* NOM's nationwide "One Man, One Woman" bus tour takes a turn: Dude with sign voices support for lynching gays.

* Via Broadsheet, the gays aren't the only ones destroying marriage: Sleeping in separate beds may also be threatening the institution.

* Sady Doyle writes in support of snark (kinda):

"Snark" is one of those fundamentally goofy internet neologisms that we could try to fight, but are better-off just learning to work with. The word denotes mean humour: sarcasm, venom, the art of the put-down. Mostly, it's an attitude. Snark is the kids at the back of the class, heckling the substitute teacher; it's the voice of people who feel stifled, talked down to, or left out; the tool of people who have discovered that honing in on the weaknesses of those in power, exposing them publicly (if only to their own circle of friends), and reducing them to figures of fun (if only in their own minds), makes them feel a little less helpless.

* The Washington Blade has more on the death of Secrets dancer Mark Gower:

Although it couldn’t be immediately determined how long Gower was dead inside his apartment, White said police indicated he could have died shortly after he was discovered missing, which was nearly two weeks before the body was found.

* Lilith redux: NPR talks to 700 female musicians about the industry.

* Scientific American's Jesse Bering debunks feminism:

The IAT was designed to assess people’s “hidden” beliefs about minority groups. If you ask folks in, say, a straightforward interview format, most will tend to report explicitly that they’re not racist, or that they don’t think obese people are stupid or that those with handicaps are dull. Obviously such views aren’t exactly okay to say aloud or to even acknowledge having as a fleeting thought. But the IAT presumably flushes out people’s unconscious (implicit) negative associations with such social outliers.

Although administration of the IAT varies, the basic idea is this. Participants see randomized combinations of negative and positive words at the top right and left corners of a computer screen (for example, in one trial, they might see “lazy” on the left versus “hard-working” on the right). Then words representing different social targets appear in the middle of the screen (for instance, “black” in one trial and “white” in the next) and participants are asked to rapidly decide—by pressing the e key for the left side or the i key for the right—which of the two words at the top of the screen it belongs with. In some cases, the participants are instructed to match the social target with the stereotypical concept; in other cases, they’re told to associate the social target with the non-stereotypical concept.

So implicit bias is said to be evidenced by faster reaction times when stereotype-consistent words are paired with a marginalized social group (e.g., black-lazy) relative to other groups (e.g., white-lazy), and slower reaction times to pairings of positive words with the marginalized group (e.g., black-intelligent) relative to the comparison group (e.g., white-intelligent). The idea is that, when asked to match positive concepts to words describing marginalized outgroup members, participants’ latency of response captures a dragging of their cognitive heels because they’re working against the grain of their inner bigot.

So guess what happened in Jenen’s IAT study when college-aged men and women were asked to match the category “feminist” with either positive or negative words? The most pertinent findings were that the participants were significantly slower to associate positive words (“happy,” “joy,” “peace,” “wonderful”) with the feminist than they were negative words (“awful,” “evil,” “nasty,” “terrible”).

Bering takes these results to mean that the feminist movement has been hijacked by "the most obnoxious, peevish and humorless feminists," turning it into "a term loaded with negative stereotypes of the kind exemplified by [the] sour and overly vigilant, accusatory, men-are-brutes outlook on life."

So, can we also use the IAT results to conveniently ignore ingrained racism and instead accuse lazy people of "hijacking" the black community? Or does the poor view of the feminist movement instead reflect the work of people like Bering, who are invested in framing feminism exclusively in negative terms?

* The Washington Blade's abandoned National Press Club newsroom remains abandoned.

* On acronyms:  Michelle Rhee chooses the term "LGBTQ" for her Blade op-ed.

* SAFER Campus covers the latest in cutesy nicknames for sexual assailants: In L.A., serial rapist and murderer is known as "The Grim Sleeper."

* Seed Magazine reviews Sex at Dawn, a husband-and-wife team's take-down of human monogamy:

When we think of the first swinger parties most of us imagine 1970s counter-culture, we don’t picture Top Gun fighter pilots in World War II. Yet, according to researchers Joan and Dwight Dixon, it was on military bases that “partner swapping” first originated in the United States. As the group with the highest casualty rate during the war, these elite pilots and their wives “shared each other as a kind of tribal bonding ritual” and had an unspoken agreement to care for one another if a woman’s husband didn’t make it back home. Like the sexy apes known as bonobos, this kind of open sexuality served a social function that provided a way to relieve stress and form long-lasting bonds.

Photo via Nationaal Archief

* Seventy-five-year-old Mamie "Peanut" Johnson, the "first and only woman to pitch in the Negro American League," is set to be commemorated with her own field in Northeast D.C.

* The National Area Woman's Foundation doles out some advice to the new cast of "Real Housewives of D.C." "Since I moved to Washington, D.C., I have been incredibly impressed by the number of intelligent, genuine, caring, friendly and strong women I’ve met," writes Mariah Craven. "Those women will not be on the 'Real Housewives of DC.'”

* The Washington Blade factors heavily into the Village Voice's story on the "death rattle" of gay print media:

Making things even harder for gay media—new and old—is the not-unpleasant problem of continuous and thorough examination of LGBT issues in big media like The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Voice. Their coverage threatens to make already-threatened gay community weeklies, with their much more limited resources, redundant. Consider this: The photo that caught notorious professional homophobe George Alan Rekers with a male escort at an airport two months ago wasn’t taken for a gay paper, but for the Voice’s sister paper, Miami New Times.

