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By BuckcuB
They are, instead, a direct quote from an obscure conservative Catholic columnist, Claudio Salvucci, printed May 17 in a suburban daily newspaper, the Bucks County Courier Times. Having largely lost the battles to spread their hate and prejudice through the medium of big-city newspapers, homophobe columnists are turning instead to suburban dailies to promulgate their malevolence, and Mr. Salvucci's recent column is a vicious example of this trend. The Courier-Times is Bucks County's largest daily newspaper. Bucks County just happens to be a wealthy suburb immediately adjacent to the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -- whose recent "Pridefest" celebration is the nation's largest festival of and for equal rights for gays and lesbians.
Unlike big-city newspapers, which generally have a clearly- stated political ideology which is clearly-understood by their readerships, suburban newspapers inhabit a more vague territory while clinging to the journalist tenet of presenting balanced coverage. "...Intimidation is the modus operandi" of the gay community, Salvucci informed his readers. And as to holding Pridefest in Philadelphia to coincide with the week containing Mother's Day, Salvucci wrote: "Shame on us" (conservatives) "for thinking that the holidays of love and life were more worthy of societal recognition than a week dedicated to a sexual fetish." It may seem that the ranting of an obscure columnist in a small newspaper is no great threat to full equal rights for gays and lesbians. In fact, Salvucci and his ilk are taking advantage of a demographic truth--the presidents, executives, and CEOs of the large corporations operating in big cities like Philadelphia rarely if ever actually reside in those cities. They reside, instead, in the comfortable suburbs adjacent. And while those high- powered officials read the Wall Street Journal and the big-city daily, they also read the local suburban paper -- where reactionaries like Salvucci can spread the hate and poison more-respectable newspapers would refuse to print. Venturing into the realm of gay parenting, Salvucci told readers that gays and lesbians have "...scorn for the miracle of conception and birth," and declared it is only the "envy" of gays and lesbians that "What they cannot do is create that child in the first place" which leads to gay and lesbian adoptions. Gay activists have long agreed that the most effective way to counter this sort of homophobia is a deluge of condemnation from the community-at-large. Staid, middle-of-the-road suburban newspapers do not want and can't afford the publicity and outcry of such condemnation -- it makes advertisers reluctant to promote their products, and newspapers depend on advertising revenue. When homophobic columnists like Mr. Salvucci take their hateful culture war to the suburbs, they count on suburban papers' laissez-faire attitude to get their savage prejudice into print, and distributed to a large audience. Only by protesting this sort of vicious propaganda can the gay community stop the spread of homophobia. Protest Salvucci's homophobic columnizing: Claudio Salvucci's email address is: salvucci@netaxs.com. PatriciaWalker is the executive editor of the Bucks County Courier Times; her email address is: pwalker@calkinsnewspapers.com. The paper's Editorial Page editor is Guy Petroziello; his email address is: gpetroziello@calkinsnewspapers.com. |
Conservative Columnist Claudio Salvucci 
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