Queer Magazine Born Again

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Accordingly, black lesbians have reacted to the switch with a decidedly religious bent.

'She's our sister and we hold her up in prayer,' says Sylvia Rhue, director of religious affairs for the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization focused on gay issues. 'She's on her spiritual journey. I just wish she weren't making herself a stumbling block for others on their spiritual journeys.' Rhue's organization is collaborating with others to respond to Cothran's 700 Club spot with a YouTube video featuring religious leaders.

Cothran says she grew up in a conservative, religious home where homosexuality was frowned upon. During 30 years of gay-rights activism, Cothran told Utne, 'I always had a belief system that being gay was wrong. I just pushed it away. But that little voice became a little louder. When you get older, you begin to pay more attention to what happens after this mortal life than to this gay pride event today.'

Some of her critics, including Monroe, claim that Cothran is simply selling out her struggling publication to moneyed conservative interests. Cothran denies doing so and says that after she changed her magazine's mission, all her advertisers dropped their advertising immediately, and she stopped pursuing a big deal she was working on with Subaru.

Her readers are coming along for the ride, Cothran claims. Out of 'several thousand' subscribers (Cothran won't release her exact circulation), only 20 canceled, she says. 'African American gays understand exactly where I am. They have been raised just like I was, in the church. They just pushed away the truth.'

All the more reason to counter Cothran's message, says Rhue: 'You can't cure something that isn't sick.'

In the meantime, Cothran is praying for a miracle. Literally.

'I stood to lose everything,' she says. 'My income and livelihood, my friends, my whole life. I gave up everything.' As for financing for her new magazine, she's 'waiting for God to show me how he plans to do this,' she says. Appearing on the 700 Club, which claims to reach 1.5 billion people a year, won't hurt.

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