Dan Savage is a columnist at a weekly newspaper here in Seattle who writes a column called "Savage Love." This column is ostensibly a romance advice column with a twist, Savage is gay, and when he started it he solicited letters from straight readers (breeder readers?) reasoning that who could give better advice on breeder love than someone who was detached, by reasons of orientation, from the whole process (or words to that effect). Savage also answers questions from gays and lesbians, and even occasionally ranges off topic to answer questions about such miscellany as baseball cards and hanky codes. The column is funny and to the point, and Savage also does a good job as a columnist writing about gay issues in the Seattle area. Anyways, a few months back Savage wrote a column where he printed the phone number of The Report, the fine people who brought you _The Gay Agenda_ and other quality products for homophobes, this week Savage is writing about a similar, yet more devious organization called The _Lambda Report_. If you're confused the following article should explain all. For Hot Tips Dial 1-800-452-6397 by Dan Savage (Ripped bleeding, no doubt in violation of several copyright laws, from the August 9th issue of _The Stranger_. Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa) Got a hot tip on the homosexual lifestyle? Call 1-800-452-NEWS (6397) operators are standing by. Lambda is a greek letter adopted in the seventies as a symbol of gay and lesbian liberation. The _Lambda Report_ is 16 or so pages of lies, hate, distortion and bullshit about queers and our struggle for civil rights. The _Lambda Report_ "monitors the homosexual agenda in American politics and culture" and offers "practical advice on how to combat the gay agenda, reporting on what works and what doesn't in the struggles of citizens across the United States to fight pro-homosexual laws." What appears to work, judging by the first two issues of _Lambda Report_ are scare stories about S&M, child molesters and the threat AIDS poses to mainstream society (one story implies that straights can contract AIDS by sharing pillows on airplanes with gay men). In other words the same tired old anti-queer bigotry. Same old lies, same old bullshit. LR apparently adopted the name "Lambda Report" in order to infiltrate gay and lesbian events. No queer organization would turn away a reporter from something called the _Lambda Report_, nor would a gay man or lesbian fear speaking to a reporter from an organization with Lambda in the title. Issue two is full of interviews with and pictures of people at the March on Washington last April. Doubtless the queers who opened up to the LR reporters had no idea they were speaking with a magazine dedicated to depriving them of their civil rights. Imagine the Ku Klux Klan starting a paper called _African American Today and sending reporters to rap shows and black churches to uncover the "excesses" of black culture, or the Nazi Party starting a paper called _The Star of David_ to deny the existence of the Holocaust and rant about "Zionist conspiracies." LR does have a couple of interesting features. There's a regular column called "Good News: Gays Can Change!" featuring the stories of serious twisted, self hating and self-identified ex-gay guys who after being seduced into the gay "lifestyle" find Jesus and "a way out of homosexuality." The idea that gays can "change", that we can turn into straight people, has been completely discredited; every reputable psychiatric, psychological and counseling organization has recognized sexual orientation as an immutable characteristic. Every day, new evidence of some sort of genetic or biological basis for homosexuality is reported. But the Christian right rejects the evidence. Why? Because if homosexuality is inborn, if it isn't a choice--not something we do for the sake of being bad boys and girls--their efforts to deny us our rights have no basis; for by law a person cannot be discriminated against on the basis of an "immutable characteristic." The courts have yet to recognize homosexuality as an immutable characteristic, but the tide is turning and it's only a matter of time before they must. (Never mind that other non-inborn characteristics are already protected by civil rights laws. Religious beliefs are a choice; no one is born a right-wing, bible-thumping, small-minded bigot. It's a choice.) Even Wade, issue number two's ex-gay poster kid admits way down in paragraph 14 that he "still struggles with temptations." Why? Because Wade's sexual orientation hasn't changed, He may have stopped having sex, stopped having brunch and stopped doing sit-ups, but he's still gay. It's his willingness to accept himself that's been destroyed. In the eyes of the _Lambda Report_, a gay person who stops