By News Editor Karen Ocamb

Recently I was a guest on Barbara Osborn's KPFK media-watch show Deadline L.A., complaining about the lack of coverage of 2-year-old Sarah Chavez's murder while in protective custody. Only IN Los Angeles magazine, KPCC's John Rabe, and Molly Okeon of the Pasadena Star News have been covering the story continuously. The L.A. Times ignored Sarah's murder until Feb.13.

IN's dedication to the story, despite a decidedly smaller pool of resources, illustrates precisely why our community needs an LGBT press, even as we increasingly assimilate into the mainstream.

First, some background. On Oct. 11, Sarah was found dead in the home of relatives now charged with her murder. The coroner found that her small intestine had been severed, causing toxins to seep into her stomach.

At the L.A. County Board of Supervisor's meeting last Nov. 15, the supervisors publicly deplored the failure of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and of the mandated child abuse reporters at Garfield Medical Center's emergency room to intervene at several points before Sarah's death. Supervisor Gloria Molina publicly apologized and admitted that the supervisors have little control over the bureaucracy they govern.

"The biggest problem about the work that we do here is that every single time when we implement these ordinances, we've put forth these motions, when you start checking through them, they aren't implemented effectively and uniformly, and I mean, we have the best intentions from the standpoint of protecting children, and we have a mechanism in place. But when you start auditing, it starts falling apart," said Molina. "When you start dissecting it, the system failed this child every step of the way."

One would think that admission of the complete failure of government to protect vulnerable children would provoke authority-questioning reporters to swarm to the story. It didn't.

IN took the lead and shared resources because the former foster parents, who had hoped to adopt Sarah, are a lesbian couple. Our community needed to know why Sarah was so abruptly removed without explanation by the child advocate who never met her and returned her to relatives who apparently have a history of abusing her. Gay people, many considering becoming foster parents with the intention of adopting, became afraid of the system.

Anti-gay bias is against DCFS and the court's policy, of course. But because of confidentiality laws intended to shield vulnerable youth, someone could exercise a private prejudice with little fear of being discovered.

Such suspicions of secret bias are familiar to minorities distrustful of government. But despite court rulings recognizing gay people as a distinct group upon whom discrimination is regularly visited, we are still not considered a "protected class" and therefore, we are not a "real" minority. Without this legal and societal recognition, we are usually left out of mainstream coverage, unless there is a celebrity involved, or a hard political or exotic element to highlight.

The LGBT media, on the other hand, recognizes that we are a distinct (while also internally diverse) community and a part of the larger world. Political journalist Doug Ireland (direland.typepad.com), for instance, has been in the forefront of writing about the hangings of gay teens in Iran.

If the mainstream media was the only source of information, Ellen Degeneres would appear to be the only gay person from New Orleans. So it was up to The Advocate and the local LGBT press to report our Hurricane Katrina stories. IN not only covered the devastation, but helped rescue a handicapped New Orleans lesbian and her partner who not only lost everything but had to go back in the closet while being sheltered at a Baptist church. We also reported on efforts by openly gay Rev. Mark Stuart of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hollywood to give financial aid to his first parish in Mississippi and the efforts of a New Orleans AIDS group (www.noaidstaskforce.com) to continue serving their clients.

The LGBT press also counters inaccurate reporting by the mainstream media. For instance, the LAPD held a news conference to gloat over their new offensive against gays committing lewd conduct in the L.A./West Hollywood area. The resulting news coverage often equated lewd conduct with prostitution, thus warranting undercover plainclothes stings. Fox Channel 11 featured gritty nighttime coverage of men wandering around in the shadows as if they were predatory sexual cockroaches. West Hollywood Hate Crimes Coordinator Rich Ryan later screamed at LAPD officials that such demonization results in hate crimes against gays.

The mainstream media moved on, but the story struck a major nerve in the LGBT community. "Sex Police in WeHo!" screamed the headline in Fab! IN's coverage of the LAPD's apparent use of undercover cops to entrap gay men included context about why lewd conduct stings and selective enforcement have historically been such volatile issues. We also recognized this as the first real community test for openly gay L.A. Police Commissioner Shelley Freeman.

The LAPD stings also threw L.A. City Councilmember Jack Weiss a political curveball. Though his office supported LAPD efforts to handle neighborhood complaints about lewd conduct, he told IN at a Stonewall Democratic Club meeting he was unaware that the LAPD thought he approved of their entrapment techniques. Weiss is running for L.A. City Attorney but we may never know if the LAPD stings affected his relationship with gays because pollsters don't consider gays a minority and therefore rarely include us in election polling.

Since Lisa Ben published her nine-page lesbian newsletter Vice Versa in June 1947 and the Mattachine Society started publishing ONE magazine in January 1953, an LGBT press has told our stories. But now, as the LGBT rights movement becomes more mainstream, it becomes even more critical to report on our issues, to question policies, and to challenge authority. Now in our ninth year of service, it is a duty and a privilege IN Los Angeles magazine promises to uphold.