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Free Speech
Free Speech
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I went to my favorite (okay, only) local natural foods store in St. Albans shortly after the July issue was distributed. The owner and I have a conversational acquaintance, and my partner and I shop there for the things we can’t find anywhere else (seitan strips, certain supplements and vitamins, other specialty items). Nancy and I had bonded in early spring regarding taking risks in public: she had doubled the size of her Main Street store by taking over a vacant space next door and knocking out the wall between; I had taken on the editorship of OITM. Her store, Rail City Market, is one of the eight places in Franklin County where a volunteer drops off copies of OITM for you to pick up at your leisure.
So when I went in at closing time that day to get a special order, Nancy said she had read some articles in the paper and liked what she read. Then she asked if I had a few minutes to spare, she had a story to tell me.
When the other last, lingering customer left, she said, “You know, I’ve gotten some heat over carrying your paper.” Of course I wanted to know who.
Nancy said another long-time customer had called her to object to the presence of the gay newspaper in her store. She spent an hour on the phone with this customer, listening to her objections, along the lines of, “It so distresses me to see that in your store, surely you’re not promoting their agenda – you know they recruit young people!”
At the end of this long conversation, in which Nancy insisted on everyone’s right to express a viewpoint, the customer asked whether she could bring in some “literature with an opposing point of view.” That seemed fair to Nancy, and she envisioned a church newsletter being added to the other free papers of various sorts available there.
The customer announced in her church service the following Sunday that Rail City Market was carrying the gay newspaper (and everyone should pray for the owner), and that the church needed to respond with an opposing point of view.
What the customer brought to the store for display was not a newsletter, not a local publication, but a prefab stand with two glossy pocket-sized booklets from the notoriously anti-gay Focus on the Family addressed to adolescents who might be “confused” about their sexuality. No matter what the teen might be feeling, “Amy and Jason – Two True Stories” insisted, none of those feelings meant that the young woman or man was really lesbian or gay. The text of “Straight Answers: Exposing the Myths and Facts about Homosexuality” was based, Nancy declared to me, on the most ignorant misinformation and negative stereotypes she’d ever seen.
In the 42-page “Straight Answers” booklet, the last 12 pages are advertising for other Focus on the Family products designed to point the errant sexual sinner to Godly Christian heterosexual “normalcy.”
That was a step too far for Nancy. This was attack literature, not about simply expressing their own lifestyle or point of view. “I called them back and told them to take the set-up away,” she said. “I do not want to become a conduit for this issue, and it just made me angry that I was being pressured by the religious right.” The issue for her is not about being pro- or anti-gay, but more about free speech and the choices she makes about what’s in her store.
She is now a little worried about the business she might lose from the long-time customer and others who belong to that church because of her stand.
So, if you’re in St. Albans, stop by Rail City Market and tell them how much you appreciate it that they stood up for freedom of speech and rational discussion. If it’s a hot day and you need a soda, buy it there as a gesture of support.
And if you thought that bigotry was dying down here in the first state to give legal recognition to our relationships, the sixth state to pass anti-discrimination legislation, a state that accepts second-parent adoption within same-gender couples, think again. The religious right is still out there, they’re active, they have tax exempt national resources, and their agenda is to shut us down, shove us back in the closet, and roll back every gain we’ve made toward equality.
In the meantime, please show your appreciation to the business owners who advertise in our pages and allow us to distribute papers through their shops. Thank you all for your support.
Euan Bear, Editor