News
VT's 'Gay Gun Nut' Blogs Between Worlds
VT's 'Gay Gun Nut' Blogs Between Worlds
by Cathy Resmer
Jeff Soyer is a rare breed. For one thing, the 50-year-old Fairlee resident is a self-described gay gun nut. "I'm pro-gun, pro-life, and pro-gay marriage," says Soyer, who concedes that his positions might seem somehow... ironic. "It does sound like an oxymoron," he admits.
But Soyer's politics aren't the only thing that sets him apart. When he reads something in the New York Times that upsets him, which is often, he doesn't just fire off a letter to the editor or complain to his friends. Soyer, who works as a webmaster for a Vermont furniture company, responds on his webblog, or blog, at www.alphecca.com
Despite its celestial address - it's named after a star - Alphecca proudly calls itself "an occasional blog by a gay gun nut in Vermont." Blogs, fyi, are on-line journals that are updated frequently. They've been around since the late 1990's, but this year have attracted considerable attention. Bloggers propelled Howard Dean into the national spotlight and recently forced CBS to investigate the authenticity of National Guard memos relating to President Bush’s military service.
Of the nearly 4 million extant blogs enumerated by Technorati.com, only a few dozen are influential. These include liberal sites like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos, and conservative blogs like AndrewSullivan.com (yes, gay conservative Andrew Sullivan has an influential blog) and Instapundit. According to site meters that track their traffic, the biggest blogs draw six-figure daily readership - Instapundit, for example, averages around 300,000 readers a day.
By contrast, the gay gun nut says his site attracts 1000-2000 daily viewers, giving him a weekly circulation that exceeds that of many Vermont community newspapers. That's not bad for a guy who doesn't market himself, who has no journalistic training, and who calls himself a gay gun nut. "I'm sort of a pariah," he admits, noting that liberal bloggers won't link to him because he's pro-gun, and social conservative bloggers are turned off by his sexual orientation.
But though he's gay, Soyer rarely writes about traditional gay issues. His favorite topic is what he describes as media bias against the Second Amendment. In a recent post titled, "NBC: Nothing But Crap," Soyer takes on the peacock network's September 15 "Special Report" about the expiration of the assault weapon ban. "This is biased reporting of the worst kind," wrote Soyer, "...and just goes to show that NBC will stop at nothing to discredit the Second Amendment, blame Bush for it's [sic] demise, and (in my opinion) outright lie about the effectiveness of or the effects of the demise of the phony 'assault weapons' ban." (Despite his conservative bent, Soyer does not support Bush.)
Each Monday, Soyer posts a weekly media bias report, which has garnered him attention from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. Reynolds mentions Soyer's weekly media bias report nearly every Monday, funneling thousands of his conservative readers to Soyer's site. As a result, Soyer has been featured in a recent issue of Outdoor Life, on an NRA radio show, and in a recent Associated Press story about how hard it is to make money by blogging.
Despite all this attention, Soyer says he's never received any hate mail from his readers - whether anti-gay or anti-gun - surprising considering how easy it is to respond. Like most bloggers, Soyer gives readers the opportunity to share comments on the site. Most of the comments appearing at the end of his posts contain predictable outrage at anti-gun bias, or congratulate Soyer for his reporting, but occasionally someone writes something unexpected.
Such responses occur when Soyer posts one of his infrequent gay-themed entries, like the May 11 item entitled "Who Speaks for Me?" In it, Soyer writes about his own experiences with anti-gay violence - he was knifed in New York in 1985 - and calls for tolerance and respect for all gay people. He also takes national gay rights groups to task for taking liberal stands on non-gay issues like the Second Amendment and abortion. In response, "Countertop" wrote, "Well put Jeff. At least this straight as an arrow neanderthal conservative read your entire rant."
In response to a July 6 post, "John Cunningham" wrote: "hi Alphecca, I just dropped by your site for the first time, it is excellent! I am a hetero gun nut, and I have no prob with your discussing being gay." Comments like that are actually more common than comments like, "I'm gay, and I have no prob with your discussing guns."
Cathy Resmer is a freelance writer who lives in Winooski.