OUT AT THE TIMES
The cover of The Advocate when this article was first published in 1992.
COURTESY OF THE ADVOCATE
IT WAS AN AFTERNOON
DURING THE PERSIAN GULF WAR.
The editors of The New York Times were gathered
in the conference room adjacent to executive editor Max Frankel’s office for a daily event: the page
1 meeting. As usual, people sat on chairs lining the
room’s walls. An inner circle sat around a long, narrow table, while Frankel and managing editor Joseph
Lelyveld sat at the head of the table.
With the paper’s Washington, D.C., bureau staff
participating in the meeting with the help of speakers and a microphone hidden somewhere in the
room, editors from each of the paper’s departments
described the articles they had in the works for the
HUFFINGTON
12.09.12
next day’s paper and
suggested what should
be on page 1. On that
particular day, there
were at least five gay
people in the room.
When it came time for
foreign news editor
Bernard Gwertzman to
deliver his report, he
decided to relay a story.
One of his reporters had
written about the elaborate display of multicolored tents that stretched
across the Saudi Arabian
desert where U.S. troops
were stationed. Something about the way the
description was worded
had irked Gwertzrman.
“I told the reporter to
change it,” Gwertzrman
explained to the group,
laughing, “because he
made the soldiers look
like a bunch of faggots.”
A cold silence came
over the room for several seconds. Then the
meeting continued, although in a tense man-