Well, shucks. Under pressure from the archdiocese, the new pastor at gay-friendly but nevertheless Catholic Most Holy Redeemer Church in the Castro has banned all forms of drag on the premises. The church already had a ban, dating back to 2006, on the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who used to host their bingo nights there until it caught some flack from conservative Catholics and parishioners. But now, as the BAR reports, pastor Rev. Brian Costello has stated that there will be no drag queens on the premises, even in non-nun drag, which has prompted the Castro Country Club, a substance-abuse-recovery organization, to cancel their drag-hosted fall fundraiser at the church.

Costello replaces former pastor, Rev. Steve Meriwether, and he says he was told in no uncertain terms by the archdiocese 'No drag queens' on church property.

Meriwether had a history of being more liberal about the drag thing, and the church got into some hot water and grabbed national headlines in 2007 when former Archbishop George Niederauer gave communion during Sunday mass to two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The incident enraged conservative Catholics.

Then, just this past December, three gay-friendly clergy who were invited to speak during a series of pre-Christmas evening services had to be disinvited at the insistence of the archdiocese, after a conservative Catholic newspaper from San Diego called them to task.

[BAR]

Boo, the tiny Pomeranian widely accepted as the world's cutest dog (or at least a very convincing Beanie Baby), had his fame called into question this week when it was discovered that his nearly 5 million Facebook "likes" may not be entirely legitimate. While the dog is legitimately cute, the pup has apparently been hiding a dark secret: his human caretaker is a Facebook insider who may have other interests in his celebrity.

Bespectacled super sleuth Mike Isaac of AllThingsD broke this very important story wide open yesterday when his sources inside Facebook, the world's best source for all things "world's best," outed Boo's owner as Irene Ahn — a top dog in the company's finance department. Ahn has been with Facebook since 2008 and Boo has been on Facebook since 2009, but it wasn't until human garbage can Ke$ha called Boo her "new boyfriend" on Twitter a year later, that the dog's page started to take off.

From there Boo was on a familiar, late-aughts rocket to internet stardom: a Kardashian blogged his photo, Good Morning America came calling and the fuzzy little canine even got a book deal through San Francisco-based Chronicle Books out of the whole thing.

While neither Ahn nor Boo are speaking to the press these days, preferring to remain out of the spotlight unless that spotlight is a Facebook photo album, the suspicious connection between Boo's widespread celebrity and Facebook's revenue is now being questioned as well. As Betabeat Reporter (and friend of SFist) Jessica Roy asks in her own (ahem) exposé:

Curious, isn’t it, that Mr. Dog boasts close to 5 million fans on Facebook, where his owner’s boss is banking on that kind of user engagement? And with a powerful parent like that, he surely didn’t earn those fans through sheer cuteness alone.

Facebook is undoubtedly the internet’s primary information source for news on Boo the Dog. That seems rather suspicious. And how did he score that coveted three-letter Facebook user ID?

How indeed, Ms. Ahn.

Anyway, because clicking the Like button is basically the same thing as petting it until it loves you and follows you home and ohmygod can I keep him?, we don't expect the accusations of puppy nepotism to slow Boo's meteoric rise to fame.

[AllThingsD]
[BetaBeat]

Robert Blitzer, 66, and his husband, Xenry, 63, were sitting in the Castro Plaza on March 11, doing what every honorable, Goddess-fearing San Franciscan should be doing on a warm weekend day of leisure: smoking weed. That is, until the fuzz killed the party. According to the BAR, "San Francisco Police Officer Matt Loya asked them if what they were smoking was tobacco, and Blitzer responded that it was marijuana. He said that Loya checked their medical marijuana ID cards and their drivers' licenses and spent half an hour with them."

"People around us were horrified," Blitzer explained to the BAR. "They couldn't believe a senior citizen couple was being harassed for smoking medical marijuana."

Blitzer and Xenry, who have been together for a jaw-dropping 42 years, use medicinal marijuana because the former suffers from severe glaucoma and sight loss, and the latter "has had an abdominal bypass and is frequently in pain." But that didn't stop the SFPD from citing them for smoking in a public area. Why? Because, as approved by the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee in 2011, smoking (marijuana or tobacco) in public spaces is verboten.

Look, citing anyone in San Francisco, much less in the Castro, for getting high on medicinal herb is downright horrifying. It's not right. It's not OK. Illegal or not. And chiding our beloved queer senior citizens — who've been keeping it real, mighty real, in the Castro since the halcyon days of the '70s — is a moral abomination. Weed is their life force, their gasoline. Old gays love pot, and that's the way it should be. Even District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener thinks the citation was bogus, saying: "The police in San Francisco should follow our city's policy of making marijuana enforcement the lowest priority ... I don't think we should be prosecuting people for personal consumption of marijuana ... absent extraordinary circumstances."

The citation that the couple each received says that they could be punished by "a fine of not more than ... $100."