The (Not So) Gay Old Times.

The author raises questions about why some the "New York Times" fired a stringer named Jay Blotcher because he'd been a member of the anti-AIDS advocacy group ACT UP nearly fourteen years ago. The "Times" is making its case not on Blotcher's membership in ACT UP, which really would be McCarthyism, but on his role as a "public spokesperson for an advocacy organization." But Blotcher and his supporters point out that many "Times" staffers have relationships that could "confuse" readers. Dr. Lawrence K. Altman has many such professional associations with various medical establishments, public and private. Bernard Weinraub covers Hollywood for the paper, while his wife is a head honcho at Sony Pictures. These cases do not involve the "appearance" of conflict-of-interest but its essence. [T]he belief of some that Blotcher was singled out not for being gay but for being in ACT UP and Queer Nation continues to divide the paper internally. Even if one accepts the paper's argument that its only crime is a kind of post-Blair hyper-fastidiousness about appearances at the expense of fairness to one of its stringers, the story cannot be allowed to die there.