Last week I wrote about the puzzling Washington Post feature of NOM’s Brian Brown. The piece, titled “Opposing Gay Unions With Sanity & a Smile,” was a bizarre portrait of Brown as just a normal guy doing what he loved to do. The article offered no counterpoint, nothing even remotely like, “NOM’s Brian Brown is seen as a vicious destroyer of equality, happiness, and marriage.”
On Sunday, the Washington Post issued an apology for the piece, and with it an explanation of its author’s intentions and marriage equality beliefs. Turns out, the woman who wrote the piece, Monica Hesse, is bisexual and is in favor of marriage equality. From the apology issued by the Washington Post ombudsman (sort of an in-house mediator):
The Post recently featured a story by reporter Monica Hesse that ran on the front of the Style section while she was on vacation. The day before returning, she logged on to check e-mails — and wept.
She was buried by an avalanche of messages angrily attacking her lengthy Aug. 28 profile of Brian Brown . . . Hesse was stunned. She had expected to hear from anti-gay-marriage conservatives who might view the story as “snide.”
. . . this is a case where three things — a storytelling concept, a writing technique and a bad headline — combined to ignite reader reaction as vitriolic as any I’ve experienced in my seven months as ombudsman.
More.
. . . Hesse said she decided to let Brown tell his story, as opposed to extensively quoting what others say about him. Her editors didn’t object to the concept. Having Brown’s story told in his “voice,” Hesse reasoned, would allow readers to best assess his arguments.
Fine in theory. But it deprived readers of hearing from others who have battled Brown and find him uncivil and bigoted.
[from an email written by Hesse to a reader:] “My current partner is a man,” she wrote them. “Before him, my partner of two years was a woman, with whom I discussed health insurance, kids, houses and marriage. You can bet that I found the fact that our marriage wouldn’t have been legal to be wrong as hell.
“That doesn’t mean that what NOM is trying to do and how they are trying to do it are not important to hear about.”
This is a shame. And confusing. From the writer to the editors, how could an article emerge that was not just ambiguous, but entirely opposite to its author’s intention?
10. September 2009 at 6:43 am
I read Monica Hesse’s article…and then I encountered the howls of protest over what she had written. This is the letter I wrote to Ms Hesse regarding my personal reaction to her take on Brian Brown. I am pleased to say that she has received it and responded to me about it.
Dear Ms. Hesse
I am sure as you open this, your heart is sinking…oh no, another person angry at me for the Brian Brown article “Opposing Gay Unions With Sanity & a Smile”. I am writing you to tell you that my partner Cyndi and I GOT it! It was a very good article, and we understand what you were trying to do.
I think maybe the only thing you were guilty of is being subtle, in a world where people expect to be spoon fed their controversy in small words, and big pictures!
I read your article very carefully several times – and Brown frightens me. You are dead on right – his very clean cut reasonableness makes him a hundred times more dangerous than the Dobsons, Hodges, and Phelps of the world! This was actually a cutting piece of journalism where you allowed the interviewee to hang himself with his own words. And the interview sections with his wife were beautifully done – you showed a woman who has been isolated and embarrassed by her husbands career, who does not personally share his vision, and struggles to get him to come home on time…she may say that she wants the person walking through the door to be a man for the sake of her kids, but then you show that she has trouble getting him to come home through that door at all…
“What time will you be home tonight?” Sue asks.
“Ahhhh . . . ”
“Six.”
“Well… ”
“Six. Just say it and do it. Six.”
That is not a united happy marriage, when you say something like that in front of a journalist! Also, her moment of speculation was very revealing – She’s pictured what it might be like to be on the other side of this debate. “I know many awesome women, and I’ve thought about what if I got together with one of them” Wow…I think that Brown had better pay more attention to his own home and marriage before he comes after me and mine! Including the slight dissonance between Brown and his wife was excellently done.
By showing his ties to the Catholic church and his extreme reliance on rationality, you portray a man who actually cannot think for himself but must have structure and framework…things must be rational, things must not change. That is someone who is still immature, and unable to deal with change and growth. Your question “Does he ever think that what he sees as an abrupt historical shift is, perhaps, progress?” and his response was “It’s irrational” was very telling! Lovely handling of the situation. His actual arguments are shallow, and his knowledge of history is non-existent. And you showed that beautifully!”He liked Catholicism’s traditions of social justice and work for the poor.” One wonders then WHY he isn’t bending his considerable organizational talents towards that social justice and caring for the poor…instead its condoms and anti-gay marriage.
Monica, thank you! It was a relief to read a piece of journalism that was not written as though I were on a grammar school reading level, that by quiet unrelenting contrasts unequivocally showed that this man is dangerous, and also off balance and heading for a fall. Please show this to your ombudsman, and let him know that not everyone missed the point out here!
If you ever get the courage to reopen this subject, I’d love to hear from the gay friends that Brown claims to have…what they say would be interesting. Or a riposte article from the GLBT side that is as measured and reasoning and subtle as this one that gives the opposite view in sanity without ranting.
Well done! It’s good to know there are still journalists capable of writing with clarity, subtlety and sophistication, even if it appears to be lost on the public.
Thank you for your work, and for this article! Your voice is important and should be heard – now go get ‘em again! We need you, if we are ever going to stop the Browns of the world!
PS I have family members that I am not Out to as gay – if this is published in a readers response, I ask to remain anonymous. Call it an illustration of the dangers and sadness of the world we live in thanks to the Brian Browns!
Thanks.
I will say that who ever titled the piece probably did not help advance Ms. Hesse’s intent. And I can see the fact that by departing from traditional Journalism of here is what he says, here is what the opposition said got her in trouble. But I could clearly see what she meaant to do, and why. I hope that others might read my letter and realize that it was actually a very good article.