Dear Editor:

Like some other worthy newspapers in town, GLT regularly includes letters from the publisher/editor of another periodical. We see this on a fairly regular schedule. Many of your readers will be aware that this individual holds opinions which contradict scientifically proven data on HIV/AIDS, views imposed regularly on his faithful conspiracy theorists as well as uninformed innocent readers. This baloney is available in his own newspaper, which is distributed widely. Fortunately, it appears the readership in San Diego has more judicious tastes.

You may call them old-fashioned, but most mentors of journalism (including those of one international daily and a local weekly where I’ve been on the payroll) did not look kindly on the printing of guest editorials in the disguise of letters to the editor, just as they believed it to be unprofessional for a columnist to respond in print to similar correspondence.

It’s apparent also that you’ve now upset a few readers from the Old Boy Network who are threatened by their perception of radical lesbian feminism and its supposed violation of their clubhouse. I would offer that your editorials and reporting are refreshing and long overdue. It’s great to see the changes at GLT. For years, the paper has missed many opportunities to become a classy outfit for news, as well as a sophisticated community forum, but seemed to flounder in a circuit party daze.

In the early 1980’s the San Diego Gayzette was a wildly successful paper here, and it was my privilege to serve as office manager and social columnist during the paper’s last two years. (One reason for its demise was an editorial policy, which deemed sexually explicit ads of any kind unacceptable. Some things never change, alas.)

The atmosphere of our office, guided brilliantly by Chris (now Christine) Kehoe and Lair Davis was reflected in the educational effect of the Gayzette had on our community. It was a paper produced without sensationalism, and even the social column was relentlessly positive in tone, encouraging to businesses and unusually politically correct and inclusive for the time. It was there, through our in-house discussions and proofreading our excellent writers, that I came to appreciate that gay men really need a good does of feminism from basic to radical. I believe I am better for the time spent in such nurturing company.

How sad it is that any member of our community would feel alienated by important political discussion in a civil forum. I hope you will continue to air these challenges; it would provide a needed push for constructive action. I know several young individual who would thrive on some inspiration to become the well-educated, articulate leaders we need.

Defining our family by its physical, sexual and sartorial fetishes is to my understanding, a manifestation of internalized homophobia in need of immediate attention and healing.

Thank you so much for taking the reins. You are deeply appreciated. And as a retired columnist, I’ll add that my hat is off to Coco LaChine. What a pleasant experience it is to sit and read such warm writing!

Geoff “Gardenia” Graham

San Diego

Dear Editor:

In your editorial on divisions in the gay community, you criticized those who point fingers and refuse to accept valid criticism. But it seems that you, above all, are guilty of these things.

There is nothing wrong with exploring the faultlines of potential disagreement in our community. But doing so requires a fair-mindedness and even-handedness that you manifestly lack. For example, your observation that lesbians contribute less money than gay men to GLBT causes (an innocuous failing that can easily be explained and excused by noting that lesbians make less money than gay men) hardly balances your self-righteous moral condemnation of older gay men who (you say) “use” younger gay men.

Similarly, your treatment of racism is anything but even-handed: You mention the exclusion of nonwhites but not overt and legally sanctioned racial discrimination against individual whites and males in affirmative action programs that accord “preferences” to women and minorities in jobs, promotions, contracts and college admissions. You might be interested to know that gays are among those disfavored individual white males.

When all is said and done, it is clear that you are coming from a point of view of bias and a position that seeks to marginalize gay white males and their concerns. I think focusing on gay white males is key to this discussion, because GWMs are in the anomalous position of being discriminated against as gays on the one hand, but being expected to defer to almost everyone else in order to make up for the “original sin” of being born white and male on the other.

Thus, even while we are the most visible gays, the ones who support most of the gay commercial establishment, the ones who are most threatening to straight America and therefore the most hated and overtly targeted by bashers and legal prohibitions, and the ones who have financially underwritten the post-Stonewall gay liberation movement, our concerns are considered the least important when it comes to setting priorities within a gay community committed to feminist causes, political correctness and liberal/left politics.

Our male inclination to have a lot of sex with a lot of partners is “sexist” and “predatory,” our failure to occupy the bottom rather than the top quartile of income earners is evidence of our “privilege” and racial “insensitivity.” No amount of shame-faced apologizing and going along with the often ridiculous whims of those who claim to be our “victims” and “moral betters” can make up for these “original sins.”

Enough of this nonsense! Maybe it's time to stop thinking of gayness as an identity and start thinking of it as a behavior. Maybe there is no rational basis for a gay community, and no reason for gay white males to include lesbians, people of color, and the whole panoply of left-liberal causes into the movement we are largely paying for to secure our own rights and freedoms.

Maybe we should make it clear to the advertisers in your publication that we are tired of being slandered and will spend our money accordingly...

Andrew Towne

San Diego