It's true that LGBT news has gone mainstream, but it's a bit odd for the Voice to lump itself and Miami New Times together with such "big media" dailies as The New York Times and the Washington Post. The Miami New Times, like the gay papers that the Voice declares as dying, is a weekly with limited resources and an equally uncertain future.

* Metro Weekly profiles a "model blood donor" who is ineligible to donate because he has sex with men. Says Lee Storrow: "I think it's powerful that I am someone who … would have been a lifetime donor—and could potentially be a lifetime donor—but isn't eligible because of this policy.''

* LGBT activist Peter Rosenstein on why he's not voting for Adrian Fenty:

Candidate Fenty promised support for marriage equality but Mayor Fenty never spoke up for it. He didn’t testify for it or allow his director of the Office of GLBT Affairs to do so. Compare that to the advocacy of mayors like Gavin Newsom and now even Michael Bloomberg and it really comes up short. He did sign a veto-proof bill and held a signing ceremony to be in on the celebration. He did sign a veto-proof bill and held a signing ceremony to be in on the celebration.

Candidate Fenty promised to fight against hate crimes. Mayor Fenty never even managed to get the words hate crimes out of his mouth. He refused to meet with the community at-large even though these crimes have been increasing. Candidate Fenty promised to hold a GLBT Economic Summit. Mayor Fenty refused to make this an event of the mayor’s office and has never found time to attend one. Candidate Fenty promised to take the message of fighting HIV/AIDS to the community, including the faith community. Mayor Fenty has never spoken to a faith-based group about HIV/AIDS.

Rick Rosendall's take: "This is too long, too one-sided, and too much about Peter Rosenstein."

In this week's cover story, I examine the cultural relevance of D.C.'s competing LGBT publications, Metro Weekly and the Washington Blade (now the D.C. Agenda). Are you a Metro Weekly man? Or are you a Blade man? Or are you not an upper-middle-class middle-aged gay man who lives in Northwest Washington D.C., and therefore largely ambivalent? File your allegiances in the comments.

Illustration by Robert Ullman

The Washington Blade served as D.C.'s gay newspaper of record from 1969 until Monday morning. This Friday, the paper intends to return as the D.C. Agenda. Editor Kevin Naff confirmed the re-Christening this evening at an event at the Hard Rock Hotel supporting the paper's rebirth.
Naff, who was accompanied by about 100 supporters at the Hard Rock Hotel event, says he believes that all of the Washington Blade's former staffers are in on the new project. Their first task, he says, was to agree on a new name for the paper. D.C. Advocate Agenda, Naff says, was "a group decision of about 25 of us." Earlier today, the paper sealed the deal by securing its new Twitter account, @DCAgenda.

Now, the staff just needs to decide which aspects of the Blade to carry on in its new Agenda. "This is still very new," Naff says. "We're still looking at everything. Our core strength has always been news coverage, and that's going to remain our core strength. But we're not going to ignore the other areas, as well."

The new outfit will need to get its editorial priorities straight quickly. The first issue of the paper, due to hit newsstands this Friday, Nov. 20, has already sold "six pages of ads without even trying," Naff reports. "We were initially thinking of releasing it just as a newsletter, a leaflet, just to say, 'hey, we're still around,'" Naff says. "Now, we have plenty of space to fill."

It's 12:30 p.m. outside of the downtown offices of the former Washington Blade, which served as Washington D.C.'s gay newspaper of record from 1969 until this morning. Just hours ago, the staff of the Blade learned that its parent company, Window Media, had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, that the Blade was closed effective immediately, and that the paper's two dozen employees were all out of work.

Now, two guys in purple shirts are methodically removing stacks of boxes out of the office, located on the fifth floor of the National Press Club building. What's inside? "Just personal belongings," one says, as he heads to the elevator. Everybody has until 3:30 p.m. to clear out.

Reporters have been calling the office all morning in search of a comment, having only heard confirmation of the paper's closure via Tweet. Finally, Editor-In-Chief Kevin Naff comes outside to make a statement. Hold on—he has to pee. When he returns from the bathroom, he addresses reporters in front of the Blade's glass-enclosed offices. Inside, a couple of Window Media staffers can be seen shuffling around a glass conference room, hard at work dismantling the newspaper. One of them wears an eye-patch. "I can't speak on behalf of the company, and I can't speak here," Naff says. So the group heads around the corner, where Naff stands in front of another large window looking in on Window brass. "You can refer to me as the former editor of the Blade," Naff says.

He rolls out the details: Naff heard this morning that the paper was kaput. The staff began forming plans to start a new publication within "about five minutes," Naff says. More information will be announced tomorrow. It won't be called the Blade. "We're going to take a day off to pack, and then dust ourselves off and get back to work," Naff says. The staff's focus is on the future, he says—Naff can't even immediately remember what stories the Blade had in the works for its next issue.

