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FOUNDING MEMBER
P E R S P E C T I V E : L e t t e r f r o m t h e E d i t o r
Change Is Good
Matt Tracy and Paul Schindler in a photoshopped composite at the 2020 Gay City News Impact Awards in Long
Island City, where the two were socially distancing for COVID safety reasons.
Tat Bellamy-Walker joins Gay City News as the new digital editor and reporter.
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
Today’s issue of Gay City
News is the last one for
which I will serve as the
newspaper’s editor-inchief.
Steering this newspaper over the
past two decades has been the proudest
DONNA ACETO/ GEORGE DE CASTRO DAY
COURTESY OF TAT BELLAMY-WALKER
achievement of my life. Gay City
News was launched in May 2002,
and was the successor to a previous
publication I worked on, Lesbian and
Gay New York, or LGNY, which got its
start in late 1994. I began writing for
LGNY a year later, and became its
editor-in-chief in 1997.
It’s scarcely possible to put into a
brief few words how much the LGBTQ
community and its role in New
York, our nation, and the world have
changed in the past quarter century.
HIV, which for a decade and a half
had destroyed the lives of hundreds
of thousands of Americans, many
of them gay men, became, with new
drug therapies, a manageable health
condition. What was almost unthinkable
in 1996 when the Defense of
Marriage Act was enacted became a
reality with the 2015 marriage equality
ruling from the Supreme Court,
and gay men and lesbians can now
serve openly in the military. Transgender
and non-binary folks, once
largely overlooked even by lesbian
and gay advocates, have stepped forward
to claim their space and their
rights, even as they continue to face
fi erce resistance in many quarters.
The LGBTQ media has played a vital
role during these past decades in
bringing our stories, struggles, and
achievements to wider public appreciation,
and if the mainstream press
is doing a far better job of that now
than it did in 1995 I am convinced it
is because our own community publications
have shown the way. Gay
City News has been at the forefront of
quality, reliable reporting amidst all
the tectonic changes unfolding.
The community still has a long way
to go to achieve full, lived equality. The
nation lacks a comprehensive civil
rights law protecting LGBTQ Americans.
We continue to face hate violence,
which has become an epidemic
against transgender people, especially
trans women of color. Trans folks
can still not serve in the military,
and their participation in sports has
sparked backlash and disqualifying
restrictions. The LGBTQ community
also continues to face critical health
and economic disparities, particularly
among its trans members and
in communities of color. And worldwide,
in far too many places, being
queer carries lethal risks. All this,
of course, is just a partial list of the
challenges that lie ahead.
As it has in the past, the queer
media must play a leadership role in
airing these issues and pushing for
change, and I am convinced that Gay
City News will stay at the front of the
pack.
For myself, I plan to continue contributing
both at the newspaper and
as an activist and writer generally.
But at the age of 66 and after 25 years
➤ CHANGE, continued on p.11
December 31, 2020 - January 13, 2 10 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
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