Via T of The Republic of T, John at AMERICAblog provides a glimpse into the slimy shriveled heart of the anti-gay (marriage) movement (more here, here, here and here, and also coverage at the Blue Lemur). The Washington Post on Friday published a magazine ad supplement put together by "Grace Christian Church"; a viler and more despicable piece of homophobic race-baiting you will be hard pressed to find. John has pdfs linked from this post and a zip file hosted by RawStory is here. Read it; you'll be astonished.

Please take a moment to write to the WaPo ombudsman, Mike Getler; what follows is the letter I sent.

Dear Mr Getler,

I am writing to express my anger and astonishment over the magazine ad supplement "Both Sides Magazine" published by the Washington Post on Friday 11/19/2004. The advertisement is a hateful screed aimed at inciting anti-gay prejudice in the African American community. It relies heavily on unsupported and bigoted opinions presented as facts, on the nonsense masquerading as science peddled by discredited quack Paul Cameron and on deliberate misinterpretation of Martin Luther King Jr's message of hope and justice for all. (An informative look at what MLK actually might have had to say about gay rights, courtesy of his widow Coretta Scott King, can be seen here.)

Gay marriage is clearly a contentious issue in America today, and if reasonable people are to disagree in a constructive manner it is vital that respectable publications should not lend their circulations, to say nothing of their tacit approval, to organisations determined to sow hatred and division by means of deception. If the Post would not -- and I am confident that it would not -- accept a paid advertisement from, say, the KKK claiming that Blacks are inferior to whites, why then did it run a paid attack on gays?

I am anxious to hear how the Post will deal with this issue.

Sincerely, etc.

Update 041123: The Post's response is to shrug and say, "but it was an ad". John's not happy and neither am I. Letter number two:

Dear Mr Getler:

If I understand it correctly, your response to my -- and many others' -- anger over the "BothSides Magazine" issue is to absolve the Post of responsibility on the grounds that they were paid to run that vile piece of race-baiting pseudoscientific hatemongering. I look forward, inter alia, to the Holocaust revisionism, eugenics and white supremacy "advertisements" that will certainly be run in a newspaper which has made clear and public its policy that all money is good money. I do not believe it is any exaggeration to compare such ideologies to a publication which relies on the hateful and discredited sophistries of professional homophobe Paul Cameron and blatantly targets Blacks in an attempt to drive a wedge between two minority groups. Having accepted "Both Sides Magazine", I do not see how the Post can turn down David Duke or David Irving.

I'm sure you know what happens, Mr Getler, when one lies down with dogs.

Sincerely, etc.