Other former employees are focused on the past two weeks. A woman steps off the elevator, a cell phone clutched to her ear. "And the worst thing is that we were supposed to get paid today," she says, before running into one of her former co-workers and enveloping him in a hug. She doesn't have a public comment. Lou Chibbaro Jr., the Blade's longest-running employee, is there to see what he can salvage from the past thirty years. Chibbaro arrived back at the office with a pack full of folding cardboard boxes in order to cart away some "personal papers and things like that . . . mementos, some award plaques." Chibbaro won't say if he'll be involved in Naff's new paper. "We're interested in keeping the best of what we had going. But I can't comment on what's going on right now," he says.

Robbie Barnett, one of the guys in the purple shirts, is back from unloading another dolly full of Blade leftovers. Barnett worked as the Blade's distribution coordinator until this morning, when he walked into the office in the middle of the closure announcement. Barnett says the news came directly from COO Steve Myers and CFO Mike Kitchens. Myers is the one in the eye-patch, Barnett says: "I think he might be ill or something." Myers and Kitchens did most of the talking, Barnett says. "None of us really said anything." The atmosphere, he says, was just "grim."

Barnett says that he has not been asked to finish up his distribution duties by removing Blade newspaper boxes from the streets. For now, Barnett is just helping to unload the paper from the National Press Club, box by box. Steve Cheverton, a close friend of the paper, is also on hand. When Cheverton heard of the paper's closing, he showed up with his Ford F-350 to help employees with the liquidation. "I know a lot of the employees, and I've supported them throughout, in all the gay pride marches and stuff like that," Cheverton says. "I just think it's really without integrity the way they did this . . . The least we can do is help these people take their stuff home."

Photos of former Blade employees by Darrow Montgomery

Today, the District of Columbia secured a temporary restraining order against "Men's Parties," the underground sex club operating out of 1618 14th Street NW. The District filed suit against the owner of the property (1618 14th Street LLC), the club's manager (David J. Butler), and its nonprofit front organization (the D.C. Wrestling Club, Inc.) on Oct. 14.

For now, the D.C. Wrestling Club has been ordered to stop partying, stop advertising, and replace its purposefully nondescript business entrance with some interesting signage:

The party's over—temporarily. "Defendants DC Wrestling Club and David J. Butler may not operate or allow to be operated at 1618 14th Street NW Washington DC any business until such a time as they obtain from the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs a certificate of occupancy for such activity and all required licenses for any other legal business activity."

The weekly Washington Blade ad revenue is over, too. "Defendants must immediately cease promoting any services or events at the Property in any medium, including, but not limited to, newspaper, radio, television, or internet advertisements."

But the D.C. Wrestling Club is alive and well! "Defendants must immediately place a sign stating 'D.C. WRESTLING CLUB, INC. REMAINS OPEN FOR BUSINESS, HOWEVER THERE WILL BE NO MEN'S PARTIES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE" on the front door of the property at 1618 14th Street NW, Washington, DC in a spot that is immediately visible to anyone who attempts to patronize the 'Men's Parties.'" According to the court order, "the lettering on the sign shall not be less than 1 inch tall and the sign shall be affixed directly to the door,5 feet from the bottom."

That last item contains an interesting little business development for the club. The D.C. Wrestling Club filed for domestic non-profit status with the DCRA in 1994. But last I checked with the agency, the club's charter had been involuntarily revoked sometime between 2004 and 2009. Now, the club again appears to be active. Nonprofit organizations (if they're legit) are required to make their tax forms publicly available. The tax forms would shine some light on the amount of "donations" the club has been reporting for tax purposes, and where the money has been going. I haven't been able to track any forms down yet, but now that I know that the club is back in business, I'll ask for some copies.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Early in the morning of Oct. 4, a member of a private Logan Circle “men’s social club” fell to his death. According to a D.C. police report, the 47-year-old man was discovered in the stairwell leading to the basement of 1618 14th St. NW, the victim of “blunt impact injury of head.” Police believe the man may have tumbled down the stairs; the organizer of the club told the Washington Blade that the man likely fell on a “cement floor,” where he “possibly hit his head on a metal pipe or a brick wall.”

The man’s injury was sustained during the regular activities of the club, which include nightly gay sex events called “Men’s Parties,” as well as meetings of the “Jack Off Enthusiasts of Washington and Baltimore.” The accident has drawn public scrutiny over the private meetings, as well as a defense: Following the death, the club’s organizer told police that his establishment provides “a safe place for gay men to have consensual sex.”

How does a club meant to provide a “safe place” end up hosting a member’s death? By working off a creative definition of “safe.”

At Men’s Parties, safety doesn’t mean ensuring that the apartment’s stairs, surfaces, and exposed metal pipes provide a secure sexual landscape for party attendees. It doesn’t even mean encouraging members to engage in protected sex. At 1618 14th St., “safe” means ensuring anonymous sex for a group of gay men sporting wedding rings, sensitive careers, or shame.

For a “men’s social club,” the regularly scheduled activities included little socializing. “There is very little to none, in terms of conversation,” says one visitor to the club, who says he has attended Men’s Parties over a dozen times in the past six years. “Everything is kept strictly anonymous. No one asks for phone numbers, and no one ever really leaves with someone else,” he says. “People come there, do their business, and leave.” The club reinforced the anonymity with a cover of darkness. “The steps leading down to the basement floor were very, very dark,” he says. “I think your eyes, under normal circumstances, could adjust. However, the place was still very dark and the steps were very steep.”

