Goodbye to all that.

Over the course of the seven years I spent writing columns in the gay press and elsewhere, I found comfort and guidance in one mantra: When it comes to opinion writing, there are two critical responses you should never take seriously-disdain from those who don't agree with you and praise from those who do.

Both are worthless to you as a writer and a thinker because neither has anything to do with the integrity of your work or your ideas, which are, as far as I'm concerned, the only two things that really matter. People's reactions to your writing will almost always be narcissistic projections. They'll tell you that you're a genius when you write something that affirms their prejudices, and they'll tell you that you're a hack when you write something that doesn't. That's the extent of it. There is no independent standard. With rare exceptions, even your fellow journalists and, worst your editors will be incapable of setting aside theft emotional reactions to your writing.

LPI Media's editorial director, Judy Wieder, is one of those rare exceptions. While editor in chief of The Advocate, she first asked me to write for this magazine in 1998, when my name, if known at all, was already a term of execration in the gay press, and since then I have been contributing quarterly columns that have, in some circles, reportedly earned me the title "Lesbian Public Enemy Number 2." (Camille Paglia, I believe, remains Number 1.)

Yet to this day I have no idea what Judy thinks of my political opinions, During the nearly five years I wrote for The Advocate before she was promoted to her current position, she was never indecorous enough to tell me, and more important, she never censored my writing for any reason whatsoever, though often much of this magazine's readership and, I imagine, at times even she didn't like what I had to say.

I have always been inestimably grateful for her professionalism in this regard, which is why 1 felt it incumbent on me to say that my decision to stop writing for this magazine--rids column will be my last--had nothing whatsoever to do with the magazine itself or its staff, all of whom have been faultlessly respectful toward and supportive of me.

I began writing these columns because I had something to say, something that other people, especially other lesbians, were not saying. I felt that in order to grow and thrive, the gay rights movement-especially the intellectual wing of it--was going to have to take a good, long, critical look at itself. I wanted to be part of that process, and for a considerable period of rime I was.

But these comes a point at which you feel that the dirty laundry has been aired, the painful things said, and the unpleasant truths faced up to, or not--and if not, never will be. You've staked out your position and reiterated it, and so has file opposition. After a while you begin to feel deadlock setting in, and you find yourself loosing interest in what, "after nearly 10 years, seems like a very old fight. And 10 years is at least how long the gay community has been arguing with itself over orthodoxy, political correctness, party affiliation, and cultural stagnation, among other things.

Oddly enough, politics and polemics aren't really my thing and never have been. I fell into them because I wanted to write, and my apparently unorthodox opinions afforded me the opportunity to do so. So I wrote. I wrote what was on my mind, and I felt supremely lucky to have the chance to be heard--a privilege few people enjoy.

I've had my say. Now it's time for someone else to have hers. And I hope it will be a she. I hope there is a least one lesbian voice out there ready and willing to say something new. If there is, I know Judy and The Advocate will find her and give her the platform she deserves.