STOP THE (Pink) PRESSES!

[November 5th, 2003] Question: What's black, white and usually not very good?

Answer: Publications catering exclusively to homos.

Long before the Internet, the pink-tinged press was a tangible piece of culture you could tuck under a T-shirt and obsessively thumb through in a bathroom stall or other private location. These rags became coveted bibles, even though they were little more than advertising vehicles for queer bars and bathhouses.

During those closeted times, we needed these homo horn-blowers. But those days are fast disappearing.

Nowadays,
stories about gay issues freely spill across the front pages of mainstream newspapers. Drag queens are the stuff of ad campaigns. And I know plenty of straight people who regularly pick up Just Out.

Started two decades ago by Jay Brown and Renée LaChance, Just Out is Oregon's oldest and most popular--OK, only--LGBTQ biweekly. According to publisher Marty Davis, one of the initial goals of JO was to serve an under-recognized community.

"It was an act of activism," Davis says of the paper's founding and tumultuous early years. "When I look back through the archives, there is clear evidence of financial struggles which continue to this day."

Like other gay publications, in the early days JO seemed to feature lesbo folk singers, like Phranc and Holly Near, on the cover of every other issue. Journalistically, it was a piece of crap. Not because each issue wasn't informative--they all were--but because the stories lacked a critical eye. As in other publications targeted toward a population niche, just because people were gay, that meant their art or music had to be good. And we all know how untrue that is (just look at any Embers drag show).

When Davis took the helm five years ago, JO began to delve into the seamier side of our society. Her own column has developed the toughest tone in the paper, as she has expressed her views on everything from lesbian health issues--including fatty phobia--to taking an unpopular stance on an unpopular police chief.

"My roots are not based in traditional, radical, lesbian, feminist activism," Davis says. "I'm inclined to take a moderate stance in most issues. And that puts me in conflict with those who want to be more radical."

I commend Davis and her staff for their efforts to feature hard-hitting stories on important stories such as substance and spousal abuse in our own community. On the occasion of JO's big anniversary, however, it seems appropriate to ask about the role of the gay press in our sexually saturated times.

Now that JO is no longer teenaged, it's time for this alternative publication to stop explaining the community to our own gay chorus.

We no longer need the queer press and its publications to write fluff that makes gays feel good about ourselves. Newsweek and People can do that for us now. And if I want what passes for queer style, I'll watch television.

Just as stories of race and women's rights now are published in the mainstream press, not just the pages of Ms. or Ebony, it's time for gay publications to start talking to everyone--and for everyone. It's time for an even more radical act, for Just Out to come out of the queer closet and begin translating gay issues to more universal human terms.

That's the kind of queer press I can really get behind.