Unfortunately for Men’s Parties, police and city officials operate on a more traditional definition of “safety.” The man’s death marks the second major incident at the club to draw the scrutiny of the police, city officials, and neighbors. In 2005, a candle ignited a mattress in the building’s upper floor, causing $5,000 in damages and bringing fire officials inside the club. According to the Blade, the emergency response revealed an establishment with “exit signs, a reception desk, a row of gym lockers, and signs stating the hours the place was open”—but no certificate of occupancy or business licenses. In November of that year, five months following the fire, ads for the parties read: “We are expecting to move soon. Please call for more information.”

But the most heated safety concerns surrounding the Men’s Parties lie outside the scope of city regulation. According to the frequent visitor to the club, “The most dangerous condition there was the lack of condoms.…There are no bowls of condoms upstairs or downstairs, where most of the sex takes place,” he says. “To me, this was always a recipe for disaster.”

At first, Men’s Parties attempted to weather the unwelcome scrutiny of police, city officials, and neighbors. The evening following the death, the club had reopened for business. On Oct. 9, a regular half-page ad ran in the back pages of the Blade, inviting readers to come “socialize.” The same issue contained a news item on the man’s death. But within a week of the incident, the club had shuttered under the weight of exposure. The front gate, typically left ajar to signal that the party is on, had been locked. A message left on the advertised phone number now informs callers, “We are temporarily closed until further notice.”

A typical advertisement in the Washington Blade.

For years, the club had thrived under a thin cover: organized snacking. In an interview with NBC 4, self-identified “volunteer” Skip Miller described the activities of the club: “We have videos. We have sodas. We have snacks,” he said. In a Logan Circle ANC meeting addressing the death, 3rd District police Lieutenant Vanessa Moore said that the head of the club “does not take money per se. He does take donations for chips, dips, and soda. And we’ll leave it at that.”

Club memberships were easy to come by. All you had to do was show up at 1618 14th St. and provide a donation at the door. The club received plenty of donations in recent years, thanks to the shuttering of gay clubs displaced by Nationals Park. As the city’s above-board clubs struggled to secure properties and licenses in new neighborhoods, Men’s Parties reaped the benefits of their closures, under the table, courting business with ads that read: “The spirit of Southeast lives on.” That spirit included a little bit more than light snacking. “No one pays $12 to eat stale pretzels and off-label lemon lime soda,” the visitor says. “The snacks are placed in large communal bowls and grabbed by hands that have been up asses.” The club’s main activity required little overhead. “Many are having bareback sex, but some are only masturbating or receiving oral sex,” he says.

Twelve dollars may be a bit pricey for stale pretzels, but it’s a small price to pay for anonymity. And no one has benefited from the club’s secrecy more than its organizers. In a 2005 item on the fire, the Blade declined to print the organizer’s name because “he is not openly gay at his regular place of work.” The Oct. 4 death prompted the Blade to get a little bit more specific: “The organizer of the men’s parties…asked that he be identified only as David.” Even the run-down conditions of the club may have benefited the organizers. “A lot of people, gay and straight, don’t know the place exists,” says the partygoer. “Among those that do, there is such shame attached to go to the place—not because of the sex, but because it is so dirty, grimy, smelly—that most don’t talk about it openly.”

Records show that David J. Butler incorporated a domestic nonprofit called the “D.C. Wrestling Club” at his Foggy Bottom apartment in 1994. The club’s members were described as “sports enthusiasts, especially of collegiate wrestling.” Butler, 68, is listed as the club’s president, treasurer, and registered agent. The club’s secretary, Robert D. Meza, listed his residence as 1618 14th St. NW. For a time, the incorporation lent an air of legitimacy to party organizers and provided an easy explanation for donation cash flow. The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has since revoked the Wrestling Club’s corporation status.

Butler did not return several messages left at the club’s advertised number, nor did he respond to a note left at his Foggy Bottom residence. Knocks at 1618 14th St. were unanswered.

If Men’s Parties remains closed, its clientele may be left without a place to meet up. Communication among this crowd of anonymous sex seekers, after all, has always been a bit awkward. Several years ago, a flier appeared in the neighborhood that read: “If you had sex with Skip at Men Party 1618 14th St You need to get tested HIV.”

UPDATE: District of Columbia files lawsuit against Men's Parties

D.C. Police Describe Men's Parties Location: Used Condoms, Glory Holes, and a Crucifix

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, one person was killed and another critically injured in a daytime stabbing outside 209 Q St. NW. In the hours following the homicide, police and reporters gathered witness testimony, formed a description of the suspect, and chased likely motives. This time, cops and journalists were also forced to devote resources to another developing story: the gender of the victims.

Within three hours of the incident, three local news sources had independently verified the victims’ gender identity with police. They all got it wrong.

Fox 5 news reporter Roby Chavez gave this report at 3:59 p.m., about an hour and a half after the stabbings occurred. “D.C. Police sources tell Fox  5 officers found two transgender male victims in front of the building when they arrived,” Chavez reported.

