But we will!
This news comes from Chris Sanders of the Tennessee Equality Project. When a member of one of TEP’s divisions submitted this letter to the Herald-Citizen out of Cookeville, Tennessee, he was told that they wouldn’t publish it because they are a “family values newspaper.” You see, in small Tennessee towns like Cookeville, LGBT youth are simply not part of families. This is evidenced, of course, by the number of gay teens in Tennessee and nationwide who become homeless when their parents kick them out like discarded trash. Out of sight, out of mind — it’s the Southern Christian way, ain’t it, y’all? Here is Shayne Bilbrey’s letter:
It’s okay to be Gay
High school graduation is just around the corner, and well over a thousand Putnam County students will be graduating this year. Most of them had the normal teenage years, goingto prom with the person they love, getting that first kiss, or getting their driver’s license at sixteen. Yet for some kids that dream was a long shot, because some of this year’s graduates are Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual. Most of these students couldn’t have that dream life, because they were usually the primary targets for bullying. The bullying would vary from daily taunting such as being called a “fag” or a “queer.” The students usually behind the bullying would often cite the bible, or what their preacher told them. This is very troubling for that, in a society that values individualism, we can’t honor these kids fundamental right to let them be whoever they want to be and to be with. I know that when I came out, during my senior year in high school, I was faced with some backlash, but even before that I was called many names, and felt at times that I was worthless, which is similar to how some of these students feel. It hurts to be bullied at school, but to be bullied in your own home is incomprehensible. Thankfully, I have a family who loves me for who I am, and for which I am blessed for. Yet, it saddens me when I hear of some of my friends, which have come out to their parents, have had to face ridicule from their own parents. Some parents go as far as to disowning their own child, calling them a failure, and sending them to a gay to straight camp. I don’t understand why a parent would do such a thing, but sadly it happens a lot. Well I‘m here to say that, things will and do get better, granted they’re still some that disagree, but it does get better. We should all be able to value ourselves, love others, and be able to accept all for whom they are. We are all God’s children, and he loves us all in the same way. So if you are Gay, Lesbian, Transsexual, and bisexual, it’s okay to be you, and be proud of who you are, and will become. Love, cherish, and embrace thy own self.
If you’d like to [respectfully] let the editor of the Herald-Citizen know that you are gay, were once or are now a teen, and that you are indeed part of a family, especially if you hail from the South, that e-mail address is editor@herald-citizen.com. Or you can visit their Facebook page. Either. Both.
God, Tennessee, get with it.
Wayne, long time follower and poster of your organization. I like what you do and have read your books and find them inspirational. I even follow you on my Twitter and Facebook(please, don’t creep out on this okay?).
I usually find myself agreeing most of the time with your articles and all, however, this is something I need to clarify with the GLBT community and I think it bears repeating because I don’t think the message is getting through.
I’m all about the First Amendment: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Expression, and so on. I may not agree with the decisions or what is being said or what is being expressed or what is being printed in the media. However, I will stand by the side of those and fight for the right to say, do , or decide what is in their best interest.
Now, I’m not negating Shayne Bilbrey’s right to have his letter published in a “family values” newspaper…that’s his right. However, you have to come at this from an editors point of view. If his readership and audience are mainly people who believe in the traditional “man and woman, two and a half kids, white picket fence” kind of values, then that also is his right to choose what gets printed and what does not.
I think the message that we tend to send out to those who do not agree with our points of view is this: Either allow our community a voice or we will take you to court, boycott your business, write mass e-mails until you have to bend to our demands. And i think that this is what Christians mean by “having our lifestyle choices shoved down their throats.”
Yes, it is sad that suicide rates are high among teenagers who identify as gay,lesbian, and/or bi-sexual, or transgender. And as a gay man myself, I have been subjected to the taunts and the ridicule of being gay when I was in high school. However, I survived and went on to lead a happy productive life. And I am not trying to negate the fact that these incidents over the past year or so never happened or that they are tragic. However, consider who it is that you are dealing with, as far as when this Herald-Citizen newspaper said they are a “family values” newspaper.
Let me pose a question, and anyone of you can answer this…poster or even you, Wayne, since you yourself are an author and editor: What if the roles were reversed? For instance, what if a pastor or someone from the Family Values Coalition were to write an article or editorial on the sins of being a homosexual and how you can leave this lifestyle behind. Would you print this article or editorial in your blog/newsletter/gay magazine, or any other gay publication? I mean, if we are to be all about the equality and inclusion of ourselves in the heterosexual community, would we NOT want to have a path of dialogue open to both gay and straight people regardless of belief or point of view? Just something to think about.
