From: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Date: Thu Jan 6, 2005 2:06 pm
Subject: GLAAD Alert: CREATORS SYNDICATE PROMOTES THOMAS SOWELL'S ANTI-GAY BIGOTRY
To: GLAADAlert

GLAAD Alert
Jan. 6, 2005


CREATORS SYNDICATE PROMOTES THOMAS SOWELL'S ANTI-GAY BIGOTRY

In a Creators Syndicate column this week, Thomas Sowell mixes absurd claims about marriage and same-sex couples with a hateful, bigoted attack on gay and lesbian Americans -- including an assertion that being gay is a "death style."

Anti-gay sentiments are standard fare for Sowell, whose columns have long traded in prejudice and homophobia. In June 2004 he wrote:

"Similarly, atrocities committed against homosexuals are big news but atrocities committed by homosexuals, including atrocities against children, are unlikely to see the light of day in much of the media. Neither is any statistical information on how homosexuals differ from the general population in life span, diseases or costs to the taxpayers for dealing with their diseases."


Sowell's recent "Gay marriage 'rights'" column, which can be read in its entirety at http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041231.shtml, is filled with statements like: "Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have," and "Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football" -- statements so silly that, despite their underlying offensiveness, it is difficult to take them seriously.

But Sowell's repugnant bigotry toward gays and lesbians -- and Creators willingness to publish it -- cannot go unchallenged. Sowell writes:

"Incidentally, it is not even clear how many homosexuals actually want marriage, even though gay activists are pushing it. What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS."


This is the second time in less than a month that concerns have been raised about Creators' dissemination of bigotry through its syndicated columns. In early December, critics condemned a Creators column by Samuel Francis on a controversial Monday Night Football ad featuring "Desperate Housewives" star Nicollette Sheridan and NFL star Terrell Owens. Francis wrote, "Breaking down the sexual barriers between the races is a major weapon of cultural destruction because it means the dissolution of the cultural boundaries that define breeding and the family and, ultimately, the transmission and survival of the culture itself."


TAKE ACTION NOW AT GLAAD.ORG!

Because Sowell's column is distributed by Creators Syndicate to newspapers across the country, GLAAD is encouraging a two-pronged response: contacting Creators Syndicate directly, and monitoring/responding to newspapers that publish this defamatory column.

STEP ONE:
1) Please contact Creators Syndicate President Richard S. Newcombe by visiting http://www.glaad.org/action/alerts_detail.php?id=3768. Ask him to justify Creators' decision to distribute Thomas Sowell's repugnant, hateful attack on gay and lesbian Americans.

STEP TWO:
2) Please monitor your local newspaper to see if it publishes Sowell's column. If it does, please contact us via e-mail at dukowitz@glaad.org, letting us know the date it ran. A partial list of papers that have run Sowell's columns in the past includes:

Aberdeen American News (S.D.)
The Baltimore Sun (Md.)
Bismarck Tribune (N.D.)
Charleston Daily Mail (W.V.)
Contra Costa Times (Calif.)
Lansing State Journal (Mich.)
Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nev.)
The News-Press (Santa Barbara, Calif.)
Richmond Times Dispatch (Va.)
San Gabriel Valley Tribune (Calif.)
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)
The Times Union (Albany, N.Y.)
Tucson Citizen (Ariz.)
Tulsa World (Okla.)
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)

STEP THREE:
3) If your local paper does run this column, please write a letter to the editor expressing your opinion about Sowell's homophobic diatribe. Please copy us on your letter at dukowitz@glaad.org.

Sowell has a long history of being a Negro Sellout par excellance.

This makes me wonder if he's also gay.

By his logic (and mine), the government and churches should get out of the mating business. Outta there, bossy jerks. Down with marriage. Heh.