At 4:36 p.m., the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan filed his item on the stabbing, also published in the next day’s paper. “Police said the victims, whom they described as ‘transgender males,’ were stabbed shortly after 2:30 p.m. in the 200 block of Q Street NW.”

WUSA9’s Bill Starks weighed in at 5:23 p.m.: “Officers…arrived and found two transgender males in front of the building at 209 Q Street, both suffering from stab wounds.”

The Washington Blade’s Lou Chibbaro was the first to nail down the correct gender identity of the homicide victim, who has since been identified under her legal name, Joshua Mack, as well as her chosen name, Tyli’a. At 7:06 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after the incident occurred, Chibbaro wrote, “One transgender woman was stabbed to death Wednesday and another was in stable condition with stab wounds from an unknown assailant.”

But even after Mack’s correct gender identity was established, the struggle continued. In “D.C. Transgender Community Outraged After Fatal Stabbing”—filed more than 24 hours after the incident occurred—ABC 7 reporter Sam Ford announced: “One transgender is dead, another is in critical condition.”

Mack was not a “transgender male,” a “transgender man,” or a "transgender.” Mack was a male-to-female transgender woman who clearly appeared to be female. On the reward poster for her homicide, she’s shown wearing eye shadow, shaped eyebrows, and two long braids. “Of course, when the one young lady was murdered and the other was hospitalized, we were quite upset [with the media coverage] because they aren’t transgender men—they are transgender women,” says Brian Watson, the director of Transgender Health Empowerment, which counted both victims as clients. “I know both of the young ladies that were attacked, and they lived their lives as transgender women. They looked like women. For me, there shouldn’t have been any confusion about them being males. If you saw them on the street, you would see they were females.”

Since the victims in this case clearly presented as women, how were they initially identified as “transgender males”?

Chavez, Duggan, and Starks all attributed the “transgender males” identification to “police sources.” Duggan says that the department’s public information office provided him the term. “The police department put it out there, and we went on what they said,” says Duggan. Starks got even more specific, sourcing the terminology to Quintin Peterson, the public information officer on duty when news of the stabbings broke. “‘Transgender males’—those were his exact words,” says Starks. “I’m not trying to get him in trouble or anything, but that’s what was said.”

Peterson denies that the police originated the term. “‘Transgender males’ was never used. Not by me or anyone in this office,” he says. “We cannot be held responsible for the terminology the news media chooses to use. We did not put anything out other than what the correct terminology is.” Acting Lieutenant Brett Parson, the police department’s top liaison to the GLBT community who was on scene shortly following the stabbing, similarly defers the misidentification to media reports. “It’s the media that seems fixated on their gender identity. That issue did not come from the chief of police,” says Parson. “We’ve had to correct the media on countless occasions because they have been reporting, insensitively, terms that are not used in the community.”

Wherever the term “transgender males” originated, no one really wanted to touch it. Starks says he never asked Peterson for clarification on what the term “transgender males” actually meant. “I didn’t ask him to go beyond that,” he says. “I assumed that it was referring to a person who may be in the process of either a sex change or someone who is dressing in the clothing of another gender.” When asked if “male” refers to the victim’s biological sex or gender identity, Starks was stumped. “That’s a good question,” he says. Duggan says that the Post avoided parsing the term with a deft use of punctuation. “It was a short brief that we wrote really fast, so we decided to use, in quotes, ‘transgender males,’” says Duggan. “I got beat up a lot over that, because I wasn’t educated on [the terminology] at the time, and I was quickly educated on it.”

For cops and journos, employing the correct terminology is more than a matter of respect. Both D.C. police procedure and Associated Press style mandate that transgender individuals be addressed in accordance with their gender expression. According to the AP Stylebook, reporters are to “use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.” And in 2007, D.C. police adopted one of the nation’s most comprehensive transgender policies, which states that when a police officer is unsure of a person’s gender identity, “the member shall inquire how the individual wishes to be addressed (e.g., Sir, Miss, Ms.) and the name by which the individual wishes to be addressed.”

Of course, ascertaining the correct terminology becomes more difficult when the transgender individual is dead. Sometimes, even the victim’s family can’t help identify the preferred gender. ABC 7’s story on the stabbing included a quote from Mack’s brother, Aaron Walker: “I’m just hurting right now. My mom, she’s got 10 boys, and that’s one of my little brothers and for me to see him pass like that,” Walker said of Mack. (ABC 7 also misidentified Walker as “Aaron Hall,” proving that newsroom slip-ups are sometimes based in sloppiness, sometimes in ignorance).

In the event that a victim’s gender identity is unclear, sometimes it helps to do some reporting. Chibbaro took care to verify Mack’s gender identity with “sources both in the community and in law enforcement” before publishing his story, three hours after the first news of the stabbing hit. “This misidentification is not always the fault of police, or the press, or others—this is something that everyone is grappling with,” says Chibbaro. “The first concern that I have, and that I think the Washington Blade has, is whether the information is accurate.”

