Gay discrimination in the media in Hawaii - gays and lesbians don’t have a voice and are not properly represented

About three weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor to the Honolulu Advertiser. I commented the recent debate about same-sex marriage. Now that California, the second state in the United States, legalized it, it is again being debated more nationwide. My article was about what these gay marriages in California and other same-sex civil unions, such as the one in Hawaii, mean to same-sex binational couples in the United States, binational meaning one partner is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and the other one is from a foreign country.

Since none of these gay marriages or civil unions in the U.S. are recognized by the federal government, a U.S. citizen or permanent resident is not allowed to sponsor his or her foreign partner for permanent residency in the U.S. In other words, if a gay or lesbian American citizen falls in love with someone from a foreign country, he or she can do nothing so that they can both legally live in the U.S. Therefore, many U.S. citizens had to go into exile, to leave the U.S. permanently, to be with the person they love. The U.S. forced them to choose between their home country and their life partner.

For binational partners of the opposite sex, there is no issue of permanent residency at all because a U.S. citizen or permanent resident can sponsor a foreign opposite-sex partner so they can both live in the U.S. In my letter I also wrote about the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), a bill still pending before Congress, which would allow binational same-sex couples to stay in the U.S. If this bill passed, a gay or lesbian U.S. citizen or permanent resident could sponsor his or her partner in the same way how a heterosexual U.S. citizen or permanent resident can sponsor an opposite-sex partner. But until today there hasn’t been any sign of the bill passing anytime soon.

I sent my letter to the Honolulu Advertiser on June 16. A couple of days later, I got a reply from the letters editor. She said my letter is too long and needs to be cut. I told her I can shorten it and did so. She said it needs to be between 200 and 250 words. I shortened it to 249 words and sent it back to her. She wrote me back the next day that my letter is still too long. I asked her why because it is now under 250 words. She told me that it is 263 words long. I told her that according to the word count function in MS Word, the article is exactly 249 words, but she kept on saying that it is 263 words. It was pathetic. She then said that she will forward my letter to the chief letters editor. She said that hopefully it would get through. That was the last thing I heard from her.

I waited a couple of days, but my article wasn’t published. In the same time, I saw a handful of other articles about the same-sex marriage issue being published, all of them were anti-gay, except for one, which was from a local church pastor, who wrote that he wishes the gay and lesbian couples who recently got married in San Francisco well. The church pastor’s article was published on June 19. On June 23, a letter was published from a woman saying that the church pastor needs to revisit the bible. She said that according to the bible, it is not in God’s will that man and man or woman and woman sleep together. Other negative letters followed; all were clearly sent to the newspaper after I had sent mine, on June 16. These negative letters were published right away, usually just 3-4 days after they were written. Up until today, June 29, my article hasn’t been published, and I don’t think it will.

What also disturbed me was to see that the Honolulu Advertiser doesn’t have fair letter guidelines for all. On Sunday, June 22, a letter to the editor from the Sierra Club was published in the Honolulu Advertiser. It appeared quite long to me, so I counted the number of words in the article. It was 312 words long. Many other times in the past I have seen articles that were similar in length. So the word restrictions only appear to some people and topics and not to others? After all these anti-gay letters and the oversized one were published, I wrote one more email to the letters editor a couple of days ago asking why my article wasn’t published but so many other ones were, but didn’t receive a reply.

This month is Gay Pride Month worldwide. Yesterday was the annual LGBTQ Pride Parade in Honolulu. The parade started in Ala Moana Park and marchers walked along Ala Moana Boulevard through Waikiki and ended in Kapiolani Park. About 200-300 people (a rough estimate) marched in the parade. Some on foot, some in cars and trolleys and a few drove on motorcycles. Many people stood on the sidewalk to cheer them on. The parade was followed by a community gathering and party at the McCoy Pavilion in Ala Moana Park. When I opened today’s Honolulu Advertiser (Sunday paper), all but three pictures of the whole event were published. Three pictures and three picture captions, but no story.

I had also watched the local news last night (KGMB9) and they also didn’t mention the day-long events in their broadcast at 10 pm (while they did mention the Flavors of Honolulu food festival and the Friends of the Library book sale that are also annual events and also happening this weekend). But nothing was said about the gay pride festival, which is actually even a worldwide event and not just happening in Honolulu. Why is it that the gay and lesbian community is not represented enough in our local Hawaii media?