The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

C2 eZ re the washington post.thursday, february 20 , 2020

that happened recently at t he f am-

ily’s c hurch.

According to Lavery, they gave

some very bad answers.

A parishioner at the church,

who volunteered with children,

had told the ortbergs that he (the

parishioner) was attracted to chil-

dren. The ortbergs had then al-

lowed the volunteer t o continue to

work with kids b ecause h e assured

the p astor that he had n ot acted on

his attraction, a church bulletin

explained.

Lavery declined t o comment on

the situation, but on Twitter he

posted a summary describing a

conversation he and Grace had

with his f ather a bout the i ncident.

“We were told (1) that pedophilia

was like homosexuality, (2) that

the most important thing was

maintaining secrecy around this

affair, and (3) that we lacked

standing to offer an alternative

form of treatment for sexual ob-

sessions with children because of

our t ransitions,” Lavery wrote.

John ortberg did not respond

to The Post’s requests for com-

ment.

The Laverys reported John ort-

berg to the church when he de-

clined to disclose the details him-

self. ortberg took a leave of ab-

sence from the church through

Jan. 24. A n independent investiga-

tion “did not reveal any allega-

tions of misconduct,” a church

spokeswoman w rote. “ In a ddition,

we are reviewing our protective

measures for children.”

Lavery had worried about los-

ing his family when he transi-

tioned. He hadn’t; Nancy had at-

tended to him after his mastecto-

my, he wrote in his newsletter.

But now, “It was very, very, very

clear to me what needed to hap-

pen,” Lavery says. “It was hard, b ut

not c omplicated.”

He dropped his last name and

cut off contact w ith h is family.

“I wanted... t o transition out of

my bloodline and body entirely, to

appear and become inhuman —

covered in e yelashes, maybe,” Lav-

ery wrote i n his newsletter.

He h ad a dvised readers seeking

to leave their families before, but

he comes to it now with “a newly

heightened awareness” of the

costs.

“Even i f you h ave total clarity on

your side,” he says, “there can be a

counterweight to that choice —

that afterwards, the momentum

slows down and t he heaviness a nd

grief, or even a sense of guilt, can

settle in.”

The day after their wedding, the

Laverys decamped across the

country to New York. They now

live in the kind of unrealistically

nice New York apartment that

usually only exists on TV: crown

molding, a massive walk-in c loset,

sweeping views of the manhattan

and Brooklyn skylines that only

grow more spectacular when the

sun sets. After the year they’ve

had, it feels like kismet — “ Trading

a family for an apartment,” Grace

jokes, bitterly, over a cup of tea at

their dining room table. The past

two months have been among the

best of their lives, and also among

the w orst.

Life is a rich tapestry. Getting

through i t can take powerful mag-

ic, huge acts of transformation

and small acts of neatening. Even

good counsel can lead to messy

resolutions. But sometimes, that’s

how a story ends.

[email protected]

D

ear Prudence’s final stop in

the Egyptian collection is

the Book of the Dead, a col-

lection of spells for the afterlife.

“Behold me, I am come,” begins

one s pell. “I have b rought truths t o

you.”

The business of bringing

truths to modern advice-seekers

fell first to one gender, then to

another. The earliest advice col-

umns, back in the 17 th century,

were written by men. Their read-

ers’ questions ranged from rela-

tionship advice to scientific in-

quiry. (“Is it proper for women to

be learned?” someone asked in

the Athenian mercury, an 1690s

British publication, according to

the Atlantic. “We see no reason

why women should not be

learned now,” t he Athenian w oke-

ly replied. “for if we have seen one

lady gone mad with learning...

there are a h undred men could be

named.”)

As n ewspapers e volved, “we got

this idea that women ought to be

the ones who deal with emotional

labor,” says Brammer, the ¡Hola

Papi! columnist. Their authors

mostly reflected the audience of

the women’s pages, where they

were printed. Until the arrival of

Dan Savage’s Savage Love in 1991,

America’s most famous 20 th-cen-

tury advice columnists were over-

whelmingly middle-class white

women, such as Ann Landers and

Abigail Van Buren (the p en names

for sisters Esther and Pauline

friedman, respectively), E. Jean

Carroll, and Judith martin, also

known as miss manners, among

others.

