IGF contributor Rick Rosendall has given me permission to relay this account of how the highly conservative and often gay-hostile Washington Times treated his recent letter to the editor. Here's the story (hang in here): The paper has recently started carrying a weekly column by another IGF contributor, Andrew Sullivan of the oft-quoted andrewsullivan.com. In his Dec. 20 column (no longer available on the paper's website without paying), Andrew took to task the anti-gay group Accuracy in Media for promoting the idea that homosexuality is linked to pedophilia. In response, a letter to the editor penned by Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine ran in the paper. In answer to Irvine's letter (keeping hanging in there), Rick Rosendall wrote this response, which then subsequently ran in the paper.
Except that the way Rick's letter appeared in print wasn't the
way he wrote it: the letters editor changed Rick's use of the word
"gay(s)" to "homosexual(s)" throughout. Rick, feeling his point of
view had been skewed, fired off the following missive to the
letters editor:
I strongly object to your changing "gay" to "homosexual" throughout my letter as printed in today's letters page. Regardless of your own style sheet, this sort of editorial policy makes no sense, as it is my name below the letter and not yours, and that is not what I wrote. Virtually no one talks that way any more, including Times readers. This is such a relic, I cannot believe you would insist on doing this. Why can't you let people speak in their own voices, short of obscenity? In fact, why don't you insist on it?
In response, Rick received the following note:
Dear Mr. Rosendall,
Per The Times' policy against Orwellian abuse of the English language, the euphemism "gay" is not used to describe the homosexual lifestyle.
Cordially,
Matthew A. Rarey, Letters Editor
What's interesting is not so much that a right-leaning paper has a thoroughly, even laughably, reactionary letters editor (even the title he gave Rick's original published letter, "Homosexuals pooh-pooh pedophilia," is belittling and misleading), but that this very conservative paper also is running Andrew Sullivan's "Weekly Dish" column and not editing its pro-gay content, much less its use of the "G" word instead of the "H" word. Institutions, I believe, don't change all at once, and even the most right-wing often have, at any point in time, people who are to varying degrees in our corner or against us. Maximizing the forward-thinkers and standing up to the backward-lookers is what it's all about.
On a happier media note, following the lead of its flagship
paper, The Orange County Register, Freedom Communications Inc. has
become the first national newspaper chain to enact a policy for all
its papers to print same-sex union announcements, as noted in this
press
release. The Orange County Register is usually characterized as
a conservative paper, but one that leans toward libertarian
conservatism. Which just goes to show what a truly ideologically
diverse world we live in!
--Stephen H. Miller