From Just Out Publisher Marty Davis:
Effective December 26, 2011, Just Out newsmagazine, serving Portland’s LGBTQ community since 1983, is no longer in business.
Three years of recession have taken their toll.
Please direct all inquiries to Marty Davis at marty@justout.com. Thank you for your many years of readership and support.
So it’s been a few days since we announced Just Out ran our final issue, published our last news story, printed our last column, and
posted our final blog. The outpouring of support from readers has been pretty overwhelming and, for the most part, incredibly positive. Major news outlets have managed to sum up Just Out in a handful of words, but, as usual, the readers who relied on and loved the paper have said much more—in emails, Facebook messages, phone calls. Lifelines.
Most want to know how we’re holding up. While I’m no spokesperson, there are a few things I can say with some certainty. Right now, the end of Just Out feels like a divorce, or even a death—there’s a big gaping chasm, a void that’s going to be incredibly tough to fill. The people who came together to make this paper week in and week out worked hard. More than that, our whole hearts were in that work. Writers poured their guts out. We broached uncomfortable subjects. Every two weeks, all of this effort turned into the creation of something—a tangible thing that came from nothing, put out there for all the world to see.
I’ve heard and read many people say a queer-centric publication isn’t relevant or necessary anymore. The OCA is gone (although plenty of that ilk remain); the internet helps us meet each other. You can use Google to find queer things in your city (a real argument I heard). And sure, technology absolutely makes some things easier. There are a variety of ways to meet people. If you know how and where to look, you can find plenty of information—but a lot of it won’t be fact-checked, copy-edited, and wrapped up into neat little newspapers. And, as we so easily forget here in Portland, there’s a strong, well-funded political movement that would like to not only halt our progress, but dismantle it. For that, organization and community will always be key. And it’d be nice to have an exhaustive local resource to have our backs.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Zach, who goes to graduate school in Spokane, called me in a frenzy. There he came across some stranger in a bar, a random guy who knew him and me from his days in Portland. Based on this person’s (very limited) knowledge us, he assumed Zach and I had, at some point, engaged with one another in sexual tomfoolery. When Zach grilled him as to the whys, this gentleman simply responded, “Well I’ve heard of you, you’re both whores, seems natural.”
While the impressive amount of self-loathing buried in that sort of gay-on-gay condemnation warrants deeper examination on another day, I offered Zach this: haters gonna hate. There’s so rarely a time when you can actually control what people think or say or do, pushing back isn’t worth the energy. Arguing is often a futile endeavor. In the end, we simply put ourselves out there, and we accept the good with the bad. And it is, for the most part, pretty good.
At Just Out, we certainly had our share detractors, just like anything in print does. Just like most any art does. There’s no way anything can be all things to all people. But another thing I can assure you: we tried. Each person there possessed a singular passion for community. We didn’t just make a newspaper, we provided a service. We were a resource, a compilation, a place people came to find some amount of community and familiarity—and yes, comfort. People certainly picked up Just Out for plenty of reasons—the aforementioned ones were always very high on that list. When I was a queer kid trapped in a Pentecostal church in Gresham at the height of the OCA saga, I sought and found Just Out; I felt more normal.
I’m not convinced society has evolved to the point where that kid-in-the-church scenario is implausible—now. I’m not convinced something like Just Out is moot.
So just like the flippant loudmouth who approached my friend at a gay bar in Spokane, haters are certainly gonna hate. And they have every right to. In the end, Just Out was much bigger than any one person or any one incident. We were a collective—of artists, designers, writers, editors, salespeople, publishers—who wholeheartedly believed in the product we created. Regardless of what comes next, the hole Just Out filled for 29 years now becomes a void. A big, empty void.
One of my favorite books in recent years—I’ll refrain from disclosing the title as to avoid ridicule here—talks about how our biggest mistake is getting attached to anything; we should always be prepared for endless waves of transformation. Yeah, it definitely sounds like the author has watched one too many episodes of Oprah. And it sounds a lot better in theory than in practice. But perhaps she’s right—maybe with ends come opportunities.
For now, though, allow us a brief mourning period. Let us maneuver through our break-up. Let us adjust to a life without deadlines, phone calls, emails, leads not followed. Let us take a minute to revel in the good we did. Just Out was many things to many people, and no words or actions can take that away from anyone. And there’s now one less publisher in the world taking chances on new, unproven talent.
We don’t know yet what Portland has in store for queer media. But this much I know: my colleagues have far too much talent to simply disappear; you’ll see our work and hear our voices again. You haven’t seen the last of this group. But pardon us for a moment while we lament the end of a pretty significant era.
(Hint: blog commenters, capital letters don’t make your arguments more persuasive.)
Gay musician Lance Bass (‘N Sync) is learning a very public lesson about the word “tranny” after tossing it around casually during a December 22 appearance on Access Hollywood.
According to The Advocate, here’s how the conversation went down:
Bass was the guest cohost of the entertainment news program and interviewed [Billy] Eichner, star of the new Fuse series Billy on the Street, in which he offers money to New York’s pedestrians to answer silly questions.
“So you need to go to Christopher and Hudson and get those trannies on the corner there — that would be perfect,” Bass suggests to Eichner. Eichner agrees, saying “I love a tranny” before realizing his error and correcting himself.
“We’re not supposed to call them trannies anymore,” Eichner says. “Did you see that Neil Patrick Harris called them a tranny [sic] on Twitter?” Bass replies, “Oh, no? Great, now I’m going to get in trouble.”
