2 Comments

Cher Houdart,

Your column, as I read it, is meant to be flippant and entertaining while presenting serious newsbites. For me, the tone of "What is up with gay mayors in the DC area?" crosses the line into unfeeling. After spending my 20-40's in downtown DC, I moved to historic Hyattsville 20 years ago. I knew Kevin Ward. He did not campaign as an out Gay man, but did talk a lot about his children, and stood with and introduced his husband at his election celebration. Supporters and others were distraught at the other side that surfaced after his death. Also, I know Patrick Wojahn from my early days in Maryland, as part of Equality Maryland campaigning together locally and in the Statehouse for civil equality for same-sex families. Patrick was widely known as the openly Gay Mayor of College Park, and what came to light last week really hurt and saddened me -- particularly because, when I was a child, "homosexuals" were conflated with pedophilia and widely claimed to be a threat to your children, to the point that even when I was a child myself I was afraid to be around younger children for fear I'd be assumed to be one of those homo-pedos. Both cases -- Ward & Wojahn -- are matters of mental health, not aspects of being LGBTQIA other than, perhaps, distant evidence of partial residue from wounds connected with growing up in 'otherness.' None of the circumstances -- embezzlement, pornography, possible pedophilia, homosexuality, leadership, private actions compared against public personas -- are topics that merit a quip. They're deep issues and behind those paths in these men’s' lives are doubtless painful, private twists in the course of each that, as we are all connected -- in the LGBTQIA community and the wider community -- merit treatment that at least respects how sad and awful the dénouement are. (Please see now if you can find balance by reporting on some openly LGBTQIA DC-area leaders who merit a newsbyte of praise.) Merci beaucoup.

Expand full comment