The right cover can make a publication. You know it when you see it, the stop-in-your-tracks image that not only captures your attention but practically forces your hand to pick up the magazine or newspaper from the newsstand. The Gay & Lesbian Times has had a few of those covers throughout the years – and then we’ve had a few you’ve probably walked right by.

Take this week’s cover, for example. Sure, it’s nice. But did it make you pick us up and read the cover story? Probably not. And that’s a damn shame because this week’s feature article, “Coming out transgender in same-sex relationships,” written by Brian van de Mark, is excellent – maybe even one of our best.

We’ve all read about or watched some made-for-TV movie about a heterosexual marriage that gets turned upside down when one spouse decides to go forward with sexual reassignment surgery. Little play, however, has been given to a same-sex couple in which one partner comes out as transgender and then transitions from his or her biological to identified gender. This quite common scenario has its own unique set of challenges, leaving partners, friends and family members questioning the couple’s “new” sexual orientation and identity.

This fascinating topic is explored through the lives of nine local transgender people, all of whom began their transitions while dating members of the same biological sex (see page 30).

In 2005, van de Mark also authored, “Targets of transgression: memorializing the victims of anti-transgender violence,” a feature to coincide with the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside each year to memorialize those who have been killed due to anti-transgender violence. The feature received acclaim by many members of the transgender and greater GLB community, but the cover image garnered a majority of the attention. The image featured a naked male-to-female pre-operative transsexual posed with both her breasts and genitalia scarcely covered.

It seemed as though even before the issue hit the streets our phones were ablaze with calls from community members who were uncomfortable with the image and concerned that it further stigmatized transwomen as sex-workers. Unbeknownst to us, transsexual sex-workers have appeared in various local free publications, such as the now-defunct Swing magazine, in similar poses advertising their services.

We maintain that this knee-jerk association of transwomen with sex-workers is flawed and an example of the community’s own internalized transphobia. The cover was raw, powerful and provocative. It made you stop and pick up our publication. It created dialogue, and hundreds – perhaps thousands – more people read that week’s feature article as a result.

Be that as it may, the GLB community – this paper included – has much to learn about the T. It was never our intention to perpetuate a negative stereotype or further stigmatize a severely marginalized and misunderstood subset of our community, and we have since been working to repair the damage.

And that leads us to this week’s cover. What do you think? Is our current cover too politically correct? Is it our job to be edgy in order to capture our audience’s attention, or should we stick to the safe snoozers that get less pick-up?

Perhaps the answer floats somewhere in between, skirting the mundane without provoking or offending… too much, anyway.