Shame on Bay Windows!

Two weeks after her paper failed to report on the brutal transgender hate crime in Lowell, and on the day for same-sex marriage, editor Susan Ryan-Vollmar chose to use her editorial space to bash the Ask Tell Act Coalition and the Dyke March organizers.

Susan's criticisms of our coalition are completely ignorant. She fails to understand that we have succeeded in sparking long overdue important discussions in our community, and she assumes we have no idea what queer pride is about. She must have been wearing two eye patches on Pride day because she didn't notice the sea of people supporting our coalition by wearing pink armbands, t-shirts, and more. Her reduction of the coalition into a small divisive group looks to me like journalistic bullying of our own community. In a speech I gave on Pride day I mentioned that I thought the way the media portrays groups like ours is a shame, but that our work has a bigger impact than their shotty and manipulative reporting. I still beleive that.

Ryan-Vollmar's criticism of the Dyke March decision is also uninformed, and frankly it is transphobic. She should have known the Dyke March has a historic policy of not allowing Mich-fest performers. It is sad that Bay Windows chose to portray our coalition as a nasty little divisive group rather than the broad inclusive coalition that we are.