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 Zealots Intimidate the Media Andrew Sullivan: Is he Reinforcing Anti-Gay Propaganda? Religious Fanatics Portray a Boy's Killers as Typically Gay |
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Compiled By GayToday
"The Dirkhising crime was a heinous case of child rape and murder. The Shepard crime symbolized the ferocity of homophobia-related murder and cast a spotlight on the need for hate crimes legislation. The violence against Matthew Shepard represented the extreme extension that many in the GLBT community have gone through at the hands of homophobic straights. "It is not a very long path from the child perceived as gay being slammed against lockers while classmates and faculty snicker or look the other way, to what fringe personalities might do if they feel society accepts the meting out of anti-GLBT abuse. The Shepard killing made America re-examine its values and consider what it was like to be ostracized, hated and targeted for violence, solely for who one was.
Miller charges that a recent widely-circulated New Republic column by neo-conservative gay writer Andrew Sullivan has provided the extreme right with "ammunition in their fraudulent war" against the gay community. Sullivan has blamed "political correctness" in the media for its not having covered Dirkhising's murder, thereby supporting anti-gay claims. Sullivan writes: "Unless you frequent rabid right-wing sites on the Internet or read The Washington Times, you've probably never heard of this case. The New York Times has yet to run a single story about it. The Washington Post has run only a tiny Associated Press report--and an ombudsman's explanation of why no further coverage is merited." Miller objects to Sullivan's placing of such blame on some of the nation's foremost newspapers. "Andrew Sullivan just doesn't get it," he says. Miller notes that Sullivan never asks the more relevant question that Miller himself has posed, namely, had Dirkhising been a girl, would the nation's press still be expected to show such interest? "Why does Andrew Sullivan never ask that question?" Scott Miller asks. Miller writes: "Rather, after acknowledging that this tragedy is in the news merely because of right-wing opportunists making their case against gay men as predators, he berates the GLBT community for not seeming to care about it. "Andrew, what would you have us do?" Miller asks. "Do you really think that we don't feel sad and want to see the murderers punished severely? Many in the community have already expressed that. That is not the issue." He continues: "Sullivan postulates that this murder is being ignored because it is politically incorrect to examine crimes committed by gays." Miller, recalling 1997's famous gay serial killer, Andrew Cunanan, ably refutes Sullivan's neo-conservative thesis. If it is "politically incorrect" to report on gay murderers, such "would be news to the families of the victims of Andrew Cunanan," Miller says, citing "just one example." What Sullivan should have asked, argues Miller, "is why, in this case, the sexuality of the murderers was stressed. When little girls are murdered does the heterosexuality of the predator become the story? Do we take that as an indictment of straight men? Sullivan lists statistics.....yet how many stories of child murders committed by straight men against little girls get covered?" Where, Miller asks, are Sullivan's statistics about such little girls? Demolishing Sullivan's accusation that "political correctness" has infected a media that has ignored the murder, Miller points out that: "News outlets chose to ignore sensationalizing the story, not because of the large numbers of gays in the press, but because they don't report on the equivalent cases of heterosexuals murdering children. These outlets are not stupid...they see the anti-GLBT agenda at play. The did not want to be party to the exploitation of a 13-year old boy's horrific killing. "Because Andrew Sullivan chose not to ask those questions he can now have the pleasure of being used by journalistic 'pillars of virtue' like the New York Post, who quoted him today as an affirmation that there is a great pro-gay media conspiracy. "He has done us all a great disservice." |
