Backlash   

The Roanoke Times expected that its ambitious look at gay life in the small Virginia city would be controversial. But it was hardly prepared for the intensity and virulence of the reaction.

LATE ONE DRIZZLY FRIDAY night last September, as the bars bustled in downtown Roanoke, a lonely drifter named Ronald Edward Gay walked up to a restaurant cook emptying trash in an alley and asked where he could find the nearest gay bar. The cook pointed the way down Salem Avenue. Gay then pulled back his trench coat, flashed a pistol and told the cook that he planned to "waste some faggots" that night.

The cook ran inside and told his manager, then called the police. But before the cops could track down the bearded ex-Vietnam veteran, he had walked several blocks to the Backstreet Cafe, a friendly watering hole for gays and lesbians. Gay ambled in, ordered a beer and sat down to survey the crowd as the jukebox blared.

Minutes later, when two men started hugging in front of him, police say Gay stood up and, without saying a word, opened fire, killing one man and wounding six others. After the final shot, Gay stepped over one of his victims, his long trench coat brushing the wounded man's shoulder, and quietly walked out. Police captured him within minutes. Gay, a self-described "Christian soldier," has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and malicious wounding.

That brutal shooting jarred Roanoke, a peaceful little city in the mountains of southwest Virginia, and thrust it into the national spotlight. But that's not all that happened. The random violence also rudely ripped away the veil obscuring the city's fairly sizable gay and lesbian community, a thriving group that had long found a haven of tolerance and opportunity in this former railroad town. For the most part, gays and lesbians had lived quietly here. They had learned the art of not making themselves a visible target, and the community had largely looked away when reminded of their presence.

Just several months earlier, by coincidence, we had started a reporting project at the Roanoke Times to better understand the city's gay population, a group we thought we needed to cover in fuller measure. After some intense newsroom discussions about diversity and a brownbag session with several members of the gay and lesbian community, we decided to launch an exploration of the city's gay population as part of our effort. So long before the Backstreet incident, a newsroom team had been examining the story of Roanoke's homosexuals, which positioned us well to pursue the shooting and its aftermath, as well as our larger project.

From the start, our reporting was driven by the not-so-startling proposition that many of Roanoke's gays and lesbians, like most people, probably lead rather unremarkable, normal lives: They hold jobs, they pay mortgages and taxes, they raise children, they go to church, they care for aging parents, they vote, they work, they own businesses, they bowl and play softball.

While we'd covered stories of outspoken gay activists, Pride in the Park gatherings, homosexual men cruising for sex, along with AIDS and other gay issues, we'd done little to understand the more subtle warp-and-woof of living gay in Roanoke. Now we knew we needed to wrap this story in the context of the shooting and its repercussions, which included a 1,000-person march through downtown--one of the largest protest marches in Roanoke's history--to honor the dead man's life and to call for national hate-crime legislation.

We started with the simplest questions to help shape what grew into a four-part series: Who are Roanoke's gays and lesbians? How do they lead their lives? What brought them here? What issues do they face living in a conservative southern city? How do they mesh--or not--with the fabric of life in southwest Virginia? How are they like you and me?

The Backstreet shooting increased the urgency of the story, and we ramped up our reporting to tackle the series more quickly. But little did I realize that reporting the series would be the easy part. The difficult task would be explaining to angry readers why we published it.

WHEN THE SERIES RAN over four days in January and February, it was as if a powerful earthquake had rocked our readers' world. Their reliable morning newspaper had jolted them by running a high-impact project on a controversial subject that flew in the face of the region's predominant--and rather conservative--system of values and beliefs.

Never mind that the project, which had blossomed into a rich mixture of intimate personal portraits and broader thematic stories about gay life here, constituted some of the finest journalism the newspaper has ever done. As readers digested the stories, which ran on A1 and the features' front each day, they swarmed like angry hornets whose nest had been battered with a broomstick.

While we knew the "Living Gay" series would strike a nerve, we were surprised by how vast and raw the neural network was. The reaction was swift, intense and, in many cases, vitriolic. The newspaper had highlighted a subject many readers thought taboo--a biblical sin, even--and we had dared to open a once-shuttered window wide on a part of the community that many readers wish could remain hidden.

Even before we went to press, our phones started ringing as outraged readers reacted to in-paper promotions. The outcry only grew louder. They said we were promoting homosexuality and the gay lifestyle. They accused us of trying to shove the gay agenda down their throats. They said we were glamorizing a sick and dangerous practice. Some called us godless. Others said we were sensationalizing. Some claimed we were hurting the regional economy and tarnishing Roanoke's national image. A few even said we were trying to make this city the San Francisco of the East Coast.

