of Harvey Milk’s from an early speech: “Some kid out there in San Antonio, Texas, will hear the story of an openly gay elected official and it will give him hope.” It did indeed, and now Dustin Lance Black, a young openly gay Hollywood writer with a gig working on an HBO series, is paying it forward.

Gus Van Sant spoke ever so briefly, obviously uncomfortable in front of a huge crowd. But it didn’t matter. The openly gay director was a conquering hero. And he had Dan Jinks to direct the crowd with humor and ease.

A gray haired but still youthful looking photographer whose name I sadly didn’t catch was called up as he took pictures of the crowd. He too had been a friend of Harvey’s and had been there back in the beginning, taking, we were told, some of the most famous iconic images of the start of the Gay Pride movement in San Francisco. He photographed the original candlelight march, and was back to photograph it’s recreation.

And so we walked down Market Street to Laguna, lit our candles, and, on cue, marched back. The laughing and cheerful crowd suddenly became silent. It was positively earie to be a part of it. Jinks told us that we could do no wrong as long as we didn’t look at the camera in the middle of the street. And no cell phones, of course. We marched past and then were asked to do it again. We were braced for it, because we had been warned that we might be asked to do this same short march four or five times. And this time the shot was flawed because the camera could see marchers at the end just starting to walk long after the first marchers started. So back we went for a second shot.

We waited for the camera to get ready. The chatty crowd lit their candles, went silent, and time went back 30 years as we walked past the camera. After we walked past, Dan Jinks told the crowd that he had seen as many photographs and as much footage of the original march as he could find. He knew what it looked like. And seeing us march had given him chills. There was no greater way to thank us, but he thanked us profusely and we went home. If I could have found him in the crowd, I would have thanked him.

I walked right next to the camera, head down and feeling genuinely sad as I channeled my memories from 30 years ago. But will I be seen in the movie? Who knows? It’s almost beside the point.

With the subways long closed for the night and the late night Market Street buses redirected to God knows where to avoid the closed street, I walked home. A very long walk, to be sure. But in my reflective mood it wasn’t bad. After all, I was walking down Market Street, reversing the march of 30 years ago on a dark night when it appeared that the gay rights movement was all but dead. When I got to Castro Street, with the last few kids hanging around after the bars closed, it was a typical early Saturday morning.  When Harvey Milk was killed most of them weren’t even alive. Those who were, were babies. Harvey is ancient history to them…at least to the ones who even know who he was. Or is… because Harvey Milk is still very much with us in the Castro if you know where to look for him.

When I walked past Orphan Andy’s 24 hour diner I looked up at Gilbert Bakers’ Gay Pride Flag flying high over Harvey Milk Plaza. I walked past the former Elephant Bar, the gay bar famously stormed by San Francisco police in retaliation for the riot at city hall when Dan White, Harvey Milk’s killer, received only 4 years for the murder of two men. It’s now called Harvey’s, and it’s decorated with photographs from the early days of The Castro and the Gay Pride movement.   Of course I had to walk over to Castro Camera. The locally famous painting of Harvey looking out of a window onto the Castro from his apartment over the store has been covered up for the sake of historic accuracy.  Hopefully it’ll be back, because I missed it that night.  It would have been great to see him looking down and finding his old store intact again.   But the door that he walked out of and off into history is there, and it was like stepping back in time to look into the store window and see Castro Camera recreated down to the smallest details.   A store I’d never seen before, despite walking down the same street for more than 10 years.

Thirty years. Bloody hell.

Then I turned the corner onto 19th Street and headed up the hill toward home. Past the neighborhood elementary school. The Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy.

I was walking the Castro yesterday, the day of the California primary, and our highly political neighborhood was filled with campaign volunteers pimping their candidates. Hillary had a small crowd, Obama, had two different groups of supporters, even Ron Paul had a few backers in front of the Twin Peaks Bar.

