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Hasbians everywhere

It’s a hot, or at least warm, topic these days: women who used to be lesbians but now date men. Sometimes they still call themselves lesbians (we’re looking at you, Tina, with no small amount of confusion on our faces), but sometimes they shun the word and all things related to it. Sometimes they even start preaching about how wrong it is to be gay, like Venus magazine publisher Charlene Cothran. (Note: The Queerty story has an incorrect link to Venus Zine, which is not the same. The correct link to Venus magazine appears below with a quote from their Web site.)

Cothran’s magazine has suffered a similar fate: Its target audience is still black lesbians, but only insofar as they can be converted to a straight, Jesus-loving life. According to Cothran,

We built this business over 13 years to target black, gay households and communities and outlets. That is still where we are going, but with a new message.
The magazine’s Web site makes that mission very clear:
The new mission of Venus magazine is to encourage, educate and assist those who desire to leave a life of homosexuality. Our ultimate mission is to win souls for Christ, and to do so by showing love to all God’s people. We believe that homosexuality is outside of the will of God. We know that many new and longtime VENUS readers have been instilled with a belief system that is in line with this teaching but are still living ‘in the life’. Many desire change and wonder if they can be accepted into the family of God ‘just as they are’. The answer is YES! These readers will find the new Venus an anointed and refreshing tool for kingdom work.
Subscribers will continue to get the magazine unless they cancel. But I’m sure most of them will keep reading. I mean, why cancel your subscription just because the magazine is suddenly completely the opposite of what you signed up for? I’m sure we’d all still read AfterEllen if it became AfterIllin and celebrated the joys of recovering from the disease of homosexuality.

For more, visit Jasmyne Cannick’s blog. (She knew about this in October, but the story’s only just now making waves.) And check out episode 5 of She Said What? for some quality discussion of the hasbian phenomenon.

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