CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has decided to really get into pushing his employer’s anti-gay agenda.
Apparently seeking a way to denigrate gays as much as possible, Jeffrey headlined his June 16 CNS article on President Obama’s marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the modern gay-rights movement, this way: “Obama Celebrates Anti-Police Riot Started at Mafia-Owned Bar for Transvestites.” The first paragraph of Jeffrey’s article elaborated slightly by calling the Stonewall Inn — the name of which does not appear until the third paragraph of the article — “an illegal Mafia-owned bar for transvestites.”
Jeffrey linked to, and selectively quoted from, a 2010 New York Times obituary for Seymour Pine, the police inspector who led the raid, highlighting the “anti-police” aspects of the riots while failing to quote from the article why the LGBT community was driven to do so. From the Times article, which did not make into Jeffrey’s article:
Although the ostensible reason for the raid was to crack down on prostitution and other organized-crime activities, it was common at the time for the police to raid gay bars and arrest cross-dressers and harass customers.
[…]
The club, on Christopher Street near Seventh Avenue South, was owned by members of the Mafia. Inspector Pine later said he conducted the raid on orders from superiors.In 2004, Inspector Pine spoke during a discussion of the Stonewall uprising at the New-York Historical Society. At the time of the raid, he said, the police “certainly were prejudiced” against gays, “but had no idea about what gay people were about.”
Why didn’t Jeffrey include that important context in his article? The only possible reason was that he was determined to present gays in the most negative light possible — as if his headline wasn’t already a clue to that.
It seems that Jeffrey supports the kind of bigotry and prejudice with which the police treated gays back then. Is that really an acceptable attitude for someone who heads a so-called “news” organization to have?