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Anti-gay activist attacks Mid-Atlantic Leather and Metro Weekly, gets dragged by Twitter
LaBarbera called MAL a "homosexual perversion-fest," but Twitter was having none of it
By Rhuaridh Marr and John Riley
January 12, 2018
Peter LaBarbera
Peter LaBarbera had it all planned out: He’d post a witty tweet making fun of Mid-Atlantic Leather by sharing Metro Weekly’s MAL Event Guide, and watch the likes roll in. Instead, he’s found himself getting slammed on Twitter.
LaBarbera, who founded anti-gay organization Americans for Truth about Homosexuality and has a history of offensive statements, called MAL a “homosexual perversion-fest,” on Twitter, adding, “Washington. ‘Gay’ mag. @metroweekly promotes it.”
LaBarbera, who some LGBTQ activists derisively refer to as “Porno Pete,” is known to have frequented LGBTQ events and taken salacious pictures of scantily-clad LGBTQ people while reporting on the “homosexual activist agenda.”
JoeMyGod wasn’t the only one to slam LaBarbera. He’s currently being read to filth on Twitter, with a number of users pointing out his obsession with homosexuality, asking if he was disappointed he couldn’t get tickets, and otherwise calling him out for trying to make an issue of people freely expressing themselves.
Classic. According to this Trump-hating, pro-#LGBTQ tweep, I’m the one with “serious issues,” not the grown homosexual men dressing up at Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend as “dogs”–complete with puppy-head mask and tail: #ProgressiveLogic#MAL#perversion-fest @CentaurMChttps://t.co/Gu7aN7TEia
However, when directly challenged by one Twitter user as to why he was “advertising” the event, LaBarbera responded by diverting to taxation and abortion.
So based on your reasoning, am I, who oppose LGBTQ perversions & porn, guilty because I expose these evil events (at major hotels like the @hyattregency)? Do I also secretly want higher taxes b/c I oppose the Democrats’ high-tax policies? And want more abortions b/c I’m pro-life?
You didn’t answer the one question I asked, so go have a great time. Conversing in good faith (which is a concept I am sure is foreign to you) would demand at least a simple answer that you can’t seem to muster. #byenow
In January 1996, Metro Weekly was banned from the D.C. Eagle -- all because of a joke. In that year's Year in Review issue, we ran a playful photo suggesting the bar's drinks would give patrons "a small electric shock if touched."
I vividly remember getting a call from a furious Bill Cappello, the bar's general manager, screaming that their drinks did not shock people. When I pointed out that it was a harmless joke, Bill only got angrier.
The call ended with a volley of "fuck you's," Bill screaming that Metro Weekly was no longer welcome at the Eagle, slamming the phone down.
Jason Elliott's first piece of leather was a Christmas present from his mother.
"I didn't own a stitch of leather when I was asked to judge as a novice in 2022," recalls the Chesapeake, Virginia native. "So, for Christmas in December 2021, my mom gave me a plain black leather uniform shirt. I still have that shirt."
As of last January, he had a sash to go with it, after winning the Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather 2025 title.
Elliott's first MAL came six years earlier, in 2019. A man he had been chatting with online invited him to have cocktails "at this leather thing in D.C.," Elliott recalls. "I showed up at the Hyatt, walked in the front door, looked out over a sea of Leathermen, and I knew I was home. That was my very first time at MAL, and I knew then I would be going there for the rest of my life."
“When I started going out in the ’70s, the hanky code was kind of de rigueur, especially at bars like the Eagle,” recalls Frank Nowicki, a member of the Centaur Motorcycle Club and the 1993 Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather titleholder. “People wore hankies in their back pockets. It was a quick way to let people know, right up front, what you were into, so that there was no confusion.”
Nowicki says that while the hanky code has expanded to include a rainbow of possibilities, and even though the earliest published hanky codes listed about a dozen options, there were generally only six or eight that people actually used in practice at the time -- each carrying a clear meaning.
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