White women, such as Amy

Dickinson and The Post’s Carolyn

Hax, still have the high-profile

syndicated gigs, but different

kinds of voices have started to

emerge in the world of advice-

giving. Half of Slate’s roster of

parenting columnists are people

of color, one o f its sex columnists is

a gay man, a nd the other is S toya, a

porn actress. Brammer is gay and

Latino. roxane Gay, who wrote

Ask roxane for the New York

Times through 2018, is a bisexual

black woman w ho h as also written

about her weight. Cheryl Strayed,

who wrote Dear S ugar f or the l iter-

ary site the rumpus, has been

open about h er s truggles with her-

oin a nd poverty.

Advice readers are Slate’s most

loyal u sers, according to Bill Carey,

senior director of strategy at the

website, and Dear Prudence gets

the most traffic of any regular

feature. Lavery receives nearly

300 questions a w eek.

many of them are entertaining

questions having to do with what

Lavery calls the “rich tapestry” of

life — a phrase he’s applied to

scenarios such as a woman who

takes her cat to raves and a man

who caught his teenage daughter

having sex with her boyfriend

while the boyfriend was dressed i n

a “mrs. Claus” c ostume.

In t he p ast few years, L avery has

noticed an uptick in questions

about transitioning. He some-

times might answer based on his

own experience, but more often

the answers are about basic

boundary-setting. “If their prob-

lem is the way that they’re being

treated by the people in their

lives,” he says, “I’ll have a baseline

of, like, I think you have the right

to expect this or ask for this.” It’s

reasonable, for example, to tell

your family to call you by your

chosen pronouns or your new

name.

Then again, Lavery’s own expe-

rience has taught him that there

are limits to what you can expect

from family.

D

ear Prudence is choked up.

He’s thinking about his par-

ents, Nancy and John ort-

berg. A m onth before his wedding,

he asked them about something

literature and pop culture you

might have once found on the

To ast, the now-defunct feminist

website that he co-founded in

2013, when he went by his birth

name, mallory o rtberg.

Dear Prudence, I think I’m

trans.

Dear Prudence, I’m in love with

my best friend.

Dear Prudence, I think I have t o

cut t ies with my family.

There are no formal qualifica-

tions for an advice columnist.

There are only informal ones: a

deep well of empathy, a strong

moral compass, a gift for being

succinct without coming off as

glib. “most of us aren’t psycholo-

gists. We’re not therapists,” says

John Paul Brammer, the advice

columnist who writes ¡Hola Papi!

for h is Substack newsletter ( previ-

ously for out magazine). “We’re

your pals at the bar who you can

tell your issues to, and we’ll talk

you t hrough i t.”

of Lavery, he adds: “Danny has

that energy.”

Perspective, too. Lavery is the

most notable new figure in a field

of advice-givers that has begun to

diversify, reflecting an overdue

understanding that cisgender

white people are hardly the only

ones in search of t he “small a cts of

neatening” that columnists can

provide — nor are they the only

ones qualified to tend to other

people’s problems.

maybe it helps for the advice-

giver t o have led a c omplicated life

— the kind that exposes you to

different people, different prob-

lems, heartbreak, forgiveness and

grief.

for Lavery, some of the most

crucial questions and answers

have h ad to do with family: the o ne

he left behind and the one he has

made for himself. His upbringing

“shaped me and made me who I

am, a nd I c an’t c hange it any more

than I can change another part of

myself,” h e says.

He pauses to take that back:

“A lthough, I can change parts of

myself.”

D

ear Prudence, a newly mint-

ed New Yorker who came

from the Bay Area, is wan-

dering through the Brooklyn mu-

seum, when Bernardino de’Conti’s

“Portrait of Catellano Trivulzio,”

stops him in his tracks.

