Letters to the Editor
UVM Thanks
I want to thank Out in the Mountains and Euan Bear for your coverage of the LGBTIQA Awards and Community Celebration at UVM. Life on a college campus has its special challenges. One of them is bridging the gaps between the world views and community expectations of the youngest and the oldest, the most radical and the most conservative. College is one of only a few places where we expect people with dramatically different perspectives to have meaningful discourse. These differences can become heated, but most often are a reason for disengagement. How can we find understanding across lines like "out" v. "closeted," liberal v. conservative, and politics of gender, class, and race within our community?
The Awards Celebration brought out tenured faculty approaching retirement and first-year students, and folks who represented every letter of our particular bowl of alphabet soup, and members of UVM's ALANA (African-, Latin-, Asian-, and Native-American) community. Looking across the generations I saw what may have been expressed as "butch" or "drag" in an earlier generation, coming out hesitantly, but proudly as "trans" today. I saw not just new allies, nervous about attending their first highly public lgbtiqa event, but a growing number of seasoned, knowledgeable allies looking relaxed and comfortable as they beamed and applauded for their lgbtiqa fellow community members. For an afternoon, at least some of the differences came together long enough to celebrate the hard work and dedication of a few of our best and brightest. The experience reminded me that in our community it is important to celebrate Pride more than once a year and not just in the streets, but in the institutions where we live and work. We are here and we are fabulous!
Dorothea Brauer, MA, LCMHC
UVM LGBTQ&A Services Coordinator
Burlington
P.S.: The recipient of the Weinstock Service Award was Peter Blackmer (not Blackburn).
Thanks for your letter, Dot. And please extend my apologies to Peter Blackmer for not reporting his name correctly. – EB
Fan Letters
We are incredibly fortunate to have Euan Bear’s skills and leadership as OITM Editor. The paper is now something I want to read cover to cover. While I surely believe the personal is political, it is a relief to move beyond articles about individuals’ experiences into more cogent analysis and connections that help us understand the socio-political context of our own stories. I was especially moved by Euan’s editorial in the May issue. Thank you for bringing a lesbian feminist analysis back to the forefront.
A definite fan,
Joy Livingston
Hinesburg
Thanks, although I must point out that while my political perspective is informed by lesbian feminism, it is one part of a mix of perspectives and points of view I hope the paper will reflect. Listening to varied voices helps us refine our opinions, understand those different from us, and honor the humanity of all. – EB
Just a quick email to say what a great job you seem to be doing with OITM. We have really increased the amount of time we spend reading the paper, and appreciate your work, as well as that of whoever else is on “the team” with you.
Chris Tebbetts & Jonathan Radigan
Burlington
Thanks for the support. A good editor helps writers shine, and I’ve got such great material to work with! Our team includes all of the writers and photographers and cartoonists whose work appears in these pages, along with the ad sales representatives (without whose work we could not appear at all), the webgoddess and operations manager, the calendar and classified maven, the art director (whose creativity displays the content so well), the distribution volunteers who deliver the paper, project volunteers, and the all-volunteer board of directors. Without them, there would be no OITM. Other important people include the folks who make tax-deductible contributions to Mountain Pride Media to support the paper, and the business owners who let us bring bundles and who advertise in our pages. – EB
Congratulations on your articulate, pointed, yet empathetic letter to the Burlington Free Press columnist [Editor’s Notebook, July 2002]. This phenomenon – I’ve never heard it called Erasure, but I think it’s a totally appropriate term – crops up so often in life, and your response to it was the most concisely stated and well reasoned I can remember seeing. I think I ought to clip it out and stick it in my wallet for those periodic occasions when, having been provoked by some similar occurrence, I could just quote you rather than sputter and rave.Anyway, good for you.
Also, I really liked the Green Landers cartoon, if you could pass that on to the dude who drew it, I’d appreciate it.
Working for a community paper when the editor is energized and into it is a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Eric Orner
West Hollywood, CA
Eric Orner is the artist who draws “The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green,” seen in our “Gayity” pages. Stuart Granoff of Groton, VT is the dude who draws “Green Landers,” which we hope will be a regular feature. – EB
Three Cheers For Skeeter
Yay! – and whatever else might be the equivalent of three cheers for Skeeter Sanders and his article “Anti-gay Clergy Do NOT Speak for God” [Spiritual Essence, July 2002] in your last publication of Out In The Mountains.
In my (as yet unpublished) book, Blasphemy! I tell the world about those infamous Councils of Catholic clergy who met at Nicea, Trent, and Carthage to manufacture our present Bible – deleting what they didn’t like, combining at least two different men under the name ‘Jesus’ and even making up parts of the New Testament story to suit themselves and their religion! The so-called ‘Word of God’ has always been the word of bigoted men.
Plus – how come those dependent on the Bible hang on to homosexuality as an abomination and disregard all the other abominations listed in ‘Holy Writ’ – all those ‘abominations’ disregarded today as out of date – such as eating lobster, oysters or crab? Or the commandments that women should never be allowed to speak in church? If church leaders bothered to understand how their guidebook was created, and realize its drawbacks and contradictions, there would be no more talk of homosexuality as a sin.
The current religious controversy over homosexuality and Biblical injunctions are the result of ignorance and the desire to maintain that ignorance in the status quo.
Alan Curtis
Morrisville
Thanks for the cheers, and best wishes in your search for a publisher. When your book sees print, let us know. – EB