having sex is no longer a gay person. I haven't had sex since yesterday. At 9:30 p.m. today I will have, by LR's standards, not been gay for a full 24 hours. Maybe they'll feature me in next month's issue: "Gay columnist sometimes goes for days at a time without being gay!" No lesbians have been profiled in "Good News: Gays Can Change!" which runs on the back page of every issue of LR. Perhaps Peter LaBarbera, editor-in-chief, has deduced that lesbianism is immutable, perhaps terminal. Or maybe no dykes have been featured because the _Lambda Report_, and Peter aren't much interested in lesbians, except for the threat bare-breasted dykes at the March on Washington pose for our republic, lesbianism gets very little play in his newsletter. There's also a column about mean nasty homos picking on straight people called "Gay Hate Crimes." Lou Sheldon's unfortunate experience on a plane coming back from Washington D.C after the March on Washington for lesbian and gay rights is featured in issue two's "Gay Hate Crimes". Lou, head of the anti-gay American Family Association, was heckled by queers who didn't approve of his lifestyle choice--his choice to be a gay bashing, right-wing homophobe who works hard to make this country a dangerous place to be queer. "Gay Hate Crimes" didn't mention that Lou had just spend the weekend in D.C attacking gays and lesbians. The queers on the plane were defending themselves and speaking up for their rights, confronting one of the people responsible for the increase in anti-lesbian and anti-gay violence in this country. In schoolyard terminology: Lou started it. When you attack people who are doing nothing to you, you may be attacked in turn. That's what happened to Lou on his flight back to his happy Christian home. Hardly a "hate crime." When Lou is beaten nearly to death by teenagers with baseball bats, then he can come crying to us about being the "victim" of a "hate crime." Also in this month's "Gay Hate Crimes:" "The Report [the group that puts out _The Gay Agenda_ videotape and other anti-queer hate propaganda] has been the victim of an organized campaign of gay hatred in the form of calls flooding and jamming the group's 800 number after it was published by a gay columnist at a Seattle weekly newspaper." Hmm. At the end of issue two, The _Lambda Report_ gives its 800 number and asks readers to call in any tips or breaking news items they may have on the "homosexual lifestyle." As only a select few of us subscribe to LR I thought that I would do the neighborly thing and pass the number along to all of you. right Christian of me, don't you think? _Stranger_ readers are, I'm guessing, a bottomless source of news and tips on the homosexual lifestyle and certain better informed about queer issues than the largely rural, straight and right-wing folks who subscribe to LR. So let's help out Peter and the gang at LR by calling in our hot tips on the homosexual lifestyle. That number again--1-800-452-NEWS (6397). Give 'em a few hot tips--what lube is best for oral sex, why gay men "brunch" and lesbians "potluck", why we have better haircuts than straight people. Straight people who don't have anything to say about the homosexual lifestyle can play too: call and let LR know that not all breeders are small-minded, homophobic, right-wing, flat-earth motherfuckers. 'Cuz you're not. Remember what we learned last time about calling 800 numbers: call from a pay phone, as all calls to 800 numbers are traced. If you don't care if The _Lambda Report_ knows your number, call from home as often as you feel like it. It's illegal to make harassing phone calls--hanging up, swearing, programming your computer to dial the number over and over again--but it's perfectly legal (Hello, First Amendment) to call 'em up and give them a piece of your mind. Clip the number from the top of this column and tape it to your phone. Call when you want to share a hot tip on the homosexual lifestyle: hanky codes, bar-etiquette, domestic partnership, where to find size 13 pumps. And dykes are especially encouraged to call: protest the scant coverage of the Lesbian Agenda in LR. C'mon gyrls, strike a blow for lesbian visibility. I would be guessing that readers of soc.motss might also be a bottomless source of information on "the homosexual lifestyle" and posted this so that people who might otherwise be deceived by the name of the organization would know the truth, and so that they would have the opportunity to call LR and share with them their wealth of knowledge on matters gay and lesbian. Interestingly enough, the column has a picture of the cover of LR and under the title, the words "A publication of THE REPORT" can be seen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. 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