As the scene of the daylight stabbing grew dark, reporters set about correcting the terminology in their stories, abandoning “transgender males” for “transgender women” and swapping “he” for “she.” But for some members of the transgender community, the damage had already been done. “[S]ix hours and (at least) six edits later, we finally have gender appropriate language in an article based on a double homicide attempt that was clearly motivated by hatred and transphobia,” wrote one commenter on the Fox 5 story. “[I]’m saddened on so many levels."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Bad move, Tastee. At 9 p.m. tonight, the diner will be chock-full of same-sex hugging. Instead of boycotting the place entirely, Ford and Brown have invited the public to inundate the restaurant with gay PDA. 94 guests are currently confirmed on Facebook; you can join them at 8601 Cameron Street, Silver Spring, Md. When you arrive, here's the drill:

We will be entering the restaurant at 9pm. We will all sit at tables together, and order one item from the menu no more than a $5 value. We will act orderly, and if you choose to show some sign of affection to the person you are with we ask that it be done tastefully. We want to observe there reactions if any to us. We will then proceed to the check out, to pay for our food. At that time we will engage in some gesture of affection. If you are unsure of the type of gesture please follow Simply Nay and Jay's lead. We will then leave the premises, still observing the behavior of the management.

Still on the fence about hugging it up? What if I told you it was . . . destiny? "This happened to us for a reason. I'm a firm believer in that," Ford awesomely told the Blade. "Because I wanted to go to IHOP in the first place."

A D.C. police officer, Tuma says, responded with some hate-speech of his own—and a swift arrest. Second District Officer J. Culp, Tuma says, "charged 40-50 feet" toward him, "pushed him against a transformer box," arrested him, then told him to "shut up, faggot."

Tuma's arrest, the Blade reports, is currently being investigated on the orders of D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier. Meanwhile, Culp may have picked the wrong group of gays to fuck with: Tuma and the two friends on the scene, Luke Platzer and Dave Stetson, are all attorneys. The exact reason for Tuma's arrest is still unclear. But while he initially agreed to pay a fine "as part of a 'post and forfeit' plea" which helped him avoid cell block time, he now says he intends to fight all charges in court:

[Tuma] said police took him to the Second District station at Connecticut and Idaho avenues, N.W., near the National Cathedral, where he was booked and released about four hours later. He said his release came after he agreed to pay a fine as part of a “post and forfeit” plea, which is an acknowledgement of possible guilt.

Tuma said he agreed to the post and forfeit plea after officers who processed his arrest told him he would be forced to remain in a holding cell before being presented before a magistrate in D.C. Superior Court had he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

He said he had a longstanding commitment that morning and did not want to miss it by having to appear in court. Tuma said he plans to exercise his right to withdraw the post and forfeit the plea at a later date and fully contest the charge in court.

Tuma's lawyer friends, too, are committed to fighting the charge:

D.C. attorney Luke Platzer, one of Tuma’s two friends to witness the arrest, said he and a second friend, attorney Dave Stetson, were approached by a D.C. police sergeant shortly after police drove Tuma to the station to process his arrest. Platzer said the sergeant, whose last name is Geer, told them he observed Tuma attempting to “resist” arrest in a disorderly way and asked them if they would give a statement confirming his observation.

“We said, ‘No, we did not see that at all,’” Platzer told the Blade. “We thought he was trying to trick us into saying that there was physical resistance by Pepin to the arrest. That is not true.”

"It could take the form of a full-time, or it could take the form of a three-quarter time or something like that," Hamilton told the Blade. "We haven't quite decided just exactly what we're going to be doing."

Hamilton admitted that while "the organization is currently able to pay its expenses," it can't "afford to hire a president with a salary in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars." Hamilton attributed the discount search to the "times," which "call for lots of flexibility."

OMG—the Log Cabin Republicans should totally hire Meghan McCain as their new part-time president! She can lobby for the hipper, gayer Republican party part-time, blog about the hipper, gayer Republican party part-time, and still have time to maintain her Twitter account while penning her lavishly funded memoir. Who cares if she's not gay, and at times unconvincingly Republican? She sounds "flexible."

In the Daily Beast this week, McCain calls gay rights "one of the [causes] closest to my heart," and insists that "if the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric." Later this week, McCain is slated to address the Log Cabin Republicans at their annual convention, and she works hard on the Beast to build up the the gay conservative group's inclusiveness as a part of its "core Republican values," while dissing the Democrats for being the party that's really anti-gay.

"President Obama, for instance, is also against gay marriage—a dirty little secret many of my gay friends were shocked to discover during the presidential campaign," McCain writes. "But you’d never know it because he always 'sounds' so inclusive."

Actually, Obama's position on gay marriage is a "dirty little secret" only to the most willfully ignorant of armchair political analysts. Actually, Barack Obama made clear his opposition to gay marriage throughout the campaign. Why? Because the only fucking reason Democrats still adopt that position is so they can stand a chance in the general election, where they're facing off against the Republicans—you know, the party that actually doesn't want gay people to get married.

The Washington Blade has more bullshit to call on McCain's new number one issue. Blade editor Kevin Naff calls the Log Cabin Republicans "a rudderless group right now, bereft of leadership following the resignation of its executive director . . . and the departure of other key staffers." But "there are other problems with Meghan’s take on gay issues and the role of Log Cabin in fighting for them," Naff writes. "Chief among her shortcomings is timing."

