Mild-mannered hatemonger

J. Edward Pawlick says he just wants to provoke a discussion. So why is he scaring the hell out of the people he hopes to engage?

by Dan Kennedy

J. Edward Pawlick doesn't look like a hatemonger. Trim, gray-haired, dressed neatly but modestly in an olive suit, blue oxford shirt, and red patterned tie, he greets me with a firm handshake and a smile. He's the sort of guy who'd probably make a good neighbor -- provided that you're a religious conservative whose sexual activities are limited to servicing your spouse politely in the missionary position.

And if you're not? Well, consider the experience of Mark O'Brien, a gay activist. One day last January, O'Brien picked up the mail at his Sherborn home. Among the bills and the junk was a pamphlet titled An Intelligent Discussion About Homosexuality. It was written by Pawlick -- like O'Brien, a Sherborn resident. But when O'Brien began leafing through, he found nothing neighborly about it.

An Intelligent Discussion turned out to be neither intelligent nor a discussion but, rather, an ill-informed diatribe about the alleged perils of homosexuality: from AIDS to rectal cancer, from a predilection for pedophilia to eternal damnation. The supposed purpose: exposing the perfidy of the public schools for presenting homosexuality as normal and healthy. "Once the behavior of homosexuality is begun, it becomes compulsive and then addictive," Pawlick wrote. "It is a habit that should not be started without a great deal of thought and information. We would never advise any child to 'try' an addictive substance such as heroin or cocaine to 'see if they like it.' It is also cruel to advise them to 'try' homosexuality or enter into that lifestyle without being well informed on all sides of the issue."

O'Brien felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. "It was shocking to receive it," says O'Brien, a founding member of the Pride Interfaith Coalition. "At first I thought I was being targeted, along with a lesbian couple in the neighborhood. Then I found out that everyone in Sherborn got one." Indeed, Pawlick sent 4000 copies to Sherborn residents, and another 11,000 to schools, churches, and elected officials across the state. The only good to come out of it, O'Brien says, was the reaction of his fellow citizens: "People were upset and angry that hate mail was coming into their homes. The amount of support in the town was just wonderful. Even people with strong conservative views were horrified."

Which seems to be the reaction that most people have when confronted with Pawlick's writings. Which, in turn, puzzles him no end. Can't people see, he wonders, that he's just trying to start a discussion?

A 72-year-old retired lawyer and publisher, Pawlick became a wealthy man several years ago, when he sold his Lawyers Weekly Publications, a small chain of trade papers that includes the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. Then, last October, he launched the Massachusetts News, first as a Web-only publication (http://www.massnews.com), and, since June, as a monthly newspaper as well. To Pawlick, the right-wing philosophy he expresses in the News and in his occasional mailings, such as An Intelligent Discussion, are nothing more than a necessary corrective to the liberal bias of the Boston Globe and to the "vanilla" offered up by Fidelity's Community Newspaper Company, which owns most of the weekly and daily papers in Boston's suburbs.

Starboard ho! The wit and wisdom of J. Edward Pawlick Granted, Massachusetts News publisher and right-wing polemicist J. Edward Pawlick is no P.J. O'Rourke. Still, his pronouncements have a zany quality that can be as entertaining as it is offensive. A sample: "Hate is spewing forth from a small group of homosexual militant 'activists' in an attempt to stop any conversation except their agenda. They dominate the Boston Globe and the other media which strive so hard to be 'inclusive.' " -- From An Intelligent Discussion About Homosexuality "Although most homosexuals are not pedophiles, it is three times more common among homosexuals than heterosexuals. More important, the normalization of homosexuality is being followed by a move to normalize all forms of sexuality, pedophilia included, and to lower the age of consent laws." -- From An Intelligent Discussion About Homosexuality "The pedophiles who are advocating these changes are highly intelligent, professional men. It will not be easy to debate them. If you doubt that, try visiting the website of the North American Man/Boy Love Association." -- From Will Pedophilia Be Next in Massachusetts Schools? "I'm not anti-gay. That's the thing that really irritates me. Who says I don't love homosexuals? I don't hate homosexuals. I definitely think that it's a foolish lifestyle, no question about that. But I think the guy that smokes cigarettes, my farmer friend, I think that's foolish, too." -- As quoted in the Boston Globe "The majority of people think of Unitarians as a 'liberal, Christian church,' but that is far from the truth. . . . No one realizes this because the Unitarians meet in those beautiful, white, historic churches that are so much a part of Massachusetts. These are the revered, old buildings located on the town commons where the original settlers worshipped. And the Unitarians continue the myth that these buildings are still being used by Christians, when, in fact, they are being used by the Unitarians to 'confront' and 'challenge' the followers of Christ." -- From Article Begins Debate About Homosexuality in Massachusetts Schools "When that girl was killed at Littleton, she was killed totally because she was a Christian. Are the Unitarians going to accept responsibility for her death? There's a lot closer nexus between her death and the Unitarians than there was between Matthew Shepard and Christians." -- From an interview with the Boston Phoenix "The EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and MCAD [Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination] are basically putting a gun to people's heads and they are going to divide the country. Let me put it to you this way. I have had diabetes now for about 50 years. There are certain jobs I can't do. . . . I can't go to [companies] and make them hire me. I can find another job I can do. What's the big deal?" -- As quoted in Bay Windows "If you look at what Norman Thomas said back in the '30s -- he was a socialist -- everything he wanted, we've gotten. But if you describe what we're living in today as a socialist world, everybody would scream and yell and say that you're using epithets." -- From an interview with the Boston Phoenix