“What a s----y little beard,” s ays

Lavery, pointing out the contrast

between the subject’s “great, lus-

trous hair” and the “faint cloud of

mist over his chin.”

His unsparing assessment

quickly gives way to thoughtful

analysis.

“What feels very transmascu-

line about this is just like, ‘I’ve got

my hairstyle exactly as I want it.

And my beard’s not ready for

prime time, but I’m gonna pull it

out.’ ”

If the Toast were still around,

it’s the kind of insight that might

have led to an entire post: ‘Trans-

masculine Beards of Art History.”

That was the website’s sense of

humor: well-read, absurd, know-

ing. Lavery c reated t he To ast, with

Nicole Cliffe and Nicholas Pavich,

in 2013. on any given day, they

might have published a literary

satire, a gender critique, biblical

fan fiction and a fantasia about

raccoons. readers, who called

themselves To asties, felt genuine-

ly bonded by their affection for t he

website. one To ast fan e ven d onat-

ed a kidney to another.

one of the site’s memorable fea-

tures involved Lavery writing fun-

ny captions for old paintings cen-

tered on a theme, like “women

resting miserably” and “really ex-

cellent pointing,” which is why The

Washington Post s uggested a stroll

through t he Brooklyn museum.

Lavery studied English, not art,

lavery from C1

Dear Prudence author’s

larger act of neatening

JaCKie Molloy for the Washington post

Daniel lavery and his wife, Grace, in their B rooklyn home. The couple both transitioned from

their assigned sexes. He jokes in his book about a “one-in-one-out policy” for their genders.

tall, British brunette who dresses

glamorously in big sunglasses

and fur coats — a complement to

Lavery’s holographic fanny pack

and deconstructed houndstooth

blazer.

They began to speak of their

shared desires to transition.

Grace, who was assigned male at

birth, went first. Lavery followed

shortly thereafter, in 2016 (he

jokes in his book about a “one-in-

one-out policy” for their genders).

They m arried in D ecember.

Writing the story of his transi-

tion, Lavery f ound himself return-

ing to the B ible s tories of his child-

hood: There’s the story of Jacob

wrestling with an angel and

emerging with a new name, I srael.

And of course there’s the resur-

rection story. Lavery thought

about that one a fter h is transition.

Especially when people would

say: “It feels like someone died.”

museum, Lavery encounters a

small exhibition titled “A Wom-

an’s A fterlife: Gender Transforma-

tion in Ancient Egypt.” Some writ-

ing on the wall provides an expla-

nation: The Egyptians believed

that when a woman died, s he must

briefly be transformed into a man

to be reborn. “The male pronoun

on this woman’s coffin represent-

ed powerful magic that caused

gender transformation,” reads the

text o n one d isplay.

Powerful magic would be one

way to describe his connection

with Grace Lavery, a professor of

Victorian literature at t he Univer-

sity of California at Berkeley,

whom he met shortly before the

To ast was entering the loam. They

became inseparable. “It was a

full-on immersive experience of

like, hanging out for hours a day,

every day, s haring incredibly inti-

mate stories,” says Grace, 36, a

at A zusa Pacific, a p rivate evangel-

ical university. He was born in

Simi Valley, Calif., to Nancy and

John o rtberg, pastor of the Silicon

Valley megachurch menlo

Church. When he w as growing up,

Bible stories became his default

reference points — and remained

so, even as he left behind other

parts o f his early life.

After college, he wrote for

Gawker and the Hairpin before

co-founding the Toast and later

landing the Slate gig. But literary

feminist websites, even ones with

cult followings, aren’t typically lu-

crative e ndeavors; the Toast called

it quits in 2016. It was shortly

thereafter that Lavery began hav-

ing, as he wrote, “a persistent

thought, which came on a ll at o nce

and in a way that suggested it had

always been with me: What if you

were a man, sort o f?”