I couldn’t help but wonder how much the gay Obama backers have been followers of the local news. Obama is not exactly considered a friend to the local gay or liberal community, despite his liberal credentials.

It seems that four years ago when the gay marriage issue was a flash point for the Cro-Magnon conservatives, former mayor Willie Brown was hosting a fund raiser for Obama in San Francisco. At the end of every event such as this the guest of honor traditionally poses with those in attendance for photographs. These are done by the hundreds, if not thousands, every year. But it seems that Obama didn’t want his picture taken with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, the straight mayor who created the whole gay marriage controversy.

The Obama campaign denies the incident ever happened. But former Mayor Brown remembers it well. ““He said to me, he would really appreciate it if he didn’t get his photo taken with my mayor. He said he would really not like to have his picture taken with Gavin.” And as our former black mayor so simply and elegantly puts it: “Why would I lie?”

The mayor still remembers the incident well, and has regularly brought it up in conversation over the years. But being a good Democrat, he hasn’t brought it up in speeches or in other public forums, at least in this country. Nor has Brown brought it up publicly. But if asked about the incident, they’ll talk about it and how upset it made them.

Whether you choose to excuse Obama’s actions or not is one thing. But you should be aware that when he was asked to stand for a simple picture with the man who risked his political career by standing with the gay community… Obama walked away.

You can read the complete story from the San Francisco Chronicle by going to: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/05/BAM5US1B5.DTL&hw=obama&sn=039&sc=378

It’s worth reading. It brings a question to mind. If a cold political decision was needed to get ahead, would he walk away from the gay community again?

Al Gore, the man who the country elected president, only to have the Supreme Court say NO, has come out in favor of gay marriage.

The announcement came in the form of a video uploaded to his Current TV cable TV network. It’s not completely clear why he would have posted such an announcement at this time. But one thing’s for sure. It signals more than anything else he could do that he no longer has an interest in a political career.

The announcement is appreciated, of course, in LGBT political circles. But can anyone really survive in national politics with such a stand? Democrats are afraid to be perceived as being anti-family, while Republicans are too busy screwing families out of work, educational, and health benefits all in the name of giving tax breaks to families who don’t need the money as much as they need the benefits.

In his announcement Gore says “Gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women — to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage, and I don’t understand why it is considered by some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage.”

Threat indeed. The Bible thumpers don’t seem to grasp that heterosexuals who are abandoning the institution of marriage in droves are more of a threat to the institution than any from the LGBT community. It wasn’t that long ago that living together outside of a marriage was considered to be “Living In Sin.” But when was the last time you heard that now quaint phrase? Except, that is, in a joke.

Rather than raising such an unholy din about gay marriage, fundamentalists should be off talking to young heterosexuals trying to convince them that marriage isn’t an institution whose time is rapidly passing. The statistics are so real and stark that not even Karl Rove or an army of conservative spinmeisters could dispute them. Increasingly, marriage is now an option for young couples, not a must.

As Gore notes: “Shouldn’t we be promoting the kind of faithfulness and loyalty to ones partner regardless of sexual orientation?” Indeed.

The big problem with that kind of thinking is that the fundies would loose a hot button issue that’s guaranteed to bring them big bucks in fund raising and a big boost among the bubbas of the world in the voting booth. An edge that they can’t afford to loose.

Time is on our side, however, and Gore knows it. Among the younger heterosexual generation there is less likely to be a revulsion of gay people. The threat of the ‘homosexual agenda’ plays just about as good as the threat of marijuana. The young know that when it comes to the pronouncements of their conservative elders, there is no boggy man. And never was.

Gore is no longer talking to the Democrats with whom he long broke bread, and who were so quick to throw him under the bus as a looser after he won the historic 2000 election. When he was classy enough to concede that stolen election, he saved the United States from the kind of constitutional crisis that crippled Mexico years later. But the Dems wanted a winner, and didn’t know one when they had him. Meanwhile, the looser took residency in the oval office and went on to prove what a looser he really and tr