Chris Kilbourne's Letter to Frontiers In L.A.

March 4, 2009

To: The Editors of Frontiers In L.A.
From: Chris Kilbourne, representing the Radical Faerie Psyche Collective
Re: “Radical Faeries Talk Marred by Protests” (Vol. 27, Issue 22, p.19)

Dear Editors:

I wish to complain that your recent news article by Karen Ocamb, “Radical Faeries Talk Marred by Protests,” reporting on a public demonstration I and many others participated in at Don Kilhefner’s and Mark Thompson’s presentation on “The Radical Faeries at 30” at the One National Gay and Lesbian Archives on February 15, was seriously biased against our protest, which attempted to espouse ideas that we feel are urgently necessary for the health and well-being of all gay and lesbian people today. The article is replete with unethical journalistic distortions, some of which I will point out and comment on.

The article in question uses the word marred in the title and text to characterize the protest. The word mar means “to detract from the perfection or wholeness of: spoil” (Webster’s 7th New Collegiate). Our view, and that of many non-affiliated audience members at the talk who spoke with us, was that the demonstration actually enhanced and enlivened what was otherwise actually pretty dull, turning it into a much more stimulating and exciting event by raising important and challenging questions which were otherwise being entirely ignored. One person said the title of the article should have read “Radical Faeries Talk Blessed by Protests!” Thus, using marred indicates a bias against the protesters, both in terms of what the word means as a characterizing of a legitimate protest and in terms of differing opinions as to the worth or meaning of the protest vs. the official event. Further suggesting this bias is the article’s failure to even mention why we were protesting, which in our opinion was not at all about an implied clash of personalities or who founded what per se, but about a quite serious debate over Radical Faerie theory and practice. This absence of any attempt to fairly represent our position, no matter that it may have been disagreed with, has the effect of making our cause into a mere personal grudge unworthy of informative comment or reasonable respect. The implication is clearly that we unjustly disfigured a thoroughly respectable presentation by two gay leaders of unquestioned integrity.

The article also inexplicably singles out by name only one of the more than 15 protesters equally present and then goes on to detail two of his professional associations having nothing to do with the event, as if to tar his reputation in other quarters through connection with a disreputable activity. It isn’t until later that the reader, after being referred to Ocamb’s personal blog, finds that she has held a long-standing, apparently hidden, grudge against this particular protest participant, thus revealing a possible reason for the article singling him out.

The article then says that the protesters held signs outside the parking lot, “blasting Kilhefner.” The word blast can mean a violent outburst, and is associated with explosives, again suggesting that we were being vicious and unethical against innocent victims rather than behaving in a responsible and proportionate way for a principled reason during a fair and legal activity.

The next paragraph of the article then replicates a particular view of what is actually a complicated and controversial history, that of the origins of the Radical Faerie movement, in which Mitch Walker, arguably one of the pivotal visionaries involved, and without whom the phenomenon would not have taken place, is made to seem petty and relatively uninvolved. The effect of this portrait, which is the same as that being promoted by Kilhefner in his recent columns for Frontiers (Jan. 27 & Feb. 24, 2009), is to erase the meaningful ideas that Walker represents in the ongoing Faerie controversy, substituting those highly relevant concerns with a supposed personal dispute. It seems reasonable to wonder if the editors at Frontiers In L.A. published this manipulated portrait as legitimate news because they have a vested interest in protecting the reputation of one of their regular contributors.

The last paragraph continues to smear the demonstration by portraying some of the protesters who were among the listening audience one-dimensionally as having “angrily shouted.” This snapshot description suggests that there was something disruptive and wrong about their actions, yet the objectors were actually fairly and appropriately, if perhaps occasionally vigorously, interacting with Kilhefner during the question and answer period. Even more importantly, the slanted portrait repeats the earlier erasure of what the objectors were actually attempting to point out, once more replacing that with personal innuendo. Furthermore, the end of the article implies that One National Gay and Lesbian Archives, the sponsor of the event, caved-in to some kind of nasty pressure or hostile demand the protest was making by offering the demonstrators our own talk at some future date. This was not the case at all. In fact, the director, staff, and volunteers demonstrated friendly curiosity and interest in what we were doing, unlike either Frontiers In L.A. or the official event presenters. It was one of the main archivists who spontaneously approached us outside and seemed pleasantly eager to be able to archive the reading materials we were passing out. He even took our signs for the archive!

To top off the problem of journalistic bias in your magazine, a link was provided at the end of the article in question to Ocamb’s personal blog, where, supposedly further reporting on news and information concerning the protest event, she instead blatantly exposes quite a fierce bias against the demonstration, including a long, detailed and personalizing rant of possibly libelous proportions against the protestors and others. She paints them as “cult-like,” and as having a long history of meanly and fanatically harassing Thompson and others, going so far as to suggest that such fanatics would “come after your dogs” if you dared to oppose them. She’s never attempted to directly obtain my views or those of anyone else who participated in the recent protest about any of these important matters past or current and their veracity other than manipulatively quoting from the protest handouts.

Why does a magazine that serves the gay and lesbian community employ oppressive tactics such as our real enemies do? This protest event was a legitimate way for me and some of my colleagues to confront unjust power, in true Radical Faerie Spirit fashion. Of course we expect that we may be misunderstood and even demonized, as some of us have already been by Kilhefner and Thompson for many years now, when we try to point out what we see as a crucial need for everybody to address the gay unconscious in all of its positive and negative aspects. We respectfully hope and expect that Frontiers In L.A. would adhere to ethical standards of journalistic fairness and objectivity involving activities that may appear on the surface to be unusual or even offensive to the status quo. Should we as gay people, so often misunderstood and scapegoated by the larger heterosexual culture, not expect better treatment from each other?

Sincerely,
Chris Kilbourne