Managing Editor Rich Martin took much of the heat from readers. "Never have I been so disgusted," wrote one. "Queers and gays indeed. God will punish the perverts." Said another: "When your works are tried by fire, I will testify against you. And I doubt you know what I mean by 'tried by fire,' and that pleases me greatly!" Martin, a Presbyterian and a Times' veteran of 25 years, knew full well what the writer meant. "After about three weeks," he says, "it wore a body down."

One incredulous woman, baffled by the amount of coverage, told me I was so open-minded my brains were falling out. Another woman caller questioned my sexuality. "Do you have a partner?" she asked. I told her yes. "Is it a boy or a girl?" she wanted to know. "It's a girl," I said. "It's my wife."

SO WHAT DID READERS FIND in the series? Here's a sampling: A historical overview of Roanoke's homosexual community, built by people coming here from smaller communities to find a social life. A touching profile of two gay men living together and raising a 14-year-old daughter. A story about the normalcy of gay life. A disquieting read on a twenty-something gay man hungrily looking for love amid Roanoke's gay nightlife. The story of a 16-year-old lesbian being raised by straight parents. A poignant coming-out tale, which featured a high school girl who declared herself a lesbian during her senior speech at the region's exclusive private school. The reasons why many gays and lesbians remain in the closet. A well-researched story on the moral and religious opposition to homosexuality. And an insightful story about a lesbian couple seeking to reconcile their love and their Christianity.

In February, when the series ended, some 500 subscribers had canceled their subscriptions. That's more than 20 times the number of drops because of complaints about content during a typical year. Still, during that same time frame, about 17 percent of those who canceled decided to renew their subscriptions. All told, that's a big hit for a newspaper with a daily circulation of 100,000.

A threatened boycott by advertisers never materialized, despite the distribution of fliers to many businesses. One prominent Roanoke business did drop its advertising for a month in protest. But a promised march on the newspaper by Christians never developed, although the Family Values Council, a group formed in the wake of the series, is still pushing to force the Roanoke Times to run an equally lengthy series examining the pitfalls and problems of homosexuality.

On our editorial pages, the series sparked a wide-ranging community debate, with readers weighing in with more letters on this series than on any other subject in recent memory.

Norris Bunn Jr. dropped his subscription of 12 years and blasted the series as peddling filth. "[Y]ou go too far when you fill the newspaper with perversion and expect me to accept it as normal," said Bunn, who lives in nearby Moneta. "If I wished to subscribe to the National Enquirer, I would. Since you seem to have no respect for normal families and wish only to push your views on the community, I will no longer be a subscriber. No matter what color you paint it, perversion is perversion and does not deserve front-page and multipage and multiday coverage."

Other Christians from across the region weighed in. "Shame, shame on you and your publication for giving this gross behavior space," wrote Earl V. Gillespie. "We citizens are insulted. Every straight citizen in this city and readers of this publication should be as outraged as I am. God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

"I think we should change the name of Roanoke to Sodom, and you should change the name of your newspaper to the Gomorrah Gazette," opined Evelyn Jones of Roanoke. "As a Christian, I do not hate gay people. But I do hate the sin and the lifestyle, and so does God. You said, 'Roanoke is a magnet for gays and lesbians.' Is this what you want our beautiful city to be known for? These articles only encourage men and women who are gay and lesbians to move here, and it seems to me we already have more than enough.... My prayer is that God will have mercy on you and all of us in our beautiful city."

While detractors clearly outnumbered supporters, plenty of readers offered praise. "I was proud that you chose to run the series, despite ardent criticism from some of your readers," wrote Lisa Johnson of Blacksburg. "Enough with hateful and intolerant rhetoric. As a nation that claims democracy for all, it's time we lived up to our promise. Your series may bring us one step closer."

Louise Rogers of Roanoke tried to counter the religious critics. "[I]ndividuals who use the Bible to hate particular people and judge others come out to express their views colored in prejudice," wrote Rogers. "I'm prejudiced, too. I don't care to interact, live near or help raise my grandchildren near hateful people. I enjoy the richness of the diversity of Roanoke--filled with those with varied backgrounds, culture, religion, sexual orientation, size, shape, age, functional status, and on and on. We're all different. We all strive to excel at our jobs, be good neighbors, help our families, worship our God and, if we're lucky, find someone to love. I believe that was God's intent."

Several readers even praised the journalism. Louis W. Hodges, a professor of ethics in journalism at Washington and Lee University, called it "journalism at its best."

