What I intended to be a simple resignation and explanation seems to have turned into a bit of a media game of ping pong over gay porn as content, the latest round starting with Michael Triplett’s “Does The Gay Media Have A Sex Addiction?” in Mediaite yesterday afternoon, followed by Joe.My.God sharing his thoughts.
So I thought I’d share a few of mine.
I wrote Michael to thank him for doing the piece because, as I said, our community still needs to and wants to have this discussion. What I’ve learned about the discussion is, perhaps unsurprisingly, my readers, by a large majority, don’t find “porn as content” acceptable, and readers at other sites, like, Bilerico, do. That’s not a judgment, merely a statement of fact, no more surprising or judgmental than some folks like Pepsi, and some like Coke.
But the Mediaite piece does, as one commenter put it quite well (and, full disclosure, I do know the commenter,) “conflate sexy ads, about which no one is complaining, with editorial content of a sexual nature, which was the subject of David’s concern.”
To be clear, as many have missed the point, I resigned because I don’t believe in porn-as-content. Sexy ads, OK. Porn as editorial content, not OK. Not in a serious news and opinion site.
That point, unfortunately, appears to have been cloudy, and even blogger Joe Jervis of Joe.My.God, for whom I have great respect, originally missed that. Of the Mediaite piece, Joe, in “How Sexy Is Too Sexy For Gay Blogs?,” first wrote that I quit over a porn ad. He later changed his post to read that it was a editorial piece, not an ad. But when I read Joe’s original piece, there were already 115 comments, so the point was missed by many. Oh well.
I have to hand it to Joe for actually asking the question, as I did of my readers. Joe (wryly!) wrote,
“Is JMG too porn-ish? Do you tend to dismiss an LGBT activism site as non-serious if they occasionally veer into sexual imagery? Obviously, this is a decades-old dilemma for gay print, but a relatively recent issue for gay blogs which are mostly read at work. Like you are doing right now.”
Back to my comments to the author of the Mediaite piece. I trust Michael won’t mind if I share with you some of my comments to him. Here’s a portion:
Most of all, I wish the discussion had veered into the issue of perception. If we want to be taken seriously as a community striving for equality, we need more people doing real journalism and not packaging it in between pornographic “editorial” content.
I think, and perhaps appropriately for the venue, you looked at the issue from, as you put it, “reality.”
“The reality, however, is that sites with a large gay male following like a little sexy with their news.”
I’ve always worked from the perspective of not trying to do what is expected, but what is possible. And I believe far more in journalism and in credibility and integrity than in “sexy pictures.”
Does sex sell? Of course. But that’s the easy way out. To me, and to many I know, quality, credibility, honesty, integrity, and working hard to achieve our equality is a lot sexier.
I’ll leave it at that.
OK, one last point.
Thank you. Thank you to everyone who emailed me, tweeted me, commented on this blog, DM’d me, texted me, called me, and offered their support. I am so very grateful for the wonderful readers I have here, and friends I have on Twitter and Facebook, and of course, in “real life.” Thank you for supporting me and my work and my goals, and thank you for sharing my work with others. That is a compliment so gratifying you cannot imagine.