| MND COMMENTARY |
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March 14, 2004 by Nicholas Stix The mainstream media have two complementary tactics in covering homosexual-related news: Flooding the zone with stories portraying gays as victims or heroes, and damming up the flow of information, when it would present gays in a less than favorable light. And sometimes both tactics are used within the same story. Consider coverage of the illegal same-sex “weddings” in San Francisco and New Paltz, New York. Several stories on the New Paltz “weddings” mentioned Tom Duane, an openly gay New York State Senator, who represents the Chelsea section of Manhattan. On March 2, Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams charged New Paltz Mayor Jason West with 19 counts of illegally “solemnizing a wedding without a license,” a misdemeanor for which Williams did not seek to jail West. Duane demanded that Williams be prosecuted: “Really, the Ulster County D.A. should be prosecuted for malicious prosecution, which is a felony in New York.” (Williams has since spoken of jailing West, but only after the latter announced that he would continue flouting the law.) Among New York City’s TV stations, to my knowledge, only WNBC News 4 reported Duane’s outburst. The only major outlet to report on Duane’s attack on Williams was the Associated Press. And yet, Michael Hill’s AP report was published by few outlets, most of which were in small markets, were college newspapers, or in… China. (Note that the version published in China, chopped off the name “New Paltz.”) The only major print players I could find who reported on Duane’s attack on Williams, were the New York Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times, both of which ran Hill’s story. The New York Times initially ran Hill’s story, including Duane’s outburst, but then deleted all reference to Duane. I know this, because some far left bloggers, such as “Scout,” at One38 quoted Duane exactly, and linked to the Times version. Some journalists reported on Duane, while artfully excising his call for the prosecution of Williams. On March 3, Keith Eddings of Gannett’s Journal News, which serves the suburbs just north of New York City, wrote “Another effort to pass legislation allowing gay marriages also has gone nowhere in the Senate or the Assembly. The bill's sponsor in the Senate, Manhattan Democrat Tom Duane, will hold a forum on the bill in Albany today.” The next day, Eddings wrote, “The state's only openly gay senator held the first State Capitol hearing on the growing debate…. “Gay marriage got a first official airing at yesterday's hearing on a bill that would allow it. The forum was scheduled in December, before President Bush propelled the issue to the forefront last month with his announcement that he will support amending the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. "It's clear we will win this battle, and, in fact, gay marriage already is here," Sen. Tom Duane, D-Manhattan, said in opening the hearing …” On March 4, “reporter” Tom Precious (or his editor), of the upstate New York Buffalo News did a painstaking job of airbrushing Duane’s utterances. “Sen. Thomas Duane, D-Manhattan, who is openly gay, called [Mayor] West a ‘wonderfully heroic, world-changing mayor.’ “Wiping tears from his eyes, Duane told the mayor he was facing a ‘malicious prosecution’ by the Ulster County district attorney. ‘Ultimately, we are going to win. We are going to have civil marriages for all New Yorkers,’ Duane said.” Either Precious or his editor left out Duane’s call for the prosecution of Williams. Had a heterosexual public official called for the prosecution of a homosexual official merely for following the law, I have no doubt that it would have been front page news, from coast to coast. And how, if Duane had already scheduled hearings on his gay marriage bill back in December, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom started illegally marrying gays on February 12, could gays and Keith Eddings (among other alleged reporters) insist that Pres. Bush’s February 24 speech “propelled” the issue to the forefront? This sounds like reverse causation to me. Earlier in the week, Duane had also gotten away with lying about the law. In a March 2 story that ran in New York’s Daily News, Albany Bureau Chief Joe Mahoney wrote that, “State Sen. Thomas Duane (D-Manhattan) claimed [Republican New York Gov. George] Pataki was blowing smoke when he characterized the New Paltz weddings as illegal. “‘They're making it up,’ said Duane, an openly gay lawmaker who has authored a bill that would legalize same-sex marriages in New York. ‘The Constitution and the laws of the state are gender-neutral when they are applied to marriage.’” Duane had to know that New York State law refers to “husband” and “wife” and “bride” and “groom.” Only Joe Mahoney reported on Duane’s dishonesty, but neither Mahoney nor any other journalist took Duane to task for either of his outbursts. And then there was the March 4 attempted mass gay “marriage” in New York City, when 36 same-sex couples tried to get marriage licenses in Manhattan, at the City Clerk’s office, while approximately 300 people demonstrated outside. The mainstream media could have been using scripts issued by the homosexual group, the Empire State Pride Agenda, the way they parroted the homosexual party line. The New York Post article, by Frankie Edozien and Joe McGurk, opened, “Scores of gay couples seeking marriage licenses in the city were turned down yesterday, receiving only a letter explaining that same-sex marriages are illegal.” You had to read further in the Post article, to see that each couple was given a “50-page explanation of why same-sex weddings are illegal in New York.” The Daily News story pulled a similar switch. The couples were described as “heartbroken” and “disappointed,” said they were “pained” and found it “hurtful,” when they couldn’t obtain marriage licenses, as if they had actually expected to get them. The shameless Daily News teaser headline about the demonstration, “Gays need not apply,” equated homosexuals’ inability to marry members of the same sex, with the terrible discrimination 19th century Irish immigrants faced in New York, when business owners would hang signs in their windows, saying “Irish need not apply.” What to my knowledge no major media outlet would report, was that the demonstration had been carried out “on the heals [sic] of extensive planning sessions,” beginning with a call to arms at least two weeks beforehand (i.e., at least five days before Pres. Bush supposedly inspired everyone to act), had its own web site, and had been publicized in advance both in the gay niche media, and in the mass circulation, leftwing Village Voice weekly, whose editorial staff is politically gay-dominated, but whose readership is majority heterosexual. The demonstration was largely organized by veterans of ACT-UP, the gay organization which led criminal actions during the 1980s and early 1990s. As the niche Gay City News reported BEFORE the demonstration, “During a meeting at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center on Monday evening, couples planning to participate and organizers of the action reached a consensus not to engage in civil disobedience, an option strongly weighed at an overflow gathering of community members the previous Friday evening. “Instead, upon being denied a license, the couples plan to exit the building to join protesters across the street.” So much for the pain and heartbreak. New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix has written for Toogood Reports, Middle American News, the New York Post, Daily News, American Enterprise, Insight, Chronicles, Newsday and many other publications. His recent work is collected at www.geocities.com/nstix and http://www.thecriticalcritic.blogspot.com. |
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