Once and for all, Charles: cease writing positive comments about yourself (See the comments left on this blog post for proof: http://blog.johnschrom.com/archives/1362#comments ), PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE ELSE. If you don’t stop, I will just continue exposing you. You are only giving your story more life. But hey, I’m not tired of this circus.

No one in this city would dare say we were lucky to have you except for you!!! What good did you do for this city?! Oh wait, except for stealing $1,700 and a non-profit’s confidential mailing list. Oh, and accept donations from a St. Paul company.

You are already laying the seeds for a political comeback…sick. What you should be doing is seeking psychiatric help, seeing you blamed all your lies on your “mental illness”. However, no matter what you try doing, no one will forget what has happened…I will make sure of it.

-La’Taya.

I truely believe that Charles will do great things in this world and that Minneapolis was lucky to have him!

Charles-you are the strongest person I know. You have never let anything bring you down, and you have risen from the ashes before and I am confident you will do it again! I look forward to see you in politics, hopefully in the near future. I will always support you!

Fortunately for me, I know both people involved here and can see past all the BS.

Andy – I appreciate your words, even if they include GAY in a not so gay positive headline. Thanks – for all you do!

Charles – You’ve taken a few pretty big hits in the past week, I guess that’s politics for ya. Hang in there – this will pass! (Hugs)

Carlson’s affiliation with the LGBT community was a fundamental component of the short history of his run–including “gay” in the headline highlights that and draws readers’ attention.

Respectfully submitted,
Addy

Eric James
Editor
TwinCityScene.com

Also, I think you hit it right on the head: “Gays are invisible for the most part until we come out and identify ourselves as such. I always err on the side of identification when I am writing about anyone in the LGBT community. It promotes visibility. Is that visibility always positive? No, LGBT people aren’t perfect.”

If we didn’t identify LGBT people as LGBT, we would be just as invisible as the religious right wishes we were.

But we seem to have different goals for our community. You want gay people to be recognized, so that they will be more visible. I want gay people to be treated as we would treat anyone else. The more that we are singled out as different from others, the longer we WILL be different from others. At some point, being a “gay” anything will not be worth mentioning. I think that time has already arrived.

As for the “Gay City Council Candidate Adopts Two Homeless Puppies” headline, I would suggest a more newsworthy version, “Homeless City Council Candidate Adopts Two Gay Puppies.”

It’s simple, Carlson ran on an openly gay platform. Therefore, he can respectfully be addressed as such. And yes jlasf, if a Black politician were running on a platform that is designed to appeal to Black voters, it would be entirely appropriate to label him as such. The irony here is that when the word “Gay” appears in a headline it sends up a red flag. A red flag that prompts some of us to meet a homosexual journalist with retribution for respectfully utilizing his own nomenclature.

I will say, however, that I disagree with you Andy, to a point. In the realm of social discrimination, being gay isn’t entirely different than being Black or Jewish. To prove, there is a blanket term that fits over each listed instance–a minority. So as a resolution, how about we end the bickering over what titles are appropriate to use at a given time, and focus on the meat and potatoes of the issue. Words aren’t the problem, social behavior is.

Andy, I stand behind your choice of words. To euphemise the English language only distracts from the point. The resolution wasn’t targeted at you, by the way.