"I would say we're basically trying to accomplish what the Phoenix accomplished in the '60s, which is to be a countervoice to the establishment. The Phoenix is now part of the establishment," Pawlick says. His demeanor is polite, almost shy; he looks down a lot, and his sentences frequently tail off into inaudibility. We're sitting in the News' offices, the refurbished second floor of a building around the corner from Wellesley's town hall. Although he claims to have about a dozen employees (a head count that includes freelancers), I see only a couple of folks dotting the rather vast expanse of blond hardwood floor. There is, Pawlick acknowledges with a chuckle, plenty of room to grow.

Though the Massachusetts News has taken on subjects such as fathers' rights, the Endangered Species Act, and even the Red Sox' proposed new ballpark, the paper and the Web site have been overshadowed by Pawlick's pamphleteering, which includes An Intelligent Discussion and several follow-ups. In mailings in Sherborn, Wayland, Weston, and Newton, Pawlick has denounced homosexuality and -- weirdly enough -- Unitarian Universalists. Pawlick, himself a former Unitarian, accuses the denomination, without evidence, of falsely presenting itself as Christian. In fact, the Unitarian Universalist Association makes no secret of its noncreedal philosophy; its members include Buddhists, Jews, Wiccans, agnostics, atheists -- and Christians. What really drives Pawlick over the edge about the UUs, though, is their promotion of gay and lesbian rights and of comprehensive, nonjudgmental sex education.

Pawlick's media activities reflect an essential disconnect -- an inability to understand that his targets view his screeds not as an honest disagreement on issues but, rather, as an assault on their very humanity, even as a potential threat to their safety. In talking with Pawlick, it becomes clear that he thinks his mailings should provoke debate, discussion, dialogue. Indeed, he seems unable even to acknowledge the fear that Mark O'Brien felt when he opened his mail that January day.

"Mark O'Brien is an activist, and Mark O'Brien will play that to the hilt," Pawlick says dismissively. "I called him and tried to meet with him and tried to mollify him, and he never responded. So my conclusion has to be that Mark O'Brien is playing this role."

O'Brien, for his part, has a simple explanation for why he won't engage Pawlick. "Why do I have to justify my existence?" he asks. "I'm certainly not going to justify it to someone like him." As for the content of Pawlick's screeds, O'Brien has this to say: "We're both obsessed with homosexuality. Only I like it."

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At this point, let me lay my own cards on the table. First, Pawlick has had much to say about the Phoenix -- which he accurately characterizes as "highly supportive of homosexuals" -- in his writings. An Intelligent Discussion includes an account of a Phoenix article on educating high-school kids about gay and lesbian orientation. Later, in a mailing titled Will Pedophilia Be Next in Massachusetts Schools?, Pawlick falsely described the Phoenix as "a leading advocate of pedophilia in Massachusetts." His "evidence" was a column by Michael Bronski in the Phoenix's monthly One in Ten supplement that included this sentence: "Gay-bashing under the guise of child protection will never go away until we as a culture can discuss the lives and needs of children openly and honestly -- and include recognition of their sexuality, freedom, and autonomy." It was bad enough that Pawlick wrenched Bronski's sentence out of its context -- a discussion of the homophobia behind fundamentalist criticism of Calvin Klein's boys'-underwear ads. What was worse -- much worse -- was that Pawlick saw fit to offer his own twisted interpretation of what Bronski really meant. Wrote Pawlick: "In his world, a child who is twelve years, or even younger, will be allowed to decide when or where he will have sex. This is exactly what the pedophiles wish because it will totally empower them."

