(OKLAHOMA CITY) On a google group I subscribe to there was a discussion of how aggressive an Oklahoma-based GLBT online news page should be in its reporting of GLBT news in Oklahoma and whether the depiction of straight women as stereotypes with photo-shopped pictures is appropriate.
I would like to suggest that whatever is developing in the way of a "non-controversial"alternative to www.Gossip-boy.com
is not some extension of the fawning obeisance to religion that passes in Oklahoma as "progressive politics". I appreciate the no-holds-barred attitude of Gossip-boy.
Those who object to the treatment of straight women on Gossip-boy should, it seems to me, be objecting as well to the depiction of drag queens as an icon of our community. Drag is not a barb to women but represents the playing out of the stereotyped belief of many straights that most gay men want to be women. I get the symbolic nature of the impersonation even though I find it personally belittling to gay men who haven't the faintest desire to cross-dress and are secure in their own egos. But that's an exercise in diversity, isn't it?
My point is that are we going to use all the tools we can legally, or are we going to wring our hands and worry over being seen as rude?
I ask that we not confuse the hard news section of Gossip-boy with the satirical Smack column written by "Hunter". The news articles give us information about the machinations and backstage plans of the homo-haters that the main stream media in Oklahoma, or nationally, will never touch. I'd put Gossip-boy's investigative success up against that of even Rachel Madow any day, any time.
By devoting itself to Oklahoma, Gossip-boy is able to put the magnifying glass on the legislative and social labyrinth that is working tirelessly to put us either back in the figurative old closet or in a literal new grave.
It's true that occasionally one of my own articles is posted on Gossip-boy for which I receive only the by-line and nothing in compensation so my defense of the news section of Gossip-boy is not of a fiduciary character. It's my impression that Gossip-boy has more than once been threatened with violence from some of the subjects of its stories. I doubt there are very many GLBT people in Oklahoma willing to do this. Where Gossip-boy gets its money I don't know but I'm more than glad the homo-haters are being exposed in all their viciousness, without the sugar-coating of religion and politesse we get from straight news sources. Who else knows what it's like to be gay/lesbian in "Oklahoma, America" than we ourselves?
I contend that it's the use of religion as either a defensive or offensive weapon that has made being gay/lesbian in this country the pariah class that we are. No gay/lesbian citizen should have to beg for the civil rights and equality that is already ours as a birthright of our citizenship. As Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation ( www.FFRF.org ) said in his recent Oklahoma appearances, when religion and government mingle, they both get dirty. I'm not interested in using the tools of the oppressors to somehow liberate us gays/lesbians from one form of apartheid and then subject us to the other side of the same coin.
If any sort of GLBT news source is under consideration, it should consist of nearly all recognized and OUT GLBTs if it's going to have any credibility.
Religion is not the panacea as its adherents on either side of divisive issues like to describe it. The imposition of religious dogma retards thought and research. Just as religion was used to silence Renaissance philosophers and nascent scientists that the earth was flat and the center of the observable universe, why would such a Bronze-age frame of thinking be used to influence the acknowledgment that gay/lesbian citizens are just the same under the law as heteros?
The society of pharonic Egypt was farther along with the true nature of the solar system than Renaissance Europe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes )
The Greek, Eratosthenes, working in Egypt, unencumbered by threat of excommunication or flaming death from the civil authorities corrupted by religion was able to measure the circumference of the Earth to an astonishing degree of accuracy for his time.
There is a difference in the exaggerated and/or fabricated lies told about us GLBTs by the homo-haters and the plain and pointed truth as exposed by Gossip-boy. The real threats against our citizenship are too far advanced to quibble over the nuts-and-bolts of journalistic technique.
We already have an alternative to Gossip-boy in the Oklahoma four-state area and that's the Metro Star. ( http://www.metrostarnews.com )
Though a monthly print newspaper, it has a website that uses media alerts for major breaking news stories.
As far as I'm concerned we can use both, and more, of these outlets for investigative news about our Oklahoma GLBT equality fight.
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