How can the left simultaneously support Islam and Gays?

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CHICAGO — It was the Friday before Memorial Day and Ali Mushtaq was in his room at the Congress Plaza Hotel, dressed like a votary in the church of Tom of Finland: skin-seizing bluejeans, lace-up cuffs called gauntlets, disciplinarian jackboots and a belted leather strap that crisscrossed the defined chest of his 5-foot-6-inch frame.

As he looked in the mirror, Mr. Mushtaq, 27, who calls himself “very, very gay,” held a necklace against his dark and hairy chest. It was given to him by his mother when he was a teenager, and on it hung a tiny pendant with a word, rendered in stylized Arabic script, that Mr. Mushtaq knew would enchant some men and utterly enrage others.
The word: “Allah.”

“My presence here is an anomaly,” Mr. Mushtaq said. “My presence shows that people that look like me, that are Pakistani, that are Muslim, are here for peace. We are the sex symbol. We are the people that everybody wants to hit on.”

By “here,” Mr. Mushtaq meant at International Mr. Leather, an annual gathering of men (and a few women) in Chicago who are into kink and leather, and culminates with the pageant-style crowning of the year’s winner.

Mr. Mushtaq, who competed as Mr. Long Beach Leather, was not the first Muslim contestant to compete at I.M.L., as the event is commonly known. But he was the first Pakistani-American contestant, and in the leather community his presence at I.M.L. was a big leap out of the pitch-black closet for Muslim men who are not only gay, but also into leather fetish.