Father Martin McVeigh was giving a talk to 26 parents and one 8-year-old kid when computer disaster struck. He connected his USB drive into a PC to start his Powerpoint presentation and, instead of the word of God, a hardcore gay porn slideshow started—thanks to Windows' autoplay.


Some parents—who were there to hear McVeigh talk about First Communion—were angry. Others were in shock. Just like McVeigh. He was so embarrassed that, according to witnesses, unplugged the USB drive and walked out of the room without uttering a single word. Later he declared to the press:

I don't know how it happened but I know what happened. There are people making innuendoes who weren't even there but in this day and age these stories grow.


Well, Father, I think there's little space for innuendo after showing gay porn in church. McVeigh, however, claims there is an explanation for all this.

The Archdiocese of Armagh, where the parish belongs, called the police and gave them the USB stick for inspection. The police told them there was no crime in gay porn and the drive didn't contain any pedophilia. It was just normal gay porn.

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According to The Ulster Herald, "an emergency meeting was held in the parish last night." You know, because gay priests are such a rare event that emergency meetings need to be held with the utmost urgency, so everyone can slam someone who mistakenly made his sexual preferences public. Embarrassment is not enough! To the fire with him.


Father McVeigh. Source: BBC [Ulster Herald via Irish Central, Joe.ie]

How to avoid these embarrassing situations

This is a good reminder for anyone who has porn in their computers or USB drives and is giving presentations: people, turn off the autoplay feature in your Windows computer. Just go to your Start button, click on Control Panel, click on Hardware and Sound, and then click on AutoPlay. There you will be able to turn it on or off for each media type.


You should do the same with the address autocomplete feature in your browser—which will populate your address bar with your latest YouPorn antics if you forgot to use anonymous browsing. Since you you are it, turn off the most visited sites front page in your web browser too. The locations of these preferences will change depending on your preferred browser, but they should be easy to find.


And never, ever leave your screensaver pointed to a folder which may contain porn, as the screensaver may fire up during your presentation.


One last thing: if you have OS X Lion, remember its new application document handling: when you open an app, OS X will automatically open whatever documents were opened the last time it was running. Like a reader pointed out, this may lead to some embarrassing situations. Always close any potentially embarrassing documents before closing the app itself.

Image by Somosnobles/Creative Commons