SF leather district board member resigns over tweets

by Cynthia Laird

Amember of the San Francisco Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District board resigned July 20, a couple of weeks after he posted tweets that some viewed as racist and anti-trans. It comes as the city’s fetish and leather communities ready for the annual Up Your Alley street fair being held on July 30.

JConr B. Ortega, the organization’s diversity and membership committee chair, posted a statement on Twitter July 20, stating that he has left the cultural district’s board. (Twitter rebranded to X on July 24.)

“It was brought to my attention that political activist(s) in our community have taken issue with my personal stance on various political issues and instead of conducting civil discourse in an entirely separate forum, they, in turn, have pressured members of our leadership to remove a democratically elected board member of a cultural district nonprofit board,” Ortega wrote. “As a board member of the Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District, I am resigning my position immediately.”

Ortega also wrote that had he not resigned, it was likely the district’s board would have “forced me out by a politically motivated vote to appease the activist(s).” He stated that he did not violate the bylaws of the leather district.

Ortega was likely referring, in part, to retweets of his July 3 post by Lito Sandoval, a former president of the San Francisco Latino Democrats and former board chair of the GLBT Historical Society. In one of those, Sandoval retweeted Ortega’s tweet in which Ortega wrote. “Wrong lane. This is the Pride lane –trans lane over to the right.”

“Uhhh, So this dood is on the board of @SFleatherDist and @sfyd? With his anti-affirmative action stance and LGB not T attitude? Que lastima! [what a pity]” Sandoval tweeted, referring to the leather district and the San Francisco Young Democrats.

Regarding affirmative action, Ortega had written July 2, “Call me an old fashioned Democrat, I do not support the idea of race being a factor in an admis- sion to a school. I reject the premise that one’s acceptance should be based on the color of their skin and not the contents of their character, as Dr. King would say.” He was referring to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the late civil rights leader.

The tweet was an apparent reference to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision last month that struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

In a direct message to the Bay Area Reporter July 20, Ortega blamed a Twitter troll but did not specifically name anyone.

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