As
long as I’ve worked at newspapers — a
whopping three
years — I’ve been open about my sexuality. I’ve
always
looked at being gay as a non-issue,
perhaps because I’m oblivious
and perhaps because I’ve had the good fortune of living in
places
where one’s sexuality doesn’t take top billing. I began
my soon-to-be
illustrious career at The Citizen,
a 13,000-circulation paper in
Auburn, N.Y., just west of Syracuse.
Central New York isn’t known
as a bastion of liberalism, nor
does it pledge any allegiance to
neocon
values. It’s just kind of neutral. There were three gay people
in
Auburn — me and two men, who, of course,
worked at the local theater. Surely,
there
were others of the homosexual persuasion
in Auburn, but I never met them.
Timmy,
Travis and I were the only ones.
Some folks
in town flitted with same-sex dalliances,
and
there were even a few rumored bisexuals,
but that was the extent of the
sexual diversity
in Auburn.
For
the nearly two years I spent
in Central New York, my colleagues
at The
Citizen never bothered me about
being gay.
Most were recent college grads,
serving a
brief tour of duty in the community
news
trenches, and to them my sexuality
was
nothing spectacular. I never
heard any disparaging
comments, though I did have one
colleague who thought he could “convert” me
by strategically placing photocopied
pictures of himself in my desk drawers.
For the
most part, my sexuality never
came up.
Granted, I never dated anyone
in my time
there, so I was only gay in theory
and perhaps
as a result, less threatening.
After
20 months (yes, I was counting)
in Auburn, I hightailed it out
of there in search
of greener pastures, or at
least greener mountains, in
Vermont,
where I had been offered a
job at The Burlington Free
Press. I
thought I had struck homo gold.
I would be living in a gay
utopia
where same-sex-loving folks
could get unionized to each
other
and nobody would bat an eyelash.
Gay people in Vermont have
nearly the same rights as everyone
else, and they hold hands in
public without getting pummeled,
and most don’t even know
what a closet looks like. No
way! So why doesn’t my newsroom
show any love to the queers?
OK,
so that’s not entirely fair. We write about gay people — when
I propose the story. Other people
have sub-beats here — weather,
the environment, immigrants and
refugees. I have the de
facto homo beat. Any time
a lavender press release
crosses the
metro desk, it gets sent
in my direction. When gay
advocacy
groups call the office, they
get forwarded to me. I don’t mind this
pigeonholing, because I actually
like writing stories about
the
LGBT community. But I feel
that other people should
try their
hand at it as well. The queers
won’t bite.
I don’t
mind doing LGBT stories, and
there are actually some I’d really like to tackle.
But there have been times
when my editors
have questioned my integrity
and my ability
to be impartial about LGBT
issues. When I
covered a debate between
a radio talk show
host and a queer youth
group, I was asked if I
was part of the youth group.
Well, one, I’m
not a youth, and two, I
know my boundaries.
I would hardly expect them
to ask a black
staffer (if we ever had
one) if he or she was a
member of the NAACP before
covering a
story about the black community.
Not
only have my editors brought
up my sexuality, but so
too have my colleagues.
One co-worker told a
man that neither of us
knew that I was “off the market” because I “
batted for the other team.” Another woman
I work with told a co-worker not
to talk to
me because I was gay.
She thought she was
being funny — apparently it was said in jest — but
it was apropos of nothing and off
color at best. In another
attempt to at humor,
one colleague asked me
how it was that a
local mentoring group
let me work with children,
seeing as how I was gay. Hilarious.
That
same colleague’s boyfriend worried aloud about the
two of us
going shopping together:
He didn’t want his girlfriend coming
back with “combat boots and a black leather jacket.” Apparently
that’s
the lesbian uniform. And I thought
it was anything plaid.
I can’t
explain the difference in the
two newsrooms, because my behavior
has been the same at both. I
suppose sexuality is a
hurdle that some people
just can’t quite get over. But it’d
be nice
if they tried to jump
it.