When I pressed Pawlick on his apparent mind-reading abilities, his response was that, well, that must have been what Bronski was thinking. "I have to read his mind," Pawlick said; a few moments later, though, he said, "You don't need to read his mind. You need to read what he wrote." Actually, all you really need to do is compare Pawlick's words to Bronski's to understand that Bronski was the victim of a vicious smear.

Second, I'm a Unitarian Universalist of the non-Christian, interested-in-spirituality-but-basically-a-secular-humanist variety. I first began to follow Pawlick this past spring, when I was researching a story for the World, the UUs' denominational magazine, on a new sexuality-education program. Called Our Whole Lives, or OWL, the program was developed by the Unitarian Universalists in cooperation with the Congregationalists, a liberal Christian denomination that Pawlick has also attacked. OWL is, to say the least, ambitious and challenging: it treats homosexuality as a normal variation, it uses explicit drawings as an educational aid, and it teaches kids that there's room for sexual experimentation without intercourse.

Pawlick, in his follow-up mailing to An Intelligent Discussion, goes off the deep end in discussing OWL and the curriculum it's replacing, called About Your Sexuality. "Since 1971, the Unitarians have had sex education materials which have included a film [actually still photos] showing a heterosexual couple having normal and anal intercourse, a male couple having anal and oral sex and a lesbian couple using a dildo. . . . A dispassionate observer will wonder how it is possible to distinguish this tremendous interest in sex from an addiction to pornography," Pawlick wrote.

When I asked Pawlick why he cared what Unitarian Universalists and Congregationalists teach their kids about sex, he replied, "I guess you might say I have the same interest that Bryant Gumbel had." He was referring to the October 1997 debut of the CBS newsmagazine Public Eye (a Gumbel vehicle that was quickly canceled), in which viewers were told the shocking story that UU kids enrolled in the About Your Sexuality program were being shown photos. In church! Of people having sex! What was Pawlick suggesting? That, like Gumbel, he was mainly interested in getting attention?

"I think there's no question that our society is governed by what we teach our children," Pawlick continues. "Many people are concerned by our society today, and it's going downhill. You can't have teenagers going out and having promiscuous sex without it having an effect. The only thing is, the Unitarians think it's having a positive effect, and I think it's having a deleterious effect."

I followed up by asking Pawlick why crime, the number of abortions performed, and the teenage pregnancy rate are all down significantly in the 1990s if the culture is, as he believes, in decline. He seemed bewildered for a moment, as if this were the first time he'd been presented with information suggesting that maybe not every social indicator is going straight to hell. He finally responded: "I don't think everything is rosy out there."

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Pawlick may be preoccupied with matters of the flesh, but he is truly a right-winger for all seasons.

Last year, for instance, Pawlick and his wife, Sarah Pawlick, gave money to the Massachusetts Independent Political Action Committee for Working Families, described by critics as a religious-right organization, and to candidates supported by the PAC.

Pawlick also donated $10,000 to backers of an initiative petition to outlaw affirmative action in Washington State; the measure won with 58 percent of the vote. Pawlick told the Seattle Times last August that he hoped the ballot measure would lead to the repeal of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Indeed, in a self-published book he wrote last year, Freedom Will Conquer Racism and Sexism, Pawlick claimed that federal civil-rights protections are "damaging to everyone," including blacks and women, and he argued that affirmative action costs the nation some $150 billion a year in lost economic output.

Like the Biblical prophets he so admires, though, Pawlick has mainly been met with scorn at home. His mailing in Sherborn led to a meeting at the local Unitarian Universalist church that Mark O'Brien, a member, helped organize. The primary agenda item: denouncing Pawlick. In Wayland, a Pawlick mailing was followed by the publication of anti-Pawlick letters in the local paper. In Newton, the city's human-rights commission held a public hearing at which the overwhelming sentiment was in favor of tolerance. According to an account in the Boston Globe, a gay Newton North High School junior named Sam Hanser said of Pawlick's mailing, "Material like this encourages crime and makes people like me feel unsafe."