Ray,
I understand what you are saying and agree with you in some sense. I think the difference in this case is the Herald-Citizen is not published at least to it’s readers as a family value newspaper and doesn’t advertise it as such. It just happens to be the local newspaper for the area. If they marketed themselves as such then I think your argument is valid. If not then I think we have every right to pressure the paper and those who advertise in it.
Ray:
Thanks for sharing your opinion. You pose the question:
“For instance, what if a pastor or someone from the Family Values Coalition were to write an article or editorial on the sins of being a homosexual and how you can leave this lifestyle behind. Would you print this article or editorial in your blog/newsletter/gay magazine, or any other gay publication?”
My reply: It would be my right not to publish it. It would be their right to criticize my decision and lobby be to reverse it. That is how free speech works. We only have to give people the right to engage in free speech. The flip side is we have a responsibility to criticize (or praise) their decisions. I am bashed by the right wing all the time. That is their right and so be it.
Unfortunately, our opponents whine and scream victim when we challenge their harmful opinions. They think free speech means they don’t get challenged. That is not true.
Finally, Ray, we have a dialogue with straight people all the time and a majority now agree with us. The remaining people opposed to equality need to be persuaded that they are wrong and causing harm.
This occurs by raising consciousness — which includes criticism. Too many people think sweeping issues under the rug and engaging in empty pleasantries is genuine dialogue. It’s not.
True dialogue with opponents is quite uncomfortable and makes both sides think and examine their assumptions.
Most of the people who engage in such “dialogue” have it backwards. They think good manners equals substance, when sometimes the niceties can be an obstacle to having a real, honest conversation. It is better to put out ones point of view and debate the heart of the matter, than to dance around a topic.
When a newspaper says that they will not publish gay material because it is a “family values newspaper” — that renders my family invisible. I will never question their right to make that decision. But I will scream like holy hell and tell the world what an offensive, small-minded and thoughtless decision it is.
Thanks for covering this. Here is a copy of my email to the paper:
Dear Editor,
I was dismayed to hear that you equate family values with silencing support for all of the family members in Cookesville.
http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2011/06/16965/
I value family. I value faith. I value community. Most of us do.
Because I had a loving family & was exposed to wonderful church families (as a preacher’s kid & grandkid), I learned that we are to love everyone; especially those who are feeling isolated, rejected & left emotionally battered and beaten along the roadside of life.
Jesus & the Good Samaritan both exemplified the value of reaching out to a hurting individual. And that is the reality of many LGBTs- hurting in isolation b/c of rejection from their families, churches and communities.
Think of a difficult time when you wanted to know that you matter.
Letting our fellow citizens, and particularly our kids, know that they matter and are valued is a basic way to show them our love.
Please reconsider your decision & run the letter.
Letting everyone know that they are valued IS a family value.
Thanks for your time~
I’m a citizen of Cookeville TN and a personal friend of Shayne. Shayne submitted his letter for publication in the Herald-Citizen’s Letters to Editor. This is a forum for anyone to express their opinions and views on whatever topic they choose. As such, the paper should have printed his letter.
It’s not as if it was a Letter FROM the editor (an editorial). That could be seen as a tacit agreement with the content and of Shayne’s opinion and views.
But by not publishing Shayne’s letter (and for such ridiculous reasons) the paper is being discriminatory toward him for sexual orientation reasons.
Of course, we are talking about the state that just passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. I guess my local paper is taking that seriously.
My letter to the editor of the Herald-Citizen that I just submitted.
A friend of mine recently submitted a letter to this paper to be published in the Letters to the Editor. His letter was rejected because “it was not appropriate because this is a family values newspaper”, according to the Herald-Citizen. I have read the letter in question and wonder what was it that was so offensive? The author writes about his experiences growing up gay and how gay teens should not be bullied but accepted and treated with respect and kindness. Are acceptance, respect, and kindness not family values of this community? Isn’t the Herald-Citizen against bullying? Or is it that this paper is taking the recent repugnant “Don’t Say Gay” bill to the extreme? I have news for you: gay and lesbians are a part of this community and have families and values just as heterosexual people do. Their voices deserve to be heard.
Ray said “Let me pose a question, and anyone of you can answer this…poster or even you, Wayne, since you yourself are an author and editor: What if the roles were reversed? For instance, what if a pastor or someone from the Family Values Coalition were to write an article or editorial on the sins of being a homosexual and how you can leave this lifestyle behind. Would you print this article or editorial in your blog/newsletter/gay magazine, or any other gay publication?”.