Cohost Kit Hoover asks Eichner if there’s a “new name.” Bass says, “I didn’t get the memo.” Eichner suggests “really, really gay? I don’t know.” Bass replies, “I like my good ol’ trannies.”
Bass, who added that he “didn’t get the memo” about the words potential for offense, issued a prompt apology via Twitter:
You think ONE of my MANY transvestite friends would have told me “tranny” is a bad word now! They only call themselves that – I’m sorry if I offended anyone by using that word! #justbeeneduacated
He also wrote a lengthy column over at The Huffington Post that begins as an apology, then turns into a criticism of “gay media” for not being kinder to the out celebrities who do so much:
I may be a bit naïve in my thinking, but imagine the headline “Lance Bass Would Like Us To Know Why We Shouldn’t Use The Word Tranny.” That is what could have happened if The Advocate had called me first and we were able to work together. It’s time our community stops bullying ourselves, especially our celebrities who do so much for civil rights. They need to learn that they are in the wrong to spin stories like this and harp on something that was obviously not malicious, because the more we become afraid to open our mouths for fear of backlash, the less likely we will continue being a voice for our community.
Bass, who has done high profile advocacy work for GLAAD and GLSEN, probably should have received said memo from one of those organizations before they signed him up to represent the various letters in our alphabet soup. The fact that he didn’t (and therefore assumed “tranny” was just another word for a drag queen) reveals a gap in education for celebrity advocates that needs to be filled. When folks who appear sincere in their support of the LGBTQ community don’t even know what is considered a slur to some of the people within in it, we’re doing something wrong (case in point: Neil Patrick Harris and Kelly Osbourne).
But whose job is it to “fix” things? Should out celebrities take responsibility for their own education or should that task fall to LGBTQ organizations or queer media?
For more thoughts on the debate over the word “tranny,” check out the conversation in Just Out‘s current issue.
All of us at Just Out want to take a moment to thank you for reading, Facebook-liking, Twitter-following and just plain being you.
The merriest, happiest and healthiest of holidays to you and yours.
A 1990′s direct-mail solicitation for Ron Paul’s political and investment newsletters warned of a “federal-homosexual cover-up” to play down the impact of HIV.
The letter — found by New Republic editor James Kirchick in a political literature archive at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society, paints a rather unflattering picture of Paul, chock full of conspiracy theory assertions about such topics as HIV and race relations. Reuters reports:
The eight-page letter, which appears to carry Paul’s signature at the end… urges readers to subscribe to Paul’s newsletters so that he could “tell you how you can save yourself and your family” from an overbearing government.
The letter’s details emerge at a time when Paul, now a contender for the Republican nomination for president, is under fire over reports that his newsletters contained racist, anti-homosexual and anti-Israel rants…
Among other things, the articles called the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a “world-class philanderer,” criticized the U.S. holiday bearing King’s name as “Hate Whitey Day,” and said that AIDS sufferers “enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick…”
The letter promoting Paul’s newsletters was written about 1993. It was during a period in which Paul – who left Congress in 1985 after serving about eight years – returned to Washington after a decade’s absence.
The letter promoting Paul’s newsletters claims that Paul – through what he describes as a network of “extraordinary sources” in Congress, the White House, the Treasury and Justice departments, the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service – had acquired unique insider information that would his subscribers to “neutralize” the plans of “powerbrokers.”
Paul’s letter went on to describe various plots and schemes that he had “unmasked,” including a “plot for world government, world money and world central banking.” He also claimed to have exposed a plan by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to “suspend the Constitution” in a falsely declared national emergency.
Despite being “told not to talk,” Paul wrote that his newsletters also “laid bare” the “Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica,” and a “federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS.”
Paul claimed that his “training as a physician” helped him “see through” this alleged cover-up… He urged the letter’s readers to send in $99, which would buy subscriptions to his monthly political and investment newsletters, a copy of his book “Surviving the New Money,” an investment manual and access to the “unlisted phone number of my Financial Hotline for fast breaking news.”
Members of Paul’s camp have cried out against reporting on the eight-page solicitation letter, claiming that the articles were never written by Paul (despite appearing with his endorsement and signature). however, one of Paul’s campaign managers asserts that the Republican presidential hopeful “does not deny or retract” the material in his newsletters:
As Paul made a campaign stop in Manchester, Iowa, on Thursday, his Iowa chairman, Drew Ivers, repeated Paul’s assertions that he did not write the articles that resurfaced this week in a report in the Weekly Standard magazine.
Paul has said that he is not sure who wrote the articles that were published under his name. He has said the articles do not reflect his views, and noted that his public stances – supporting gays in the military for example – have run counter to the incendiary statements in the newsletters.
In an interview with CNN’s Gloria Borger on Wednesday, Paul said of the newsletter’s articles: “I didn’t write them. I didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them.”
When Borger continued to pursue the subject, Paul removed his microphone and walked out of the interview.
“It is ridiculous to imply that Ron Paul is a bigot, racist, or unethical,” Ivers said.
However, Ivers said, Paul does not deny or retract material that Paul has written under his own signature, such as the letter promoting Paul’s newsletters.
When asked whether that meant Paul believed there was a government conspiracy to cover up the impact of AIDS, Ivers said, “I don’t think he embraces that.”
Paul’s newsletters “showed good factual information and investment information,” Ivers said. “It was a public service, helping people understand and equip them to avoid an unsound monetary policy.”
