I got criticized by a Philadelphia gay group for asking why GannonGate was not going to be included as one of the main topics of discussion at the Equality Forum blogging panel next week in Philly - a panel that Republican former male prostitute Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert), top lesbian political blogger Pam Spaulding, and I were to sit on, but Pam and I have since pulled our participation after the Equality Forum refused to make GannonGate even one of the topics on the agenda.
Mike LaMonaca, the Equality Forum program director, released a rather bitter press release yesterday criticizing me for allegedly attempting to "control the panel" when Pam Spaulding and I both noted that GannonGate really had to be one of the topics on the agenda. (According to the person moderating the panel, GannonGate was NOT going to be one of the main agenda items, period. Which is even more odd since the head of the Equality Forum emailed me 3 days ago saying he agreed with me, GannonGate should be one of the agenda items.)
Now we find out that LaMonaca apparently intended all along that GannonGate be discussed at the panel. From LaMonaca's interview, it sounds like GannonGate was the only issue that interested him at all from the panel, or at least it was the one most on his mind. And LaMonaca is the guy CREATED the panel in the first place. Bizarrely, he's also the guy who publicly criticized me yesterday for trying to edge the panel back to what he apparently intended it to be.
Then why did LaMonaca yesterday criticize me for proposing the same thing he advocated in this week's Philly City Paper - discussing GannonGate as one of the panel topics? Not to mention, this is now clear evidence that the direction of this panel very much changed from where it was only a week or so ago when this article was completed. Why was that? Did Gannon put his foot down? Did a board member or a donor or a Republican in the senior ranks of the Equality Forum flip out? Did the moderator in her ivory tower (she teaches at the Annenberg School) refuse to address that icky sex issue? Growing numbers of questions, and fewer and fewer answers from the Equality Forum on just what the heck is going on here.