Here's a dirty little secret for you: Barack Obama is not the only major presidential candidate to have opposed gay marriage in the primary! The point is not lost on Naff, who is miffed that McCain decided to wait until her father lost the presidency to reveal her whole-hearted support for gay rights. "It’s easy to adopt these 'progressive' stances when the campaign is over and you’re looking for a provocative gimmick to get yourself booked on Larry King and 'The View,'" writes Naff. "But when Meghan’s pro-gay views might have mattered, she was silent."

Then, it gets personal. "In fact, the Blade reached out to Meghan several times during the campaign for comment. We sensed that she was a new kind of Republican, one who doesn’t subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh-enforced code that the GOP remain beholden to the most out-of-touch Christian conservatives on the far right," Naff writes. "She declined all interview requests, while her father supported Proposition 8 in California and a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Arizona."

Let the record show that I have also found my attempts to contact Meghan McCain rebuffed. Meghan, if you're listening: I don't care that you're late to the party. I know you'll be in D.C. this weekend. The offer to down shots in Adams Morgan still stands, girlfriend.

On Saturday, Jan. 31, Iceland inaugurated "the world's first openly gay female head of government." Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, a lesbian, is now the nation's Prime Minister. Predictably, Sigurðardóttir's appointment set off a wave of excited coverage in the gay (and mainstream) press. But today, "Bladewire," the Washington Blade's news aggregator, picked up a follow-up story on the Prime Minister: "Iceland PM Wants Nation to Join EU."

The CNN story details Sigurðardóttir's intentions to seek EU membership and convert the country's currency to the Euro. The piece then proceeds to delve into the nitty-gritty of Iceland's financial crisis and political turmoil following a devastating economic collapse last August.

None of this has anything to do with Sigurðardóttir being a lesbian. Granted: Her historic appointment was only made official a week ago, and she's an interesting person to watch for a number of reasons. But at what point will general Icelandic news lose its luster with the American gay press? Is Iceland the gay country now, because its PM is gay? Are we going to be fed a lot of thought pieces about why such-and-such move of Sigurðardóttir's—which we'd never pay attention to otherwise—ties back to her lesbian identity? Will we see the American gay community transform into a highly informed expert on the minutiae of Icelandic politics for the remainder of Sigurðardóttir's tenure? Or will the gay papers soon move on to another international darling?

Photo by Gunna.

Led by Hearts & Homes for Youth, a group that provides services to youth who are abused, neglected or homeless, the discussions remain preliminary, but Rex Smith, the organization’s president, said he’s already identified locations in Rockville or Gaithersburg for the home.

“We believe there’s a need here,” he said. “So we need to figure out a way, even in these hard times, that we can save a few lives.”

Smith said plans for the home began when Hearts & Homes sought to find foster parents who were willing to take in gay youth for their foster program, which currently has about 30 youth.

In the Blade, Lou Chibbaro Jr. runs down some of the challenges facing a ballot referendum banning gay marriage in the District. They are many: For one, 21,000 signatures is a lot.

Meanwhile, in WaTimes, Gary Emerling examines how gay-marriage advocates are “re-evaluating their strategy.” Pretty much everybody says it’s all about timing. Emerling manages to get one minister on the record, the Rev. Derrick Harkins of Nineteenth Street Baptist, who says he doesn’t think a bill “would be met with great enthusiasm on the part of the African-American church.”

* Tim Dickinson for Rolling Stone on why Prop 8 failed. (Hint: It wasn't Mormon or black voters, but it might have been you).

* The Gay Recluse reports on the shielded statues in Union Station (photo above), indicates that behind the shield are uncircumcised Roman penises, calls it "the biggest scandal in the history of hot gay statues!"

* WaPo says Barry and Hills need to work on their "rapport," but noted this cute press conference tidbit: "Leaving the news conference in Chicago yesterday where he introduced his national security team, President-elect Barack Obama strolled out of the room arm in arm with his choice for secretary of state and onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton." Oooooooh!

* Mark your calendars: Forum on gay marriage in D.C. slated for Dec. 11.

* Barrack buys Michelle First Bling!

Last night, a commenter on this blog made the connection between a Washington Blade story identifying the victim of yesterday's police shooting as David Kerstetter, and a 2003 Metro Weekly feature which highlighted the home Kerstetter shared with his now-deceased partner, Paul Brazitis. Kerstetter was shot and killed by police yesterday inside the condo—part of Logan Circle's Iowa building at 1325 13th St. NW—after he allegedly threatened officers with a knife. A neighbor, who identified Kerstetter to the Blade, said that Kerstetter was suicidal and mourning Brazitis, who died in October of last year. Five years ago, 1325 13th St. was a very different place.
It looks like they had a nice home life, and a really nice home: Crown molding, antique Austrian china set, a $15,000 Viking stove. That was five years ago, when the couple had the luxury of agonizing over interior decorating. Now, both men are dead. After the whirlwind tour of Kerstetter and Brazitis' immaculate home, the Metro Weekly piece ends this quote from Brazitis:

We didn't consider having the inside of this [cabinet] stained — it was this ugly blonde wood inside. One day, I was in the other room painting and all the sudden there was this red mist through the entire house. David was [staining] this cabinet. All the new hardwood floors had red on them, the animals had red on them, we had red on us. That was one thing I should have put my foot down and said, "No!"

Photo from Metro Weekly.

