Letters to the Editor	Letters Archive

Appreciative in the Heartland

On behalf of Pride St. Louis, the organization responsible for producing our city's annual Pride Fest, I would like to thank you for the wonderful coverage of our city's gay scene [August 1998]. It was nice to see so many photos and coverage taken from our most recent Pride Festival.

Having just finished producing our most successful celebration to date, with well over 18,000 in attendance, we are already gearing up for Pride Fest '99. to be held the last weekend of next June. With our more frequented gay meccas on either coast drawing their usual fanfare and attention, I must say it is nice to see your publication do such a nice job of presenting what the heart of the country has to offer.

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We look forward to welcoming your readers to next year's Pride Festival!

Rolf E. Rathmann

Pride St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

Pissed Off by Shit Article

Your powerful editorial about the importance of "rooting out destructive, fearful notions about sex" should be the attitude of any group who would hope to promote health and well-being among gay men and lesbians, and is particularly important to an AIDS agency such as AID Atlanta. We long ago learned that scorn will alienate us from the very groups-- namely gay men at risk-- that we are trying to educate.

A pity, then, that the same issue would devote two pages of copy to the nauseatingly detailed description contained in "The Joy of Shit-Eating" ["Sex Histories," September 1998]. Apart from the aesthetic challenges of this article, the health risks are numerous and completely ignored.

The freedom for a magazine to print, in vivid detail, the physically dangerous acts of a man who wants to consume "entire bowel movements" is hardly the type of movement that our political allies have in mind. Your editorial column makes a valiant attempt to push groups such as Human Rights Campaign to the "fringe"-- while you claim the mainstream for yourself-- but the disgusting nature of those two pages betrays your best arguments.

How then can we replace society's ignorance about homosexuality with "loving and life-affirming sexual values," as your editorial states, if your pages perpetuate derogatory images-- indeed, they introduce new ones-- of us as people who enjoy eating feces from Tupperware containers? Please don't use this as an opportunity to cloak yourself behind freedom of speech. Editors make choices every day. You had an opportunity to back up your editorial with the magazine's content and you blew it.

Tony Braswell

Executive Director, AID Atlanta

Atlanta, Georgia

Thanks for your feedback. Our article "Coprophilia: A Lot to Digest" [February 1993, also available at www.guidemag.com] did discuss the health issues involved in shit play, and our regular half page "Safer Sex, Safer Drugs" is one of the country's only HIV risk reduction guidelines to discuss the hazards of shit play and how to minimize them.

You seem to miss our editorial message that rational and loving sexual values have to be rooted in the truth, not sanitized imagery calculated to win mainstream approval.

Supporting sexual diversity means living side-by-side with people whose sexual tastes are not your own. You may find coprophiliacs "nauseating," but surely you realize many in Atlanta would find plain old cocksucking or buttfucking or clit-licking sufficiently disgusting to warrant suppression. Though free to cluck and condemn, the "Offended Majority" should not dictate who can be seen or what can be said about sex.

The Sunshine State Is Not Amused

Please be advised that your correspondence is being returned for the following reasons: The Guide magazine has been disapproved.

C. Mallory

Mailroom Officer

State of Florida

Department of Corrections

And we disapprove of you, too-- so there!