Local leathermen OUTraged

Local columnist on hot seat

Members of the city’s leathermen scene fired back at a columnist for Out--a monthly newspaper that serves Pittsburgh’s GLBT community--claiming the writer’s perception of the group is shallow and misguided .

In April, Colin Morgan, who pens a column called Master’s Class, wrote about his disappointment over meeting (read: bedding) leather chaps in various local gay bars. He was saddened by the lack tete a tetes on dungeons (he knows plenty of folks who have them in their houses) and found the fellas deficient in da pillow talk.

After not “exchanging bodily fluids” Morgan concluded that he spent “a night at the bar with a bunch of leathermen who don’t heed what I believe is Rule One in the leather community: It’s supposed to be about sex.”

Nobody seemed to be interested in anything but talking, he wrote. And the talk wasn’t cheap enough for Morgan.

Instead he eavesdropped on conversations about charity events, which he found tiresome.(For five years the Three Rivers Leather Club has sponsored and served Shepherd Wellness Community Dinners and have hosted numerous toy drives for foster kids.) Leather groups often sell raffle tickets and Jell-O shots as fundraisers in bars, which wasn’t hot and sticky enough for Morgan.

He advised: “Come on guys, let’s get back to basics. Charge me 10 dollars to come into your bar night if you want—but be sociable and frisky.”

Members of the leather community put their own pens to paper in this month’s issue of Out:

As the current president of the Three Rivers Leather Club, I’m concerned as to the misrepresentation of the leather community that self-proclaimed leather authority Mr. Morgan is giving to the gay community in general. …

Let me address the fund-raising that goes on at our events. When the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force outreach testing program in the bars ran short of funding a few years back, it was the Three Rivers Leather Club, in conjunction with the Eagle, that stepped up to raise the money to carry the agency through until funding resumed. …

This is the positive image that I would like to see portrayed to the gay community. The leather community is a brotherhood/sisterhood that fosters a non-judgmental acceptance of like-minded individuals, like a fraternity on a local and national level.

As for Mr. Morgan, I suggest that what he is looking for might be better found at a bookstore, truck stop or bathhouse.

--Dave Vey

And this:

Mr. Morgan’s major complaint seemed to be that he went to a leather bar recently and there wasn’t enough sex going on for his taste. Where does he point the blame? He takes issue with those working to raise money for important causes in the community, both locally and internationally. That sounds like a convenient and somewhat callous scapegoat for his inability to get what he was looking for….

I know a wide range of people in the Pittsburgh leather community, including pretty much everyone in both leather clubs and a number of local BDSM players. No one seems to know who “Colin Morgan” is. To me, that suggests one of two possibilities: either he’s a complete outsider who is saying a lot of things about a community he has little to no experience with or, more likely, it’s a pseudonym for someone who’s been around for a long time, has grown bitter and feels the need to grind his ax and settle some imaginary score. …

--Mike Natale, Mr. Pittsburgh Eagle Leather 2004

Photo above (Three Rivers Leather Club members)

Below: Some members of the TRLC serve a meal at a Shepherd Wellness Dinner. Photo from newsletter published online.