Dear Editor,

Last Thursday night after I had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with some good friends I sat down with my buddy Sam and we were discussing many things and the Nicky Awards and Sandie Awards came up in our conversation. We began to talk about why the Sandies were canceled and clearly one can read between the lines as to why it was canceled. Intimidation.

Intimidation by other people in the gay community who feel that San Diego’s GLBT community needs only one “best of” awards ceremony. Then suddenly Sam posed the question, “Why do we as a community have to award ourselves for anything?” Why does San Diego’s GLBT community have to award best bartender, best female impersonator, best adult business, best escort? (now surely you can read between the lines of that category) Best Dyke bar? C’mon. Who cares?

Now I know the proceeds of these awards ceremonies benefit all sorts of worthy charities but can’t the GLBT community of San Diego come together and raise some cash without making it a popularity contest?

Can’t we have a big fund raiser at a really nice hotel with some really great food and some really great entertainment and just have everyone check their egos at the door? Best male personality, best hair salon, best gym? C’mon.

Wouldn’t it be simpler for us to say to a bar owner in person or by email, “Hey, I think you have the coolest bar in town.” Or couldn’t we just give our favorite sports writer and social columnist a big high five for doing such a great job? And the awards themselves? Well, let’s just say I could get the same paperweight at a trophy shop and have inscribed on it, “Best Grandma” and it would make one hell of Christmas present.

Last April myself and Tug James of Rich’s put together from what I’m told was the most successful fund raiser of it’s kind for one of our communities champions. You all know him. His name is Big Mike. Big Mike does a lot for our community and in his hour of need when he was battling cancer and needed some extra financial support, San Diego’s GLBT community came together and raised $25,000 dollars. $25,000 dollars!! The benefit was put together in one month with the help of a lot of people. No ballots were needed. No “best this or that” categories were needed. No fancy names for any awards were needed like Nicky or Sandie. It was done and it was over. There wasn’t any bitterness from any business or person that they weren’t nominated or won any award. No intimidation. No rumors.

Now I know thousands of dollars are raised every year by a lot of GLBT organizations and there is a lot of ego checking at the door. But an awards ceremony? I think it’s a bit old and tired. I know of some past winners of Nickys who use their awards for target practice. Well, if you’ve won it I guess you can do whatever you want with it.

Sloan Gomez

San Diego

Dear Editor,

The writer(s) responsible for “Keep that Pecker in a Pocket” [Editorial, Gay and Lesbian Times issue 831, 11/27/03] failed your publication dismally. The Editorial doesn’t help the efforts of Michael Signorile and others to encourage condom use via more public reminders that unsafe sex practices still do have serious health and social consequences.

That nasty, mean-spirited and downright wrong Editorial alienates and hurts those within our community living with HIV. It also quite probably discourages safer sex practices, early detection, and treatment. The same issue containing the Editorial emphasizes (on page 53) that it is not acceptable to call the straight female friends of our community “fag hags.” Why, then, is it acceptable for your publication to tell the HIV-affected in our own community that, without exception, their “friends and family (biological or chosen) . . . face the prospect of years of worrying about every sniffle you have until you finally succumb, leaving them to nurse you on your deathbed”? Ask a few HIV doctors and you’ll find many are more concerned about their patients’ risks of heart disease deaths from cholesterol and blood pressure levels than about those patients’ risks of “succumbing” due to HIV-related ailments. It is not right for your publication to overgeneralize, frighten, dishearten, and further stigmatize part of our community, in service of the laudable goal of lowering infection rates through condom use. The Editorial became useless at best, and counterproductive at worst, when it declared that “real intimacy . . . has nothing to do with the penis and everything to do with the head and heart.” Everyone who has ever had an erection, when heart and head (the one attached to the neck and shoulders) are lovingly focused on someone, knows the penis has something to do with real intimacy, regardless of what causes the penis to rise to the intimate occasion. The Editorial lost credibility then and there with the main group of readers it sought to reach with its wear-a-condom message: sexually-active people (with active penises) and their sexually-active partners (also the ones with active penises, that is). It’s easier for someone to dismiss even the strongest arguments for safer sex practices, when advocates like your publication raise them side-by-side with obvious physiological and psychological untruths. Page 39 of the same issue printed this provably-true observation by Delores Jacobs, Ph.D., Director of The Center: “Most direct fear tactics don’t work in public health prevention efforts.” The next time your publication’s editors address HIV prevention issues, please do so in a way that shows they’ve actually listened to her.

Doug Bedard

Palm Springs, CA