The St. Augustine Record editorial below is shocking in its use of bigoted pejoratives -- sissies. It quote Cathy Brown of the COA, who is no right-winger.
Both Cathy Brown and Margo Pope need their consciousness raised -- just like the Chief Judge of the U.S. Department of Labor, JOHN MICHAEL VITTONE, a noted homophobe who actually testified several years ago that "litigation's not for sissies."
Judge VITTONE was talking about me, in a proceeding he began to silence my zealous advocacy for environmental and nuclear whistleblowers.
Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual people hear homophobic argot from childhood. Like racism, homophobia is an institutional force here in St. Augustine and St. Johns County. It's why we had to go to federal court to overrule the City of St. Augustine on the Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions. It's why African-Americans had to hire William Kunstler and other civil rights lawyers and invite Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in to fight oppression in the 1960s.
Journalists and COA professionals are tone-deaf and skin-deep if they ratify bigotry by using bigoted language. Using "sissy" or other anti-Gay words as pejoratives is like using "black" as a pejorative. It's wrong. It's dumb. It's coarse. It coarsens discourse.
We don't ever want to have to respond to any more homophobic or racist argot from the St. Augustine Record or the COA ever again.
Consider yourselves on notice as a publicly-held company and as a grant-funded non-profit -- your stockholders and your funders don't like bigots, either.
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