Editor's Notebook
Editor's Notebook
Hearing From The Opposition
For each of the last two issues, I have received a letter to the editor from a man in southwestern Vermont. I have declined to publish them – a choice always at the discretion of the editor. The reason is that I considered the first – a screed larded with religious dogma on “saving lives” from a gruesome death by AIDS by persuading gay men to stop having sex with each other – anti-gay. The man who wrote called twice to find out whether his letter would be published, and when I emailed him to say it wouldn’t, he requested an explanation for my decision. He insisted that his letter wasn’t anti-gay, that he had worked with AIDS patients, that all he really wanted was to save gay men’s lives.
Of course, suggesting that “abstinence only” for gay men – the Bush administration’s sole favored approach to AIDS prevention – would end the AIDS epidemic is fatuous, simplistic in the extreme, and ignores all other transmission vectors.
The second letter announced the same man’s candidacy for a seat in the Vermont House with the primary legislative goal of repealing “the wicked civil union law.” Once again, the letter was full of selective quotes from the Christian Bible and made some leap of (il)logic to suggest that by recognizing civil unions between gay men the State was then condoning the spread of AIDS.
He strongly urged that we print his letter because it would be of interest to OITM readers to know where he stood on these issues. I don’t know what his real agenda is, other than to get in our faces, or perhaps to use whatever reaction he would get to fuel his right-wing conservative campaign, but other than this summary, I’m not going to play.
The bottom line for me is that people from outside our LGBTQ communities opposed to gay and lesbian rights have many more receptive print outlets for their opinions than we in our community have. And those outlets collectively – and in most cases, individually – have many more resources – in pages, advertising, funding – than OITM does.
Farewell, Elizabeth!
With this issue, we say goodbye to one of our most stalwart and involved volunteers: Elizabeth Hane. She is moving – has moved by the time you read this – to New York state’s apple country to follow her beloved, Stina Bridgeman. Both women earned doctorates in their respective fields and are in the academic life; Stina has been and continues to be gainfully employed, while Elizabeth’s grant-funded work at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center has come to an end.
Elizabeth has been a regular at stuffing night, made major contributions as a community member of the Technology Committee of the MPM Board of Directors, and took on the leadership of the online archive project – the effort to make all 16 years of OITM accessible electronically. Under her direction, and with the help of many volunteers, the online archive project has made a huge step toward completion.
And she writes well, too. Elizabeth has contributed several articles – on working in the sugarbush, updates on the archive project, travel in Scandinavia, to name a few – to these pages. I hope that she will continue to send us the occasional article – especially before she gets caught up in the travails of teaching and/or research.
Elizabeth, while we’re sure this move to join Stina – after two years of conducting a long distance relationship – is ultimately a happy one for you, we will miss you, and we wish you well.