"The matter of sexual orientation is of major significance in the lives of many citizens," wrote Hodges. "Yet modern society has tried to sweep it under the rug. We readers have every reason to be grateful for your willingness to undertake a study you knew ahead of time would be controversial."

LIKE ANY OTHER GOOD NEWSPAPER, we tried to open eyes, to spark discussion and dialogue, to push people beyond stereotypes, to promote understanding. But, for many readers, our series felt like electroshock treatment.

"I think we learned--again--that it is sometimes painful to tell stories that people need to hear," says Cody Lowe, one of a team of eight staffers who reported the series. Lowe and his colleagues are proud of their work. Says staff writer Lisa Applegate: "I think we approached a topic many people would simply rather not ever see, and we handled it with honesty and respect."

Even though they were prepared to take the heat, some were taken aback by the gut-wrenching intensity of the reaction. "I didn't know how tremendously threatened many straight people are by gays," says staff writer Mary Bishop, "and I'm still trying to understand the visceral nature of their response. I think it's the civil rights movement of our time, the old story of a population devalued and misunderstood by the majority of straights."

The outrage and the support, ironically, are reassuring reminders about the influence of the Roanoke Times. Readers care passionately about the newspaper, which they view as their own, and their responses are a vital sign of their investment in what we publish every day. They care deeply about what appears on the front page of the newspaper, and in this series, as with others, they realize again that they're not going to like everything we publish.

Even though we knew the series would hit like a 20-megaton nuclear bomb, we took steps early on to prevent it from feeling like a 50-megaton blast. For starters, we decided not to run the series during the Christmas holidays, which we knew would offend many readers. We toned down a story on the twenty-something gay man as he searched for love, and we downplayed a picture of two men kissing after seeing the initial layout. We committed significant space to a story on the moral and religious opposition to homosexuality, and we tried to steer clear of the gratuitously incendiary.

We also put together an extensive plan to deal with complaints and reaction. We solicited reader comments through story boxes containing a central phone number along with e-mail and snail mail addresses. The newsroom and customer service department designated people to handle the reaction, which totaled several thousand responses. And through it all we had the support of Publisher Wendy Zomparelli, who'd taken on her new job just two months earlier.

In the end, perhaps the toughest truth for many detractors to understand was that we were not promoting homosexuality by giving the series such high-impact play. If we were promoting anything, it was the importance of the issue and, if we were advocating anything, it was discussion and debate about living gay in southwest Virginia. To do that, we had to put the topic high on the community's agenda.

SO WHAT LESSONS have we learned so far?

Good journalism often carries a high price, especially when you're trying to open eyes and spark intelligent discussion about a sensitive, and once taboo, topic. In this case, the price was worth paying.

A high-impact series does put a controversial issue on the community's agenda, but make sure you give readers a chance to breathe. In retrospect, our A1 and features presence was too massive; many readers were simply overwhelmed and turned away without considering the stories. We should have given readers a better chance to digest the stories along with a part of the newspaper they could escape to.

We should have considered more carefully and listened to the voices of opposition. It would have been better to publish the story about the religious and moral opposition to homosexuality on the first day of the series rather than the last. We should have solicited broader pre-publication reaction to the series from all parts of the newsroom. Diversity and balance mean taking into account viewpoints across the spectrum.

Filling in one blind spot often points out others. We need to examine closely whether we're covering the community of conservative Christians well enough, and odds are, given the outcry, we have room to do better on that front.

A newspaper can be an agent of change, but many readers just don't like change. So it helps to specify to readers exactly why you're tackling a major project, and the explanation bears repeating with each new installment. We ran a column explaining the series on the first day only.

Jen DeSaegher and her partner, Wendy Maxey, profiled on the final day of the series, stand as a poignant example of the importance of this project. The story looked at the women's efforts to reconcile their love and their Christian faith. Several days after the series ended, DeSaegher sent an e-mail saying the couple had been overwhelmed by support as well as saddened by some not-so-surprising negative reactions.

Some of those comments stung deeply, but DeSaegher took them in stride. "The comments mentioning that the series will bring more gays to Roanoke and that it was an assault on family values struck me quite hard," she wrote. "For I too am part of a family, reveling in every moment I can spend with nieces, nephews, sisters and parents. I want a family of my own someday. To say that our beautiful city is devalued in some way because myself and other gay citizens live here is very disheartening. Nevertheless, I stand strong and confident, knowing that I am a member of this community every bit as much as the next person. I am a part of this fine city and am entitled to read things in my newspaper that I agree and disagree with. For it is in differences that we grow and our faith becomes stronger."