Ever since the murder of Fred Martinez Jr., a 16-year-old Cortez boy, the Cortez Journal has drawn considerable criticism for writing about the fact that Martinez was gay or transgendered.

"Excuse me where is your compassion for this young man’s family," said one writer in a recent letter that can’t be published because it was unsigned. "I am sure there is a flaw in everyone and I am sure no one wants to bring it out in the open."

Curiously, there seems to be little criticism of the big papers for discussing Martinez’s sexuality. In a lengthy article in Saturday’s Denver Rocky Mountain News, a local woman castigated the Journal for mentioning the word "homosexual" five times in a story. Her comment came in the midst of an article that used the word "gay" throughout, described ad infinitum the fact that Martinez wore women’s clothes and makeup, and even managed to work in two uses of a very pejorative term for gays that we won’t even repeat.

But it’s the Journal that has drawn all the fire for calling attention to Martinez’s homosexuality — perhaps because we were the first to mention it, or perhaps just because we’re the hometown paper and more accessible.

Whatever the reason, we think the criticism is a little overboard.

In covering any murder, newspapers have to try to find a balance between showing sensitivity to grieving family members and reporting all pertinent facts in the case. Such facts naturally include the personality and background of the victim as well as possible motives for the killing. When someone who is gay is killed, concern inevitably arises about whether the murder might have been a hate crime.

Most critics, though, maintain that we should have refrained from any mention of his feminine side, even though police all along said it could have been a factor in his murder. At this point, we still don’t know that it was, and some persons believe we should have refrained from even mentioning the possibility until and unless the homicide was shown to have been a hate crime.

In an ideal world, perhaps, no one would speculate about possible motives behind a murder until the police made an arrest. The problem is, at the time a murder occurs, we don’t know when or even whether there will ever be an arrest. There was plenty of speculation — and still is — about the motives behind the horrifying events of May 29, 1998, when Cortez Patrol Officer Dale Claxton was gunned down and two other law officers were injured. Were the three alleged perpetrators trying to rob the Ute Mountain Casino? Were they planning to blow up Glen Canyon Dam? No one seems to be saying we should refrain from all speculation until the police have solved that case.

In the Martinez murder, though, speculation was touchier because it involved the issue of homosexuality. Strangely, many people who claim to believe there is nothing wrong with being gay nevertheless found it offensive that we wrote about Martinez’s gayness. Evidently they felt it should have been concealed from the public.

But Martinez didn’t keep this aspect of his personality secret. His family, friends, teachers and acquaintances knew he was gay or transgendered. He adopted a feminine appearance and liked to hang out with girls as though he were one of them. One of the photographs displayed at his funeral showed Martinez with a woman’s hairstyle, plucked eyebrows and makeup.

Even if it turns out that his murder was not related to his race or sexuality, we don’t regret having included such information about him in our articles, because it was an integral part of who he was. Just as we might state that a crime victim was a family man, we wrote that Martinez was gay.