Recordpub.com - Printers balk at content of KSU gay magazine: Three reject publication of Fusion because of language issues, controversial images

By Ben Wolford | Staff Writer
A gay and lesbian magazine at Kent State University will hit newsstands behind schedule because three printing companies balked at its controversial content.
A fourth printer, Printing Concepts, based in Stow, agreed to print Fusion, a student-run, semesterly magazine that addresses lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.
“I think we did the right thing by standing up for the First Amendment,” said Raytevia Evans, the spring editor of Fusion.
She said she didn’t believe the content was more offensive than images in other media.
Freeport Press, which had printed issues of Fusion before, declined to print this issue because it included the F-word in a headline and an image of “graphic material, which involved some pictures of genitalia,” said David Pilcher, vice president of sales and marketing, talking with Campus Progress, an activist group.
Pilcher did not return a call to his office Thursday.
The content in question was the fashion spread in the middle of the magazine which showed one man in a form-fitting leotard. No nude genitals were exposed.
The piece was apparently a statement about the difference between sex and gender, proclaiming, “Gender is dead.” The magazine is available at Fusion’s website, www.thatgaymaga
zine.com.
It was the language that threw “red flags” for a second company, Hess Print Solutions in Brimfield, said Chief Financial Officer Fred Cooper. In another article, the headline contained words some consider slurs for homosexuals.
“Generally those are harmful words,” Cooper said. “We don’t generally do profanity.”
With the end of the semester looming — when students and readers would leave campus for the summer — Evans and the Fusion staff tried a third company, Davis Graphic Communication Solutions in Barberton.
The company’s decision not to print the magazine was one of necessity, not content objections. Whenever potentially offensive material runs off their presses, employees have the opportunity not to participate in the job, President Bob Ellis said. Giving that opportunity would take time.
“Davis GCS also could not produce the project within the time constraints requested by Kent State University due production capacity issues,” Ellis wrote in a statement.
Evans was up front with Printing Concepts, she said, telling them about the other printers, their tight deadline and the language and images.
“They actually got right back to us when we contacted them,” Evans said.
Ron Taggart, the president of the company, put out a press release saying, “Printing Concepts advocates freedom of speech and the extension of that right to all persons or organizations. They accepted the Fusion magazine project based on this constitutional right.
“As a business philosophy, Printing Concepts maintains that they do not judge the artistic, literary or political content of their clients’ work, unless that content advocates violence or harm to others.”
As a first-time editor of Fusion, Evans, a KSU graduate student in communications, said she was surprised by the reaction of the printers and by the amount of coverage the issue has received. The Huffington Post and journalism commentator Jim Romenesko posted blogs about it.
“We think this shows what we really stand for,” she said.