Pawlick: At the center of a storm
Says schools wrong to teach homosexuality

By Vanessa Parks, Globe Correspondent

SHERBORN - J. Edward Pawlick is the founder of the highly successful Lawyers Weekly Inc., with designs on being a gentleman farmer in his retirement. But he is also at the center of a storm - a storm of his own creation that he says he doesn't particularly enjoy.

Since January, Pawlick has used his own funds to mail controversial material on homosexuality and pedophilia to school principals and teachers across the state, as well as to townspeople in Sherborn, Newton, Wayland, Wellesley, Sudbury and Concord. He has also set up the Massachusetts News, an online newspaper, to publicize his view that allowing students to form gay/straight alliances in their schools is wrong.

Last week, Newton officials sponsored what was billed as ''a community response to hate mail,'' featuring a panel of speakers that included a psychiatrist and representatives from the gay-straight alliances at Newton North and South high schools. Pawlick, 72, who says he's just trying to start a dialogue, called it a ''get-Pawlick meeting.''

The Human Rights Commission, which organized the event, grappled with whether or not it wanted to give Pawlick the attention. Back in January, when he sent the first mailing, the commission responded with a letter simply saying everyone is welcome in Newton. But when calls kept coming in after the most recent mailing, the commission decided to act, said chairwoman Lynn Goldsmith.

In a mailing titled, ''Will Pedophilia Be Next in Massachusetts Schools?'' mailed to residents of Newton, Pawlick says, ''The citizens of Massachusetts will soon have to decide whether or not they approve of pedophilia. It will soon be fashionable. ... The perfect place for a pedophile to find [children] in Massachusetts would be working with a Gay-Straight Alliance in our schools.''

''We're trying to really support the gay-lesbian community in Newton,'' Goldsmith said. Referring to the content of the mailing, she added, ''It's confusing. You don't really know where he's coming from at the beginning. At the end, he really attacks the gay-straight alliances. We wanted to support them.''

Holly Gunner, a Newton resident who has served on the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth since its inception and who serves on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said it's difficult to respond to Pawlick.

''Obviously, I respect Mr. Pawlick's right to send out the propaganda he sent out,'' Gunner said. ''And I believe that the appropriate response to hate speech that misrepresents a group of people is other speech that provides accurate information and that supports the group under attack.''

Pawlick bristles at the use of the term ''hate speech.''

''I'm not anti-gay,'' he said. ''That's the thing that really irritates me. Who says I don't love homosexuals? I don't hate homosexuals. I definitely think it's a foolish lifestyle, no question about that. But I think the guy that smokes cigarettes, my farmer friend, I think that's foolish, too.''

Pawlick has never attended a meeting of a high school gay-straight alliance, but his impression is that they teach students grappling with sexuality questions to be gay. The alliances are designed to foster tolerance between gay and straight students, and other groups.

''You say to them, 'Go down there and meet with the rest of the homosexuals,''' Pawlick said. ''I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's what we should be doing.''

Pawlick also believes the alliances are natural magnets for pedophiles, though he acknowledges most pedophiles are men attracted to girls.

''It's just not antigay, in either sense of the word, particularly the people sense of the word,'' he said. ''I should never be a Girl Scout troop leader. Not any man. I mean, I am normal and natural and I would be attracted. I wouldn't want to put myself through that.''

Asked if he's ever had any contact with pedophiles, Pawlick said, ''When I was about 12 or 13, our scoutmaster, it turned out was hitting on one kid in the troop. But as far as I know that wasn't a big deal, we just got a new scoutmaster. I don't think anything ever happened to him. He was a nice guy, everybody liked him. I don't know what his problem was.''

At Massaschusetts Lawyers Weekly, Pawlick said, ''I had all kinds of homosexuals working for me. ... They were good employees, they were top employees. But I wouldn't want them teaching my children. It depends on what they're going to teach. Are they going to teach them homosexuality? Are they going to teach them 'Heather Has Two Fathers' and that kind of thing?''