The man, whom police say they shot after he threatened officers as a knife, is identified by Chibbaro as David Kerstetter. He was shot in his home at 1325 13th St. NW.

Police declined to identify the victim nor give further comment on the case, but the neighbor confirmed Kerstetter's identity and told the Blade that the victim "had severe mental problems," and had tried to commit suicide in the past The neighbor added that the police were contacted after his mother had called the building, concerned that "she couldn’t reach him by phone." Police entered Kerstetter's home this morning and shot him after he threatened them with a knife, the neighbor says.

When contacted, Mahl released a brief statement confirming that the incident occurred but declined to provide additional details.

“I’m a police officer assigned to the Third District substation,” he said. “I was the target of a hate bias incident. It was reported to MPD and they are conducting an investigation to the best that they know how.”

Police sources familiar with the incident said the graffiti referred to Mahl as a “fag” and made lewd references to sexual acts by Mahl and a female police sergeant who is also assigned to the Third District substation.

Spokesperson Traci Hughes said Police Chief Cathy Lanier called the act "cowardly," "disrespectful," and "reprehensible."

Today, we sew up the media bracket in the D.C.'s Manliest Workplace Tournament with two of the Districts alternative weeklies: The Washington City Paper and the Washington Blade. Earlier in the media contest, the Washington Times out-manlied Washingtonian, the Washington Post pwned Congressional Quarterly, and El Pregonero fell to USA today. Check out the full 64-workplace bracket here.

WASHINGTON CITY PAPER: Paper, you say? That's right, the Washington City Paper, true to its name, still gets printed on dead trees manlyly harvested by the world's well-muscled lumberjacks. But is its reportorial muscle as manly as the paper it's printed on? Or have new efforts tipped the balance toward the femaleish end of the employment gender spectrum? Let's take a look:

Publisher Amy Austin (Female, ZERO)
Editor Erik Wemple (Male, 9 points)
Ad Sales Director David J. Walker (Male, 8 points)
New Media Director Joshua Lieb (Male, 7 points)
Business Devel. Manager Sheila Alexander-Reid (Female, ZERO)
Information Technology Director Jim Gumm (Male, 6 points)
Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon (Male, 5 points)
Classified Sales Manager Heather McAndrews (Female, ZERO)
Assistant Managing Editor Jule Banville (Female, ZERO)
Senior Writer Jason Cherkis (Male, 1 point)

With a score of 36 out of 55 on the manly scale, the Washington City Paper weighs in with 65 percent manlines; not bad for a paper too bankrupt to pay those meaty male salaries. Hey, at least we're manlier than Washingtonian.

—

WASHINGTON BLADE: The potential manpower of D.C.'s foremost alternative gay newspaper is obvious. But lest you have any doubts about the Blade's manliness, allow me to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: Dictionary journalism. Ahem. Blade, noun. 1. The flat cutting part of a sharpened weapon or tool. 2. A sword. 3. A swordsman." Need I say more?

Publisher Lynne Brown (Female, ZERO)
Co-President & COO Mike Kitchens (Male, 9 points)
Co-President & CFO Steve Myers (Male, 8 points)
Co-President & CMO William R. Kapfer (Male, 7 points)
Director, Online Operations Kevin Smith (Male, 6 points)
Editor Kevin Naff (Male, 5 points)
News Editor Joshua Lynsen (Male, 4 points)
Features Editor Joey DiGuglielmo (Male, 3 points)
Senior News Reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. (Male, 2 points)
Art Director Rob Boeger (Male, 1 point)

Oh, Brown, you're killin' me! The Blade's all-male roster suffers a serious blow with its to Still, 45 out of 55 is more than enough to swat down the pesky City Paper. But will it be competitive in the finals? Stay tuned later today for our media bracket manly round-up.

—

GLASS CRACK COUNT! The four women in the top ten positions at the Washington City Paper and one at the Blade bring our continuing glass crack count up to 20. That's 20 out of 80 top-level media positions in the District of Columbia staffed by women—a round 25 percent.

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2008/10/24/man-madness-washington-city-paper-vs-washington-blade/feed/ 3 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2008/10/23/this-week-in-glbt-news-inside-metro-weekly-and-the-blade/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2008/10/23/this-week-in-glbt-news-inside-metro-weekly-and-the-blade/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:00:41 +0000 Amanda Hess http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/?p=505 Metro Weekly fronts its election round-up this week, reporting on gay issues in the District, Maryland, and Virginia races. In "Outing the Vote," Will O'Bryan sums up election day for GLBT wonks: "For politically minded locals," he writes, "Tuesday, Nov. 4, is the Super Bowl, World Series and American Idol finale, all rolled into one—on steroids, with a cherry on top." Metro Weekly also has a nice feature on queer-identifying Indian dancer Aniruddhan Vasudevan, who performs with the Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company this weekend.

The Washington Blade continues to exhaustively report crimes within and against D.C.'s GLBT community. Yesterday, Lou Chibbaro Jr. reported on a robbery at Dupont Circle gay bar The Fireplace. The robbery—and the assault of an employee that occurred during the theft—are not classified as hate crimes, Chibbaro notes. Chibbaro also has a profile of Trevor Potter, the openly gay top attorney for the McCain campaign. Meanwhile, Chris Johnson has an update on the fight for Prop 8.