Even Pawlick's attempts to reach out and establish the "intelligent discussion" he so earnestly wants aren't nearly as successful as he seems to believe. For instance, Bay Windows, a Boston-based gay-and-lesbian newspaper, profiled Pawlick earlier this year. "We had a very nice discussion," Pawlick says. "I've known homosexuals all my life. Obviously we disagree on many issues. But they know I'm a responsible person. I believe I've done a responsible job of reporting this. We can disagree on issues without having all this hate."

But Bay Windows editor Jeff Epperly makes it clear that he's not ready to sit around the campfire with Pawlick and sing "Kumbaya." "I think he's destructive, I think he's mean, I think he's hateful, and we in no way support what he's doing," Epperly says. "We support his right to say it, and that's it."

Which raises a crucial point. Yes, what Pawlick says is hateful, even though it's heavily couched in love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin rhetoric. But he's not advocating violence, and, judging from the reception he's gotten in his hometown and surrounding communities, he's not developing much of a following. Does he matter? Do activists need to pay attention to him? Might that merely risk making him seem more important than he really is?

There is no doubt that Pawlick's activities are protected by the First Amendment. (A fun aside: one of Pawlick's stranger assertions is that he can't hire more than four full-time employees. Otherwise, he says, the News will fall under the purview of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which will ban his publication for its politically incorrect views. Pawlick seems not to realize that the MCAD regulates employment practices, not speech -- which Pawlick, as a lawyer, ought to know is constitutionally guaranteed.) But are Pawlick's words, on some level, dangerous? Is there a connection between anti-gay diatribes and the homophobic explosion that resulted in Matthew Shepard's murder? It's a question that Pawlick himself dismisses with an absurd analogy, saying that drawing such a link would make no more sense than blaming Unitarian Universalists for the murder of Christian students at Columbine High School on the grounds that UUs have stirred up hatred of Christianity.

Jeff Epperly, though, isn't so quick to dismiss the connection. "I think when you talk about gays recruiting children and gays spreading disease, you're just setting people up who are mentally unbalanced to go after those people who are 'lesser human beings.' It probably feeds some of the haters out there, at least." Adds Surina Khan, an analyst with Political Research Associates, a Somerville-based organization that studies the political and religious right: "He's obviously not calling for any sort of violence, but he is creating a milieu and a climate that does in some cases inevitably lead to violence. They may not be directly related, but there is a link there."

Words, in short, can have consequences, even though the person uttering those words may not intend them. Only someone who doesn't believe in freedom would attempt to muzzle Pawlick; but there's a price to be paid for that freedom.

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That price was brought home one day last spring to Brad and Susan Keyes. Long-time members of the First Parish, the Unitarian Universalist church in Wayland, they were recruited two years ago to "field test" the new OWL sexuality curriculum with 15 seventh-graders. Then, last spring, they received one of Pawlick's mailings, which described UUs as "obsessed with sex," controlled by "militant, homosexual activists," and trained "to 'confront' and 'challenge' the followers of Christ."

"When I started reading the comments about sexuality education in the Unitarian church, it scared me," Susan Keyes says. "It's frightening to think you might have been targeted."

Targeted? Perish the thought, says Pawlick. After all, he's just trying to get a discussion going. Why, did you know that when he stopped by the Sherborn church after his first mailing, the minister practically threw him out? "The Unitarians went after me tooth and nail," he says. It seems you just can't call people Christ-bashing sexual deviants anymore without them getting all upset about it.

"We need another point of view," he says, stroking his chin, sitting back in his chair at an angle. He looks tired, even a little sad. Though his message is surely hateful, J. Edward Pawlick himself is clearly not a hateful person. An Intelligent Discussion may be whacked, with its reliance on the discredited research of sociologist Paul Cameron (who mistakenly asserted that gay men's life expectancy, even discounting AIDS deaths, is 30 years shorter than straight men's) and its comically irrelevant attempt to prove that there's no such thing as a "gay gene." But Pawlick wants to be taken seriously. His writing style evokes the over-earnest seventh-grader turning in his first term paper, right down to the footnoted references to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He's worked so, so hard on this stuff, and no doubt he's genuinely confused, and hurt, by the hostility with which he's been received.

Trouble is, Pawlick's notion of how to get a discussion going is to deny his opponents' very humanity. His failure to see that is ultimately of little consequence to him. But for the targets of his misplaced moral authoritarianism, it's offensive, hateful, and frightening.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.