I had never heard of her until I read her New York Times obituary. Now I know what an impact Deb Price made.
Ms. Price was working in the Washington bureau of The Detroit News, when she proposed a column from the gay perspective.
“I found the courage to ask for the column that I’d always wanted to read,” she said in a 1993 speech in New York to what is now called The Association of L.G.B.T.Q. Journalists.
“I wanted to be entertained, not offended,” she said. “Talked to, not about. Informed, not maligned. Inspired, not demoralized.”
Her publisher, Bob Giles, agreed and announced the column in a front-page letter to readers.
In her first column, Ms. Price asked how she should introduce Ms. Murdoch (girlfriend? lover?). Some readers were disgusted and offered their own choice suggestions of what Ms. Price could call Ms. Murdoch.
Mr. Giles said at the time that such bigotry only hardened his resolve to continue the column.
Ms. Price took the attacks in stride. “If there weren’t hostility and if there weren’t misunderstandings about gay people,” she told The Associated Press, “there would be no point in doing this column.”