NO H8 2 Dept.

Another odd bit of news about that cancelled GLBT zombie anthology:

Based on his words and the editor’s first statement, this anthology was pulled for fear of people’s reaction. (The editor now says there were concerns the anthology would be seen as a gimmick, and that it wouldn’t have good stories.) ... Whatever his personal views on homosexuality, I find that disappointing in the extreme.

(Jim's take is that the nice-guy defense is not apropos here, because even nice people can do foolish things, and it's his actions and not his attitude that are being questioned here.)

If what I see in the linked piece is right, that sounds like the anthology was cancelled more because of fears that it would offend people in the GLBT community, and not the knee-jerk bigots who find reasons to be offended about things no matter what.

But wait a minute. It's no better to cave in to perceived (not even manifest!) pressure and rejection from your own side as opposed to from someone else's. And plus, wouldn't the only way to tell if the stories were good would be to put the thing out there and get some feedback instead of second-guessing reactions to it? (There's always the chance the editor did in fact do that, and got cold feet when that someone he trusted told him this was a Bad Idea, but I haven't seen anything yet to suggest such a thing happened.)

This whole thing made me wonder about listening to people who claim to speak on behalf of a specific group. I say, take their professed identification on behalf of the group with a grain of salt. People within a given population who want to be empowered need to do that by speaking for themselves and not letting someone (self)-appointed do that frequently messy and difficult work for them.

No, it isn't easy; who said it was going to be? This free speech thing works both ways, y'know.