Apr 04, 2008  |  By: KEVIN NAFF  | COMMENTS     

THE STORY OF a gay Army major who ded in Iraq has presented the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets with an opportunity to revisit and update their stylebook policies regarding when to identify someone as gay.

As the Blade reported last week, Maj. Alan Rogers, by all accounts a hero for his brave acts while serving in Iraq, was killed in January and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Rogers lived as openly gay a life as he could, given the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. He had many gay friends in D.C., patronized gay businesses and even worked as treasurer for the D.C. chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group working to overturn the military’s gay ban.

But the mainstream media accounts of his death omitted any reference to his sexual orientation. These were not benign omissions. The Washington Post, in particular, worked overtime to excise any mention of Rogers’ sexual orientation. It did not even report his work for AVER. Several of Rogers’ gay friends told the Blade that they were interviewed by a Post reporter at the funeral, but their memories were not included in the paper’s coverage.

Even in death, the military succeeded in keeping Rogers in the closet — until his grieving friends began speaking out. It’s one thing for the military to hide the truth of this hero’s life, but it’s quite another for the media to play along.

The Post ditched its responsibility to the truth, opting instead to enforce its 1950s-era views of sexual orientation that require gay subjects to remain in the closet.

The paper’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, agreed that the paper had erred.

“The Post was right to be cautious, but there was enough evidence — particularly of Rogers’ feelings about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ — to warrant quoting his friends and adding that dimension to the story of his life,” Howell wrote in a column Sunday. “The story would have been richer for it.”

The story would have been accurate for it.

MOST DISTURBING ABOUT the Post’s coverage is that it wasn’t a Metro section reporter or even a junior editor who made the call to straight-wash Rogers’ life. That decision was made by Executive Editor Len Downie himself, according to Howell.

The reporter’s original story included accounts of Rogers’ sexual orientation and the issue triggered a debate among editors who deemed it an “agonizing decision.” But “the decision ultimately was made by Executive Editor Len Downie, who said that there was no proof that Rogers was gay and no clear indication that, if he was, he wanted the information made public.”

And there we have it, at last, an explanation for the antiquated way the Post so often deals with the issue of sexual orientation in its coverage: the top editor doesn’t get it.
It’s incredible that reporting such a basic fact about someone led to an agonizing debate among editors, necessitating Downie’s involvement. How frequently does Downie get in the weeds of stories appearing inside the Metro section? Doesn’t the top editor of the Washington Post have more pressing issues to worry about?

Downie seeks “proof,” yet he removed any mention of Rogers’ gay friends from the story. He worries that Rogers may not have wanted this information made public, but Rogers worked for a gay rights group. Clearly, Rogers was not afraid of people knowing the truth about his life. There was concern that Rogers’ few surviving family members — cousins — didn’t want the Post to report on his being gay. But what gay people know is that many of our family members would prefer we stayed in the closet. That decision should not be left to disapproving relatives. For so many gay and lesbian people, friends become a chosen family. And in Rogers’ case, they should have been trusted to speak on his behalf.

Downie’s decision, and the Post’s stylebook policy, help perpetuate the notion that being gay is something to hide. If Rogers had been straight, there would be no heated debate about making references to relationships or hobbies that implied he was heterosexual. At the very least, Downie could ...