Continuing advocacy as activism, journalism collide

Lots of people juggle multiple roles in their lives. Roles as children, parents, workers, activists, teachers and students of life and of each other.
Here at BTL we have two primary roles. The first, of course, is our role as the paper of record for our LGBT and allied community. The second is as strong advocates for our community's rights.
And sometimes, just as with individuals, our roles can conflict with each other in uncomfortable ways.
As a newspaper of record, BTL must strive to be as objective as possible. That means telling every side of every story as much as we can – even when we don't like what some of those "sides" have to say. Hard as it is to quote the American Family Association's anti-gay nonsense, for example, our role as a newspaper requires that we do just that.
Harder still is when we find ourselves reporting on a dispute between members or organizations within our community. Because we are community advocates, and because we frequently personally know everyone involved, we can find ourselves dealing with the same kind of inner conflict faced by anyone when people they know and care about aren't getting on well with each other.
As community advocates, we want to portray our community in the most positive possible light. We face enough discrimination from the bigots and extremists, after all, and given that those bigots and extremists have political power right now it behooves our community to stick together. As advocates — as activists — we understand the importance of keeping a united front in the face of our oppressors. As human beings we stand with our community in the face of the powerful people who are abusing us.
But as a newspaper we are honor-bound to report the facts as we determine them. That means quoting Triangle Foundation's Director of Policy Sean Kosofsky and the AFA's Gary Glenn. It means telling you, our readers, what "he" said – and what "she" said. It means letting the story tell itself, and trusting you to form your own opinions about it. Most of all, it means telling the story of our community — our flaws as well as our strengths, our losses as well as our triumphs.
And though we frequently feel as though we have a huge rock to our left and a hard space to our right, we comfort ourselves in two ways when our roles as advocates and reporters seem to conflict with each other.
One is that we are performing a service not only for the present, but for the future in archiving the day-to-day history of our community. We imagine the day when future generations will look to the story of our struggle for equal rights with awe, admiration and a deep understanding of our humanity. When, with the perspective that only time can give, they forgive our flaws even as they applaud our courage. If we don't report the whole story now, they won't have a chance to appreciate that perspective later.
Our other comfort is our faith in the vast majority of our LGBT community. Faith that our community's members can read the facts, draw reasonable conclusions and act on those conclusions. Faith that our allies and potential allies understand, or that given the facts they will understand, that LGBT human beings are just as glorious and brave and confused and flawed as they are.
In other words — when that rock and hard place start squeezing, we place our faith with you. And with the children we are raising together in what we passionately hope and believe will be a more equal world for all of us.