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You've probably already seen this picture. The July 19 torture and execution-by-hanging by Iranian authorities of two teenage boys convicted in a homosexual-sex case showed the power of bloggers to set the gay agenda-- and unleash gusts of bytes and pixels in which mainline groups end up blowing and twisting.

Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari were hanged by Iranian authorities in the northeast city of Mashhad for-- it is variously reported, being lovers and having sex with each other, having sex with another teenager who was 13, or forcing sex on said teenager at knife-point. The executed boys were in detention for 14 months and had been tortured-- at least by the 228 lashes they received before they were killed.

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The pictures, first publicized on the web by Iranian Student News Agency, were picked up by bloggers Doug Ireland and comand UK's Outrage. Pointing to Iran's death penalty for consensual homosex, its use of torture, and a media that dances to the state's tune (with numerous arrests and killings of journalists), Ireland and Outrage expressed doubt about Iranian media reports that the lethal punishment was meted out for anything other than consensual homosex.

If bloggers are like the electric grid, photos such as this one are the voltage that makes it crackle. With CNN and the New York Times too squeamish to show the blood and gore of, for instance, America's Iraqi disaster, these pictures, even if touted by an Iranian news agency, might have found few Western eyes to stir and sorrow-- even though Iran is high on Bush's official hit list. Certainly other recent Iranian executions-- such as that of a 16-year-old girl for promiscuity-- generated scant attention in the West.

But with bloggers on the case, Western gay groups and pols, usually focused on domestic affairs, had to respond-- though not gracefully. The US's Human Rights Campaign maintains agnosticism on what is one of human-rights doctrine's key tenets-- opposition to the death penalty. Still, in this case they urged letters be sent to Condaleeza Rice (well, something had to be done!)-- though for a time HRC removed the call from their website after they became aware of the rape allegations. HRC together with the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Watch and Rep. Barney Frank-- despite their collective agnosticism on whether teenagers who have sex with each other should be given decades in prison (done routinely in America without any of them noticing)-- scrambled to join the anti-Iran protest. IGLHRC's director Paula Ettlebrick was typical in insisting that the executions weren't a gay issue, though she condemned them on the grounds that the youths hanged weren't of age.

Thanks to the bloggers-- thousands of gay people knew about the killings and disagreed that it wasn't a gay concern. An online petition started in the Netherlands has garnered nearly 25,000 signatures so far and hundreds have protested in San Francisco, Stockholm, Moscow, Paris, Vancouver, and Dublin.

The Iranian horror-story illuminates who's who in the gay blogosphere. As well as Doug Ireland and UK's Outrage, Michael Petrelis, perennial nag to officialdom, kept up a steady supply of info on the case, and www.gayrussia.ru, taking advantage of Russia's ties to Iran, offered an important interview with Iranian gay activists. When the next big story breaks-- at least if there's an awful picture to go along with it-- expect the mainstream to be stumbling a few steps behind the bloggers.