Open letter to Birmingham Times

March 22, 2026

Dear Editor,

Without commentary, a good friend texted me your March 18 roundup feature titled “Black Women With Alabama Roots Turned Historic Firsts Into Opportunities For Future Generations.” Upon reading the title, I continued scrolling, suspecting my friend had a distinct reason for sending it. 

He did.

Just under the Art, Entertainment, Literature, & Media subheading, I saw an ode to a man pretending to be a woman in a feature about women. Incensed, I first scrolled up to double check the publication’s name and did some research on it: Birmingham Times; a 50+-year-old weekly with around 37,000 unique visitors per month and a modest sized staff. I was first amazed that a publication has remained in circulation for over 50 years. Given the current media climate, that’s no easy feat.

My amazement ended there.

Your publication is also described as a group employing those who “look at ourselves as the documenters of African-American news/history in Birmingham, Alabama.” Admittedly, I am ignorant to the breadth of your editorial scope, but I’m guessing the article is one of several Women’s History Month-dedicated pieces, which makes my writing this letter all the more necessary.

Still unclear about my friend’s reason for texting the article, I kept scrolling. And then I saw it. The last entry in the roundup is, alas, me. As I lamented yet another confirmation that my beloved home state is becoming an almost unrecognizable bastion of godless, leftist rhetoric with increasingly weakened leadership, I chose to deal with this head-on.

If you’re not already, prepare to be offended. 

Prepare, also, for my give-a-damn to be busted as it relates to your offense.

Consensus bias strikes again

You may (or may not) have concluded at this point that I am journalism knowledgeable. In fact, I’m professionally classified as being journalism-adjacent. When my gymnastics career concluded, I launched my communications and public relations career, spanning myriad industries including sports, TV, film (including two box office successes), music, legal, real estate development and nonprofit, just to scratch the surface. I’ve successfully and strategically secured editorial coverage for clients in a wide range of local, regional, national, international and trade press in the print, digital, radio, podcast and broadcast mediums for over 25 years. I mention that information to confirm what you may have suspected, which is that I know my way around newsrooms, mastheads and editorial calendars. To that end, I read your article with a different discernment.

But, here’s the real rub. Contrary to what you (and the staff writer charged with curating the roundup) undoubtedly think, your including me in this roundup neither honors me nor my ethnicity, gymnastics career or womanhood. As a Title IX beneficiary and subsequent NCAA and SEC champion, that is especially true.

Read that again. AI didn’t write it.

What you’ve accomplished is quite the opposite, actually. With your freedom of the press rights (and your odd commitment to capitalizing the ‘b’ in the word ‘black’… it’s an adjective; not a proper noun), you published me in the article. You also, by extension, assumed I’d respond positively to seeing both my gymnastics accomplishments and my two X chromosomes blatantly mocked, demeaned and inextricably linked with spiritual sickness, fetishism and kink. You have aligned with – and attempted to hoist upon me – an ideology that does not request acceptance, but rather demands agreement and, even more egregiously, advocacy. 

And you expected me to consider it an honor that I was included.

Consensus bias is wild. 

And you’re trippin’.

I’m used to consensus bias in its usual form: leftist people (usually women) who assume that I share their stances on spiritual, political, social and personal agency issues based solely on the color of my skin (which is, of course, the definition of racism). But you’ve managed to significantly move that ridiculous needle by assuming I’m supportive of your solidarity with fantasy.

I’m guessing that neither you (nor anyone on your staff) bothered to do a cursory search of my social platform accounts. Had you done so, you would have discovered my Fox News and Fox News Digital appearances and this feature about my active defense of protecting women’s spaces. You would’ve also, hopefully, known better than to include me in this roundup. Instead, you erred on the side of lazy assumption and plowed forward. At best, it’s irresponsible story research. At worst, it’s forced association.

The official retraction

My objection to being included in your article is not a personal affront to the man pretending to be a woman you featured. I’m praying for him. And I’m not smugly looking down my nose at him or you. Despite the fact that I’ve been saved and accepting of Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord (which hits different when you understand Lordship) basically since I cut my first tooth, I’m remembering the years I was deceived, rebellious, prodigal, unrepentant and proud of it. I had a lot of agreement from other lost people during those years. We were all wrong. So are you.

Your kneeling to nihilistic gods through your segregationist echo-chamber is, unquestionably, the result of your yielding to one word: tolerance. Or, perhaps you’re more invested. Maybe your fear of the infinitesimal percentage of people comprising that community – and the self-loathing straight women who refuse to be appropriately incredulous – rules your professional and personal decision trees. Whatever your misguided reasoning, that’s between you and the One who created you. I’m praying for you, too.

It’s not lost on me that you featured a man (in an article celebrating women) heralded by an industry of people who have proven, time and again, that mid-to-high paying “work” is readily available to the black men and women willing to sacrifice their God-given designs to the entertainment industry elite. But, based on this absurd roundup, you’re clearly good with the emasculation and feminization of black men while simultaneously – and dangerously – bastardizing the femininity of black women. Got it.

It has also not escaped me that generous budgets and a commitment to defiling any semblance of decency in the name of “creativity” has been normalized. As a creative, I realize that not everyone in Hollywood has stacked soul-selling subscriptions to the industry’s dark underbelly. But the slope is more slippery than ever and the only way to not engage in that particular fight is to refuse access to the ring.

I know you won’t publish this letter, so consider this my official retraction on your behalf. I renounce being included in your story. I reject it. This is my full-throated disassociation from it. Feel free to slide into the predictable woke position: responding with ad hominem attacks about my alleged black lack, rescinded cookout invite, coonery, Auntie Tom energy and, of course, the obligatory “phobic” accusation. But when you inevitably assemble your rent-a-friend alliances and come for me, be sure of the following:

It is written, God did not give me a spirit of fear, so I wholly rebuke all claims that I’m “phobic” about anything or anyone (2 Peter 1:7).

It is written, I will not make myself a friend of the world and an enemy of God (James 4:4).

It is written, have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth (Galatians 4:16)?