Walking through the Brooklyn

Lavery found himself returning to the Bible stories of his childhood, such

as the Resurrection, which he thought about after his transition.

Especially when people would say: “It feels like someone died.”

The

Reliable

Source

Helena Andrews-Dyer and Emily Heil

have moved on to new assignments at

The Post. A search is underway for a

new Reliable Source columnist. The

column will return.

Trump removed Yovanovitch

as ambassador last year, appar-

ently based on Giuliani’s com-

plaints that she was resisting a

Ukrainian investigation into the

Bidens. She later testified at the

House impeachment hearings

that Trump had pressured the

State Department to remove her

before her term was complete.

The Hill report criticized the

Hill for publishing Solomon’s

work in a manner that suggested

they were news stories, not opin-

ion columns, which it said poten-

tially confused readers. It also

said it failed to insist to fox News

producers that Solomon be iden-

tified as an opinion columnist,

not as an “investigative journal-

ist,” when he appeared on the

network to discuss his work.

It noted Solomon’s “hybrid

role” at the Hill — both as a

columnist and a sometime re-

porter on Hill.TV, the publica-

tion’s video streaming operation,

and that this may have further

confused readers about his work.

Among other correctives, the

Hill said it has given its top editor,

Cusack, “enhanced editorial au-

thority” over all content on its

website. It r eiterated existing pro-

hibitions about disclosure of

sources and against sending out

drafts of stories to sources.

[email protected]

“In certain columns, Solomon

failed to identify important de-

tails about key Ukrainian sourc-

es, including the fact that they

had been indicted or were under

investigation,” said the internal

investigation, which was over-

seen by the newspaper’s editor,

Bob Cusack. “In other cases, the

sources were [Solomon’s] own

attorneys” — Victoria To ensing

and Joseph DiGenova, who have

also represented President

Trump and Giuliani, who was also

a key source for Solomon’s col-

umns.

Solomon didn’t disclose this

connection in his columns nor

did he disclose to his editors that

he shared drafts of his stories

with To ensing, DiGenova and

Parnas, the review noted.

To ensing and DiGenova also

appeared frequently on fox News

to promote the Biden-Ukraine

narrative that Solomon pub-

lished.

Solomon also told the Hill he

relied on Parnas as a “facilitator”

in setting up interviews for his

Ukraine columns. At the time,

attorneys, who also represented

clients embroiled in U.S.-Ukraine

politics.

But the Hill stopped short of

retracting or apologizing for Solo-

mon’s articles, nor did it say it

shouldn’t h ave published them. It

also didn’t characterize Solo-

mon’s m otives in presenting what

appears to be a largely debunked

conspiracy theory about Ukraine.

The columns were roundly

criticized as distorted and inaccu-

rate by U.S. diplomats during

their testimony before the

House’s impeachment hearings.

The Hill, in its review of 14

Solomon columns and related

videos about Ukraine, found mul-

tiple flaws in his reporting and in

the Hill’s own presentation of his

work. It said it has attached edi-

tor’s notes to the columns to

provide “context and/or disclo-

sure that should have been in-

cluded at t he time of his writings”

or to “highlight what has been

learned” since Solomon’s col-

umns were published.

solomon from C1

The Hill’s internal report

faults Solomon’s work

the 2016 U.S. election. It also

acknowledged that one of Solo-

mon’s most important sources,

former Ukrainian prosecutor

Yuri Lutsenko, later recanted alle-

gations reported by Solomon

against Yovanovitch.

report noted that he has stood by

his columns “to this day.”

Contrary to Solomon’s pub-

lished assertions, and later

Trump’s claims, the Hill investi-

gation acknowledged that Ukrai-

nian officials did not meddle in

Parnas was working with Giuliani

to oust marie Yovanovitch, then

the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Solomon, who left the Hill in

the fall to start his own media

company, did not return a call

seeking comment. But the Hill

2008 photo by gerald Martineau/the Washington post

The report by the Hill states that some of the columns by John solomon, above, “failed to identify

important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted.”