New York Times Magazine Eats Humble Pie

By Jack Nichols

ringing a happy ending to a contentious dispute in which I got shamelessly engaged, The New York Times Magazine admitted, finally, in its July 2 issue, to having made (in its May 28 issue) an editing error.

Herewith are some of the earlier debated explosions at their best:

Guilt at the New York Times Magazine:

http://www.nycny.com/columns/nichols/nichols6-2-00.html

The dispute had erupted when the Service members Legal Defense Network (SLDN) objected, as I did, to questionable reportage that gave readers the impression that SLDN, an effective activist organization, had asked Calpernia Addams, a pre-operative transsexual, to twist facts about her gender identity in order to suit its own gay agenda.

Ms. Addams, however, denied having told David France, the New York Times Magazine writer, that she’d been asked by SLDN officials to self-identify as a male. This, the Times article had implied, would have been required in order to effectively dramatize and politicize the murder of her lover, Pfc. Barry Winchell, turning it thereby more recognizably into a gay bias case.

In fact, Ms. Addams had been quoted in an earlier interview in which she’d explained that she’d reached the decision to call herself a man entirely on her own.

I’d called the slant of the Times story a "deliberate attempt to trash SLDN." It was titled, after all, "An Inconvenient Woman." David France, who has since reportedly been hired as an editor at

Newsweek, responded angrily to me, defending the accuracy of his reportage. However, I simply maintained that my criticisms had been aimed specifically at the magazine’s neo-conservative editorial department, not at the writer of the article, may he edit in peace.

And, in the July 2^nd issue’s selection of Letters, Page 8, TheNew York Times Magazine printed the following admission of error:

CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, an article on May 28 about Calpernia Addams, who is in the process of changing sexes to female from male, and the murder of her boyfriend, Pfc. Barry Winchell, included an erroneous statement about a meeting between Addams and Kathi Westcott, a lawyer, and Rhonda White, a gay rights advocate, after the murder.
Westcott did not say that Addams, "for the sake of clarity" should tell reporters to refer to her as a male. White and Westcott discussed the press with Addams but did not make a specific proposal about
how the press should refer to her.

JN is Senior Editor at GayToday: www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com

READ JACK'S COLUMN FROM LAST WEEK

 Jack Nichols is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press)