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The Washington Post Is Sorry For That Creampuff Piece on NOM’s Brian Brown

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The Washington Post is very sorry it delivered a completely one-sided, sympathetic profile on Brian Brown, the National Organization for Marriage’s executive director. Especially because the reporter who wrote it is queer.

Writer Monica Hesse didn’t expect you’d get upset with her for lauding Mr. Brown’s “smiling” approach to hatred. In fact, she thought the criticism for this profile would come from anti-gay folks, who would call the piece “snide.”

Wrong. Hesse, who is currently in a relationship with a man, was with a woman for two years prior. The 28-year-old reporter “discussed health insurance, kids, houses and marriage” with her lady partner, she told readers who emailed her, as a means of explaining why she wasn’t NOM biggest cheerleader, as the piece might have suggested.

The Post‘s public editor, meanwhile, admits the article was way too fawning, and the approach to just let Brown tell his side of things misrepresented him, his organization, and their approach to bigotry. It is great to see this postmortem from the newspaper. What we did not see, however, was one of America’s most prestigious newspapers identify this man for what he is: a preacher of hatred. One day soon.

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