One word comes to mind when thinking of the legacy of Between The Lines: heft.
We’re talking 30 years of continuous publication, first monthly until late 1997, then biweekly for a year, then weekly for more than two decades, then back to biweekly in early 2020. That’s more than 1,200 print issues to date.
I was directly involved in BTL at its founding and for its first four and a half years, and I’ve continued to occasionally write for the paper ever since. The byline I have enjoyed there under each publisher gives me a unique vantage point.
My sense of the paper’s history, however, my sense of its heft, has been shaped by clippings.
From BTL’s start, with digitization far in the future, I set aside three or four copies of each issue to clip and save. Time went by. I finally got around to actively clipping all the slowly yellowing stacks of papers, several file cabinets full, after finishing my B.A. and getting my Ph.D., a couple summers of mindless toil just prior to COVID. I now have a dozen cardboard U-Haul boxes jammed with loose clippings.
The process of cutting out thousands of articles to archive has given me a new appreciation for BTL. These years have been momentous for our community, both nationally and locally.
Let’s consider (to borrow my go-to phrase for talking about COVID) the “before times.”
Between The Lines launched in March 1993, before the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, before the implementation of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It began publishing prior to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. Prior to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
The paper started out only in paper, in newsprint. It predates the “Information Superhighway” and social media infiltrating our lives.
BTL arrived before retroviral cocktails. Before Ellen came out. Before the Lawrence v. Texas ruling jettisoned state sodomy laws. Before Drag Queen Story Hours.
We’ve gone from Clinton to Bush II to Obama to Trump to Biden, from Engler to Granholm to Snyder to Whitmer. We’ve gone from pariah status to being an eagerly sought constituency and market niche.
Those of us around in 1993 have gained 30 years of life experience. Some alive in 1993 did not live to see 2023.
As a “trained historian,” I am cognizant of a longer view, that 102 years ago Detroit Free Press writer Harold Auer wrote a fan letter to queer British author Edward Carpenter; that 85 years ago both Ruth Ellis and Prophet Jones moved to Detroit; that 65 years ago Detroiters attempted the first foray into homosexual organizing in Michigan, a chapter of the national Mattachine Society.
When I first began researching Michigan’s LGBTQ+ past, the first issues of the Gay Liberator had been hawked outside Detroit’s downtown Hudson’s less than 20 years earlier. The Liberator lasted for 48 issues, until 1976.
In 1976, I was all of 12 years old.
Now pushing age 60, I am less freaked out at the thought that Between The Lines is celebrating its 30th anniversary than I am unnerved to realize it’s been 10 years (10 years!) since I wrote about the the paper celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Next to sharing the thousands of clippings or taking a deep dive into back issues, perhaps the best way to convey how BTL has helped to document our history is through some Whitmanesque inventories.
A sampling of headlines drawn from the paper’s archives suggests the scope of its coverage.
“Printer Refuses Lines” from the premier issue.
“Domestic Partnership Languishes” from 1997.
“Detroit Pays Tribute to Ruth Ellis” from 1999.
“An Arabic Coming Out Story” from 2002.
“Tawas Schools Promise to Address Antigay Harassment, Discrimination” from 2003.
“U of M Union Fights for Trans Rights” from 2005.
“Affirmations Overhauls Youth Program During Turbulent Year” from 2009.
“Adoption Rights Suit Amended to Include Same-Sex Marriage” from 2012.
“Royal Oak Human Rights Ordinance Upheld by Voters” from 2013.
“Sterling Heights Man Charged with Murder of Transgender Woman” from 2018.
“The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan Elects First Openly Gay Female Priest as 11th Bishop” from 2019.
“Michigan Plaintiff Instrumental in Pro-LGBTQ Supreme Court Ruling” from 2020.
There have been milestones aplenty.
We’ve felt the suicides of poet Terri L. Jewell, MCC Detroit pastor Mark Bidwell, and trans teenager Ian Benson.
We’ve witnessed the slayings of Kevin Bacon, Bob Gross, Kenny Heron, Shelley Hilliard, Nikki Nicholas, Amber MonRoe, Gary Rocus, Coko Williams, and too many more.
We’ve fought ordinance battles in Delta Township, Hamtramck, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Royal Oak, Ypsilanti, and elsewhere.
We have experienced wave after wave of backlash. Think State Rep. Deb Whyman, Troy Mayor Janice Daniels, or the ever-devoted Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan.
At the same time, we’ve seen the rise of GSAs. We’ve voted for an astonishing number of out candidates. We’ve elected allies and openly LGBTQ officials who got our rights enacted. We’ve attended Same-sex Wedding Expos and Wilde Awards. And we’ve shopped in all those “Cool Cities.” Some of us even saw RuPaul at Menjo’s.
