Band members and fans of the Tampa rock quintet Giddy-Up, Helicopter! have voiced disapproval — through email and online posts — about my recent profile of the group, which included them in a list of the top women musicians in Tampa Bay. Objections were raised about my references to the sexual orientations of certain band members. It distresses me that two sentences should overshadow the rest of the article, which describes the band’s music and their accomplishments on the local indie scene. But now I must defend my position, while also expressing regret that anyone may have been hurt by the profile.

I met with the entire band in person to do the interview. At the time, two of the women in the band commented they had dated each other before becoming bandmates. Lead singer Jill Conner said she was living as a man and is now to be called Jay. I called Conner before the story ran and spoke with him. He gave me permission to write about his planned sex-change surgery, which my editor, Eric Snider, and I found germane to the story, considering past newspaper articles had referred to the band as being all-female and Jay as Jill.

Conner also confirmed, upon my question, the sexual orientations of the band members. An hour or so after my phone conversation with Conner, I received an email from another member of Giddy-Up, Helicopter! requesting I not mention her sexuality. I promised, via email, I would not “out her.”

This article appears in Apr 11-17, 2007.