What a sad little man

GannonGuckert is now posting "news" stories on his Web site. I'll be curious to see which right-wing sites pick up the news feed of a gay hooker.

I only bring this up because the story itself is just sad. It's about yesterday's lower court ruling in California granting equal marriage rights to gay couples. In it, GannonGuckert quotes "the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign" - the only pro-gay source cited in his story - then he goes on to quote 6 religious right sources opposed to gay marriage. He also notes that "President George W. Bush called for a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage."

If a heterosexual reporter had written this article it would be considered absurdly biased. HRC is a "pro-homosexual" group? Homosexual? As a straight guy, you MIGHT get away with using that word. As a gay guy, the use of the word homosexual is downright messed up. The word homosexual is now often considered derogatory by gays, partly because the word is used incessantly by the religious right for the express purpose of denigrating gays (the word can sound dirty and clinical). While this can certainly depend on context, in this context no NORMAL gay person would use the phrase "pro-homosexual" for anything. You'd say "pro-gay" because you'd realize the inherent bias and forced and pejorative nature of "pro-homosexual."

Then there's his description of Bush's constitutional amendment as being "to protect traditional marriage." Sure, that's what Bush says, but again, I think it's odd a gay person would describe Bush's amendment as "protecting marriage" without any qualifiers. You don't need to be biased the other way, but don't buy into Bush's language and putative reason for the amendment. No reporter should do that, and a gay reporter doing it is, again, odd.

And finally, he uses 6 religious right sources and one pro-gay source? Huh. For a straight reporter that would be egregiously biased and a major screw up (to wit, our recent brouhaha with the LA Times when they had 6 or 7 sources pro-Gannon in a story and one source pro us - in that instance, the Times gave us an op ed to counter their story). But for a gay reporter, quoting six sources to bash gays and only one source to defend gays is not only biased on its face, but it's creepy as hell. Why? Because when the discrimination/bias is about you, you're more sensitive about noticing it (to wit, the fact that I immediately went "six sources to one?"). There's no way GannonGuckert didn't know he was quoting 6 on one side and one on the other.

The creepy part about all of this is that it's hard to believe GannonGuckert didn't know exactly what he was doing. It seems that he chose to severely bias his story to push the religious right view on gay civil rights - that is, that they don't and shouldn't exist. That kind of bias is disturbing from a straight person, but from a gay person it's seriously messed up.

I'm sure Jeff will be amused that we're writing about him again. Maybe some day when no one remembers his name anymore (like in two months) he'll sit back and look at his life and consider why in order to strike back at his supposed enemies he always feels the need to bash himself.