Part of the aftermath of a failed political campaign is that natural allies turn on each other.
We're seeing it in the Republican Party after John McCain's defeat, and among gay-friendly liberals after the passage of California's ban on same-sex marriage.
The latest fight involves feuding alternative weeklies:
Salt Lake City Weekly,
The Stranger in Seattle, and New York's
The Village Voice.
It started when Dan Savage (pictured), the esteemed editor of
The Stranger and writer of a nationally syndicated sex-advice column,
chimed in to support a blanket boycott of Utah (because the LDS Church and its members supported California's Prop. 8 and bankrolled much of the campaign). Savage said he and his boyfriend had been contemplating a Utah ski vacation, but now they will go to Colorado instead.
Of course, a blanket boycott won't hit its intended target (there are a lot of Mormons who don't live in Utah) and will cause collateral damage (think of the 3,000 Utahns who protested around Temple Square last weekend, or the gay-friendly Sundance Film Festival). But Savage is angry, and somebody has to pay.
John Saltas, the president of
Salt Lake City Weekly, made such an argument in his
weekly column. "A Utah boycott hurts the very people Savage claims to speak for," Saltas wrote, while also noting that Colorado is home to Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family and several other evangelical groups that also supported Prop. 8.
Saltas went even further, though, and terminated Savage's sex-advice column, "Savage Love," which had been running on the
City Weekly's web site. "Since Savage hates Utah so much, there’s no point in us playing in his sandbox by sending him a regular check," Saltas wrote.
This announcement raised the ire of
The Village Voice writer Roy Edroso, who
condemned Saltas' action on the paper's "Runnin' Scared" blog: "Runnin' Scared and the
Voice are astonished that the paper would defenestrate Savage on the basis of his views - especially when those views are entirely predictable from the tenor of his previous work. (Did they actually expect Savage to be gentle about a major gay-rights issue?) We can't think of another alt-weekly that would do such a thing and, till this happened, never expected it of the
Weekly."
Can't we all just get along? I invite Savage to come to Utah (he can fly on an airline with a strong anti-discrimination policy, and we can find him a nice gay-friendly B&B, whose owners won't give a penny to tithing) - and I'll buy the drinks while Savage and Saltas debate the issue and find common ground.
I'm betting that is Savage came to Salt Lake City, the crowd of gays and lesbians that would greet his arrival would leave him staggered and impressed.
Labels: City Weekly, LDS, politics
Word is trickling out that Holly Mullen has been let go as editor of the City Weekly, Salt Lake City's alt-weekly paper.
