Letters to the Editor	Letters Archive

Texas Prison Officials: Big Bird is a Dyke!

The October 2002 issue of The Guide has been reviewed and denied in accordance with section 3.9 of the TDCJ-ID Rules and Regulations because a specific factual determination has been made that the publication is detrimental to prisoners' rehabilitation because it would encourage deviated [sic] criminal sexual behavior: page 119 contains graphic depiction of women engaging in homosexual activity.

Mail Systems Coordinators Panel
Huntsville, Texas

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Subscribers Sound Off!

Many thanks for the best gay publication around.

B.H.
St. Louis, Missouri

Please cancel my subscription. Why don't you cover Eastern Europe, South America, Spain, Portugal, Italy, or Turkey? Not always the same places!

V.B.
Oakbrook, Illinois

Thanks for the feedback. We have covered many of the places you mention, but we do focus on destinations with a large gay travel community­ both because we're out to cover the gay scene and because we need a strong ad base to justify the expenses involved in preparing a travel article.

Very good mag! It saves a lot of money when traveling by knowing which clubs to hit, what baths are hot, where to stay, and so forth. Keep up the good work.

D.B.
San Antonio, Texas

Web Research for Prisoner Ads

We can find many ads from prisoners in each issue of The Guide. Reading them, it seems that what they say about themselves could be true, so I wrote some of them and received an answer from every one of them. They send pictures, and I did the same, exchanging a few letters. It doesn't take long for them to ask for money (which I never send) to pay for stamps or because they're in prison without being guilty and want a new lawyer (promising they'll visit me once out). What a joke.

It's easy to find information about prisoners on the web, though. As you can see from the examples enclosed [ad text compared with prison info gleaned from the web], everyone is lying!

C.P.
Montreal, Quebec

Using a search engine like Google (type in "prison information florida" for example), you can find on-line information about many states' prisoners. And, indeed, many prisoners' advertised stats do not match those given by their captors. But then, stats given by many non-prisoners might not stand up to scrutiny, either. We trust readers to realize that sending money to an unknown person (prisoner or not) involves the risk that they may not be who/what they claim to be. Caution is appropriate with any new pen pal you make.

But please consider that there are lots of guys in prison unfairly, and that almost every prisoner is subjected to dehumanizing policies that do not encourage responsible behavior. Many prisoners have been forgotten by family and friends and work as slaves in the prison industry, paid pennies a day. For such guys, a pen pal who stays in touch­ who sends a few bucks for shaving cream or fresh coffee or a radio­ can make a huge difference in their lives. Many readers who respond to prisoner ads understand that they may get a bit of a "story" from their incarcerated pals, but they don't care so much because they like the idea of helping someone unfortunate enough to be locked up in the snakepits our country keeps building at record rates.