Georgia Voice publishes a print edition every two months along with a digital edition.
Photo by Georgia Boyce
While waiting for my order at Woody’s Cheesesteaks recently, I had time to catch up with an old friend. A new edition of the venerable LGBTQ+ newspaper, Georgia Voice, had just arrived at the counter. So, with a symphony of steaks and onions sizzling in the background, I flipped open GaVo and learned about the shocking 3am gun shooting at Midtown’s Rainbow Crosswalk, the 10-year anniversary of clothing store Barking Leather, and Atlanta Falcons cheerleader Dante Sanders’ efforts to eradicate gender stereotypes in sports.
As the threat of new anti-trans bills looms in 2024 and a so-called “religious freedom” bill is resurrected for the first time in eight years, creeping like a legislative Freddy Krueger under the Gold Dome, the bi-weekly coverage from Premier Media Source for LGBTQ Georgia remains as important and necessary as ever.
Picking up the print edition, I was reminded of my first bylined piece in the city more than 30 years ago. As a young contributor who had just come out, covering the city’s queer community was both a moving history lesson and a reassurance that, as a reporter, I didn’t have to hide my sexual orientation. At the time, the independent LGBTQ+ weekly newspaper was called Southern Voice, founded in 1988 by Christina Cash. And we had a lot of stories to cover. AIDS was devastating Atlanta, the queer mecca of the South. Cheryl Somerville had just been fired from Cracker Barrel for coming out as a lesbian. Activists Pat Hussein and John Ivan Weaver were trying to convince the Atlanta Olympic Committee (ACOG) to pull volleyball from Cobb County, where the commissioners had passed an anti-gay resolution.
I was a budding gay journalist, and Cash, then editor-in-chief of SoVo, assigned me important stories that regularly pushed me out of my comfort zone, both journalistically and personally. In a two-part series, I investigated the wellbeing of national and local gay advocacy groups; I interviewed young sex workers getting into cars with strangers on Cypress Avenue about the risks of HIV infection; and, perhaps most terrifying of all, I was assigned to interview famed drag performer Charlie Brown in a backstreet dressing room about accusations of misogyny by local feminist groups.
I brought these valuable experiences and community resources to my next job as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a position I held for the next 16 years. As my AJC colleague Celestine Sibley later taught me, “Through reporting, things can change.” On July 29, 1994, ACOG announced it would relocate volleyball qualifying for the 1996 Summer Olympics out of Cobb County. With the development of groundbreaking new drug treatments, HIV is no longer a death sentence. And Cracker Barrel, a company that once required all employees to “exhibit normal heterosexual values,” now celebrates Pride every June.
Through his editorial mentorship at SoVo and GaVo, which he launched in 2010, Chris Cash taught me and others the importance of bringing our authentic selves to reporting and the essential value of queer people covering our community. That is The Voice’s true legacy, in addition to the essential LGBTQ+ coverage we’ve provided for 35 years.
Richard L. Eldredge is editor of Atlanta magazine and founder and editor of Eldredge ATL.
This article appears in the July 2024 issue.
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