There’s an interview with me in today’s issue of Bay Windows. For those of you with access to the print version, it is in the special supplement released for Family Week in Provincetown (but the supplement is available in with the paper throughout New England).

I didn’t know at the time of the interview that it was going to be a Q & A. (Yes, I could have asked, but in every other Q & A I’ve done, it was explicitly stated ahead of time.) I knew the interview was being recorded, which I always appreciate so that I’m not misquoted. But I handle Q & A’s differently than I do regular interview. If I use an example in a Q & A, it is really short and specific. In an interview for a regular article, I tend to answer the question one way, and then throw out a bunch of general examples/scenarios so that the reporter gets my point and might or might not choose to summarize one of my examples to share with the readership if s/he feels it’s necessary.

And this was edited down from the original interview, so some bridging information gets lost, like my background explanation of how anthropological theory informs my understanding of how I define queer culture. Yeah, I know: you’re grateful that compelling section was cut. I’m just explaining why there is a reference to anthropology in the interview that seems to come out of nowhere.

I’m not trying to pass off responsibility for anything I said or how I said it. It just will give you insight into why I sound more scattered than I usually am in print.

My more casual/chatty tone is also in part because of the audience I had in mind when I was talking with Ethan Jacobs. Mainstream media fixates on my experience in 1978 or maybe, like, 1986 if they are more enlightened. In a gay publication, however, we can get to the heart of the issues of 2006. Since I won’t be at Family Week this year, (I have presented there four times) this article is my stand-in for what I would want parents to be thinking about if they were to attend one of my workshops.

Reading this and the other articles in the supplement, I can’t help but remember approaching Bay Windows several years and several editors ago. I pitched my self-syndicated column (twice) and was told by the editor that writing about family didn’t fit into a gay community paper.

This was a challenge I faced with editors of queer publications nearly everywhere. No room for my column, not just ideologically but also quite literally. Even if they were open to running a column written by a straight woman from a gay family, they couldn’t figure out where to put it. Lavender Magazine, for example, stuck my column in the “Leisure and Sports” section when it debuted in 1999.

Now queer press is making room. Lavender thinks nothing of regularly running articles and columns about family. Advocate Magazine runs several feature pages under the heading “Parenting.” And this week Bay Windows has an entire pull-out section just about kids and their queer parents.

Change is good.

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