Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Thursday, September 23, 2004

by Wayne Besen

One would think allegations charging that a close colleague of Rev. Jerry Falwell was possibly spreading HIV to Norfolk/Virginia Beach area men would pique the interest of The Virginian-Pilot, the hometown newspaper.

It didn’t.

In July 2003, I got a call from Norfolk attorney Michael Hamar, who was representing a client who feared he might have been exposed to HIV through sex with “ex-gay” poster boy Michael Johnston.

Before the scandal, Johnston founded National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day. He frequently gave his testimony of praying away the gay to Rev. Falwell’s followers. He starred in a television ad campaign produced by Coral Ridge Ministries. He also appeared in videos by the American Family Association, viciously attacking the gay community.

I went down to southeastern Virginia to investigate, and found that Johnston allegedly picked up numerous Hampton Roads area men via the Internet and had unsafe sex with them, even though he was HIV+. I personally spoke with two such men. Atlanta’s gay newspaper, Southern Voice, did some great reporting and broke the story.

When I contacted the Virginian-Pilot and spoon-fed them this scoop, I thought they would at least dispatch a reporter to follow-up on the allegations made in the front page Southern Voice article.

Instead, I was dismissively brushed off and told that they were not interested in covering the ex-gay ministries.

So, imagine my surprise last week when I read a major feature in The Virginian-Pilot on a local ex-gay group! The unbalanced puff-piece was virtually a free advertisement. Indeed, the story, written by Steven G. Vegh, takes fifteen paragraphs to offer a dissenting viewpoint.

Most disturbing, Vegh had personally been informed of the Johnston scandal by Mike Hamar in autumn 2003. Nonetheless, he chose not to mention it in his story. How on earth could a fair and responsible journalist write a story on this topic without mentioning the most notable ex-gay catastrophe in the history of Virginia? Especially, when the alleged horrors happened on his home reporting turf.

I spoke with Vegh, his editor Dave Mayfield and Public Editor Marvin Leon Lake. All three men failed to offer a coherent explanation.
“I can’t really tell you why. I have no answer,” offered Mayfield.

The answer may be very simple. I’ve obtained a memo that shows The Virginian-Pilot’s official advertising policy explicitly denies the existence of gay people.

“Gay/Lesbian advertising that promotes a homosexual lifestyle will not be accepted,” the memo reads.

I reasonably figured “promoting a homosexual lifestyle” would be construed to mean banning ads deemed objectionable, such as sweaty, half-naked men gyrating at a circuit party. So, I called the newspaper, posing as a potential ad buyer, and asked advertising representative Sarah Ridenour to explain what type of ads the Virginian-Pilot would prohibit.

“We won’t allow ads that use the words ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ or ‘homosexual.’ However, we can run an ad if it uses a phrase like, ‘alternative lifestyles’ or ‘diverse lifestyles’,” Ridenour explained.

I asked why a paper that ran a fluffy, adoring feature promoting the ex-gay myth would not allow a commonplace word like “gay” to appear in an ad?

“It violates standards of acceptability,” she said.

Deacon Maccubbin, owner of the gay book chain Lambda Rising tried to run an ad for his Norfolk store. The innocuous ad was headlined “Gay?” and the “controversial” part of the copy stated:

“The bookstore for gay men and lesbians, their families and friends…Celebrating 30 years of gay and lesbian pride.”

Wow! Now that’s obscene and risqué! Practically a gay print version of a Janet Jackson Super Bowl moment!

This institutional, homophobic policy sets a negative tone that shows upper management’s antipathy for gay people, labeling them unmentionables. Well, actually, you can use the “G-word” at the Pilot, as long as it is used primarily in a pejorative way.

Gay people can be discussed if they are repenting. However, when a failed ex-gay leader tied to Falwell has a moral collapse while potentially endangering lives, it goes unreported.

Gay people can appear in advertising, as long as they don’t have normal lives, but oddball “alternative lifestyles” that differentiate them from the population at-large. And precisely what do the yahoos at the Pilot think gay people do that makes their daily lives different than that of their neighbors?

With outright censorship at Virginia’s largest metro newspaper, can it be any surprise that Virginia is fast becoming one of the most homophobic states in the nation?

The citizens in southern Virginia deserve better. They are worthy of objective reporting where readers can be trusted to make up their own minds. These folks can handle seeing the word “gay” in an ad, instead of being subjected to an embarrassingly retrograde, 1950’s-style advertising policy.

The Virginian-Puppet must decide if it is a legitimate newspaper that reports all the facts, or an Orwellian church bulletin that censors and suppresses. It must choose if it publishes all the news that’s fit to print, or prints only news that fits into its narrow, backwards view of gay life.

5 Comments:

In late 2006, the Virginian-Pilot finally relented and quietly accepted an ad from Lambda Rising Bookstore that included the words "gay and lesbian".
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