The Mirror’s LGBTQ reporting and my letters
I suspect the Mirror is biased in regard to views on human sexuality. In the Pride flag ceremony story on the front page of the June 7 issue, reporter Keelin Everly-Lang included the dissenting view of a single Federal Way resident, Mary Locke, who called the Mirror after the ceremony.
Good of the Mirror to act on a current event so readily by including two sides of the story. Suspicious judgment of the Mirror in their choice of which “other side” to include. True, there was likely no other dissenting view at the time to include, but my question is this: Why this one now? I suspect I know why: It was easy to present it as a narrow-minded religious view easily refuted by institutional experts.
The details: According to the article, Mary Locke said over the phone how concerned she was about LGBTQ ideas affecting children (a good point), and about the Mirror website’s Pride page linking to GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network. I had to look that up. It wasn’t spelled out in the Mirror’s article).
Locke is quoted regarding GLSEN: “I just don’t think they need to exist.” The article then reports on Locke’s religious views on homosexuality and how she supports sexual orientation conversion therapy. The reporter immediately follows this with facts that such conversion therapy has been banned in Washington state since 2018, is opposed by the American Psychiatric Association, and then a lengthy quote from the National Institute of Health stating how harmful such therapy is. No time here to point out how politicized and obfuscated those determinations have been.
So it’s a slam dunk in the average reader’s mind. Concerned religious citizen Mary Locke’s phone call versus the institutional experts.
Point being: The Mirror seems happy to report on a dissenting voice if doing so seems to expose narrow-minded fanaticism. Apologies to Mary Locke, but her brief exposure in the article has cast her in that light.
Yet I know of at least one other dissenting voice that was presented to the Mirror, in writing and much more thoroughly, at a time last year when a similar issue was causing a stir in Federal Way. That voice was mine and it was ignored completely. (I’ve just now found that the Mirror had a problem with their website and email, but I’m too tired to rewrite this beyond this acknowledgement).
The details: In November 2023, LGBTQ+ issues caused a stir at a Federal Way City Council meeting, causing Mirror columnist Keith Livingston to offer his views on the subject. I wrote a lengthy response to that column and submitted it to the Mirror and received no acknowledgment of it at all. True, it was longer than instructions for letters to the editor allowed, which I had failed to note in my zeal. It also contained a fundamental error in historical background, which I have since corrected. But zero acknowledgment?
One would think a local paper would appreciate a significant effort by a community member to engage with it, say by responding with an email explaining its policy and maybe a “Please try again. We would love to hear from you.” Maybe I should have just called. I might have been included in a front page story like Ms. Locke.
Which brings me to my point. I suspect the Mirror would not love to hear from me or anyone else who brings a reasoned dissent to LGBTQ+ activist overreach.
But I may be wrong. So I’ll try again — one, with this letter, and two, even including my previous too-long letter to trigger their memory or provide a little background, since maybe it got lost in the email or something. All in an effort to challenge the Mirror to be a truly balanced purveyor of news and views of Federal Way citizens.
Torger Helgeland, Federal Way