But if there's such a thing as a ''homosexual lifestyle,'' it's news to Gunner, who is gay.

''I'd say that that view is based on ignorance of real gay people,'' Gunner said. ''Most gay and lesbian people live lives pretty much like everybody else's. Like everybody else, we spend most of our time at work or doing the daily chores of living. We wish we had more time to go to the movies or have a picnic. We make New Year's resolutions about getting more exercise or losing weight, but can't always keep them. We help our kids with their homework, and keep our fingers crossed that they'll be OK when they go off to college or a job.''

Pawlick started Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly out of his rented home in Weston in 1972. His company, Lawyers Weekly Inc., also publishes Lawyers Weekly USA and sister publications in seven states. In 1996, Pawlick sold Lawyers Weekly Inc. to his daughter, Susan, and stayed for a year before retiring early in 1998.

According to a Globe article in 1994, Pawlick was starting to take a more active role in the newspapers - staffers said he was moody and micromanaging things - and about a dozen key staffers left, including his brother, Al, and 20-year employee Sam Spencer. Paul J. Martinek, the publisher of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, said, ''Our position so far has been we do not want to comment on anything [Pawlick] has done since leaving here.''

Pawlick moved to Massachusetts from York, PA., where he practiced law and worked as an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State. He specialized in helping lawyers understand the problems of farmers, particularly in estate planning. He attended Williams College and received an agriculture degree at the University of New Hampshire, and served twice in the armed forces. He enlisted in the Navy just after high school, two months before the end of World War II. Later, at 25, he was drafted to serve in Korea. The conflict ended while he was at sea, but he spent two years there, writing for the Stars and Stripes and the Army Times.

He entered law school at 30, thinking it would be a way to make enough money to buy a farm. Working days, he attended George Washington University Law School nights.

He won't talk about what happened after he moved to York, or what happened with his first wife. He says only that he ''became sole parent for my four kids who were 4, 6, 8 and 10. I couldn't practice law anymore so I came up here and started the newspaper in my house. We had very little money at that time. We were living in a rented house.''

He married his second wife, Sally, in 1984, after moving to Massachusetts. They live on 40 acres in Sherborn.

After retiring, Pawlick wrote a book, ''Freedom Will Conquer Racism and Sexism: The Civil Rights Act is Damaging Everyone in America, Especially Blacks and Women,'' which he self-published through Mustard Seeds because, he says, he didn't want to deal with meddling editors.

Last year, Pawlick donated $10,000 to the Initiative 200 campaign in Washington, a ballot question that ended preferences based on race, gender and ethnicity in public employment, contracts and schools. He told the Seattle Times he was hoping it would lead to a repeal of the US Civil Rights Act, which is not something the supporters of the initiative were trying to do.

He has been a longtime contributor to Action on Smoking and Health, known as ASH, and an assortment of other groups and candidates. ''You name a group on my side and I've given ... 25 or 50 bucks or whatever,'' he said.

These days, most of his money is spent on Massachusetts News, the nonprofit online newspaper he launched in October.

''We don't want to make money,'' Pawlick said. ''We just want to have a good source of information for people. Any money we make will go back into doing more things, hiring more reporters.''

Asked if the operation has any income, he laughs and says, ''Well, we're going to have work on that, aren't we? Up until now, I'm spending my life savings. You can't take it with you.''

He says the mailings he did were designed as focus groups, so he could see what people were thinking. More mailings are planned, possibly statewide n the nonprofit status qualifies him for bulk mailing rates. He says he hasn't planned topics of future mailings, but hopes to touch on a number of subjects on his Web site - women, Web sites the Minuteman Library Network is recommending to teens, religion.

''My religion means a lot to me,'' he said. ''For us to think we know everything because we've learned a little science is preposterous.'' Pawlick identifies with the Christian religious right, but worshiped for a decade in the more liberal confines of the First Parish, a Unitarian church in Weston. He ultimately switched to a Congregational church.

''I want to write a novel, based upon what's happening in our society and where we're going and what it used to be like. We're not going forward, we're going backward.''

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