No I would not print it for the same reason that if I was printing an anti-murder, anti-theft article I wouldn’t print an article from someone praising theft and murder. One point of view is unassailably correct and the other is undeniably wrong. The right thing to do is to print the gay supportive letter and it is never right to print an anti-gay article.
You’re acting like all viewpoints have an equal measure of validity, that’s most certainly not the case. Some views are moral and some are not, period.
Thanks to WAYNE for that response! That about sums up our ‘work’ for the last decade! Got to keep on it. We do have the right to complain! Remember physicists and engineers, even social engineers agree.. that to cause ‘an event’ to happen you must use the appropriate tool applied in a specific direction with just the correct amount of force.
Okay, I’m the person in focus in the article, so I thought I would chime in a bit. I understand they have the right not publish that, and I understand that completely. That’s what I told the editor when he said that the paper was a “family values” newspaper, and that the editor didn’t feel “comfortable” for publishing it. I just find it troubling is that they, The Herald-Citizen, publishes letter to the editors by mostly offensive from people who claim to be Christians, and also by mostly conservative readers. Granted they are a few times when they including liberal points of view, but that’s very far few and between so they do have moments when they do including both sides of the political spectrum. Just to let you all know the Herald-Citizen is the largest newspaper in the Upper Cumberland, it goes into several surrounding counties, and doesn’t cover news just in Cookeville, but in all of those surrounding areas. So that’s why I found it somewhat hard to believe that they would not publish it, because our area is very diverse in its population, and also home to one of the best universities in the state of Tennessee. Now it was to my understanding that the newspaper’s letter to the editor section was supposed to be a showcase of varying opinions on a wide range of topics either good or bad. That’s what I was trying to do here, was to let our voice be heard in the paper. I grew up in a very small Tennessee town, and I was picked on and teased by people for who I am. I don’t look any different than the next guy, and I act like everyone else. I just don’t see why it would be a bad thing to be yourself, that’s my goal for the letter. Now Wayne, I totally and completely agree with you and that the editor does have the right to publish and not to publish, that’s not the issue here. The issue is the fact they didn’t publish it because it didn’t fit into their Christian Idealism. For example their managing editor left the H-C a few years ago to become the editor of a now defunct Christian magazine. So you know where they want to serve, and they are extremely bias on certain groups of people. This paper is a joke to some in the community because they don’t vet their stories properly, they have hardly any to no copy editors, and they choose to sometime publish stories in A.P. style. Not to mention that the paper was founded by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. So I thought I would chime in with my opinion and I just want to say thank you again for publishing it here on your website. I encourage all of your readers, and followers to press the Herald-Citizen for answers, and to hold them accountable for this. Editors do have final say, but their faith, values, and moral judgement shouldn’t be factored into the Letter to the Editor section. So thank you again, and I just hope people enjoyed my letter, and hopefully it will inspire someone to stand up for themselves.
[...] Tennessee ‘Family Values Paper’ Won’t Publish Letter on LGBT Youth Difficulties. Read more [...]
“Family value” newspaper. Interesting since the Married Editor got someone (other than his wife) pregnant and left his family for her. (Just happened in the last couple of Months).
Letter to the Herald-Citizen
Cookeville, TN
As a Christian woman it saddens my heart when I hear that a young person killed himself because of bullying. It breaks my heart even more when I hear it was because of peers who threw scripture at him, telling him he is an abomination to God.
I know that we are called to love… the greatest commandment is LOVE. When someone is so lost and all we can say is “you are an abomination” what we are doing is cutting God out of his or her life. We have given them no hope, and no reason to live. What right do we have to separate them from Him?
These kids need to be loved, by us, Christians. Do we accept a lifestyle that they are heading into? No. We should only give them hope, that they can find hope in God. We need to reach out and be the first to stop bullying, stop being so righteous, so that we ourselves don’t find ourselves fallen.
To really love someone takes more than just mere words. It takes accepting them and being patient with them. To be long-suffering and to NEVER give up on them.
My God is an awesome God and He is capable of all things seen and unseen… Why not let God be God and let His people just do what He has asked us to do…. LOVE. Let the bondage of sin be destroyed by love NOT hate.
Any church speaking of hate is just that, hate. But, a church speaking of love and help and endless hope is a church that is truly after God’s heart.
So is there a Church here in the Upper Cumberland who is willing to accept all people, no matter what their lifestyle? I don’t know. What an amazing chance we would have to speak to the world, if all churches could unite and stand for these souls. Just let them know that, WE, God’s people will love them. We know that God will do His part and soften hearts all over the Upper Cumberland. No one will feel like they want to die.