Along the way there have been Hotter Than July, OutFest, Comedy Fest, PrideFest, Reel Pride, Michigan Pride, Motor City Pride, and a multiplicity of additional prides: Berkley, Cadillac, Ferndale, Flint, Grand Rapids, Grosse Pointe, Hazel Park, Kalamazoo, Lowell, Macomb County, Muskegon, Port Huron, Royal Oak, St. Johns, the Straits, Traverse City, and the Tri Cities.
BTL has tracked the highs and lows of our organizations, sometimes holding them to account.
It has covered the bar scene, guerilla and fixed, maybe half-heartedly so since it was far less reliant on bar ads than Metra and Cruise magazines had to be in 1980s.
BTL has also been a ready venue for local LGBTQ+ leaders to speak directly to the community, a roster that includes Kofi Adoma, Penny Gardner, Jay Kaplan, Terry Kuseske, A. Nzere Kwabena (previously known as Curtis Lipscomb), Rev. Renee McCoy, Jeffrey Montgomery, Leslie Norlin-Thompson, Rev. Roland Stringfellow, and Stephanie White.
Perhaps most indicative of the diversity of our community, the paper has published profiles of everyday LGBTQ folk, activists and volunteers and entrepreneurs and pet owners. In 1993, it seemed brave to be out in print. Given how we’re targeted by resurgent enemies, maybe it’s still a bit brave.
Of course, BTL didn’t cover everything. It couldn’t cover everything. It may not have always covered everything well. Logistics and priorities and staffing and deadlines inevitably shaped editorial decisions.
It deserves scrutiny and criticism, too, especially with how it has often hewed to traditional politics. As with so many other community publications, it could always use more coverage about LGBTQ people of color. More about bisexual and gender fluid people. More about radical alternatives. More about kink.
Invisibility, marginalization, and gatekeeping are, of course, concerns seen in the larger queer community as well. BTL is to be commended for making major strides in the past few years to push against privileged narratives and to reflect diversity writ large. One case in point is the recent Love + Sex Issue.
BTL has endured as a vital institution to ensure that the ignorant and hateful do not control the narratives that are told about us.
The stories in BTL helped put LGBTQ+ Michiganders on the map, showing that the queer Midwest matters. Article after article showed the importance, for instance, of having a PFLAG chapter and PFLAG parents Downriver. Article after article documented the life-changing impact of the Ruth Ellis Center.
Showcased in a special 30th anniversary feature are reflections on previous writings by past and current contributors who offer a personal window on specific moments. In subsequent pages please join them in revisiting some of their meaningful coverage in a sort of time capsule. Chris Azzopardi, Michelle E. Brown, Donald V. Calamia, Julie R. Enszer, Todd Heywood, Susan Horowitz, Ellen Shanna Knoppow, Sean Kosofsky, Jason A. Michael, Jan Stevenson, MaxZine Weinstein, C. Imani Williams, Dawn Wolfe, and Cheryl Zupan are welcome voices indeed.
Other key writers deserving of mention have been Mary Banghart, John Burchett, Jessica Carreras, Tara Cavanaugh, Shea Howell, Eve Kucharski, Sarah Mieras, Kate Opalewski, Kelly Peters, Gary W. Roberts, David Rosenberg, Andy “Sunfrog” Smith, and A.J. Trager, as well as such columnists as John Corvino, Craig Covey, Dawn Kettinger, Joe Kort, Pattrice Maurer, Eric Rader, Larry Topping, and Jody Valley.
We posthumously remember the vital writing of Charles Alexander, Brent Dorian Carpenter, Sharon Gittleman, Anne Harris, J Katzeman, Jen Kohout, and Eric Otto.
Ric Brown, Keary Campbell, Elizabeth Carnegie, Danielle Eve, and Jetta Fraser are among the photographers whose images left an imprint on BTL readers.
Their cumulative work made Between The Lines what it is and serves as a testament to advocacy journalism at its finest.
Whether revealing the Radical Faerie sensibilities of its founder or the mainstream Democratic perspective of subsequent publishers, BTL has survived in a shifting media landscape. It has established itself online as well as at hundreds of distribution sites across the state.
Throw in doses of feminism and pragmatism and whimsy and it has become more than mere content and click bait.
The journey of the paper has been intertwined with so many individual and collective journeys. Combing through my cardboard boxes of clippings for articles to scan for this anniversary issue, it’s hard not to be awestruck by the history chronicled in the pages of more than 1,200 issues, political and cultural inroads, recurring joys and sorrows, change coupled with continuity.
Readers can explore the full heft of Between The Lines themselves by perusing copies held by the Labadie Collection and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan or by Special Collections at Michigan State University, each of which hold full runs or near full runs. The Library of Michigan in Lansing has the first ten years on microfilm and the next 10 years in bound volumes. Pride Source has pdf versions from 2010 to the present on its website.
It’s all a hefty achievement indeed.
(Originally published in Between The Lines, July 6, 2023)
Queer Remembering 
What would we possibly have done without BTL?
LikeLike