Attention, irresponsible media:

Allow me, if you will, a few hundred words with which to build a bridge between you and me.

Our similarities are numerous, if we really look for them.

We're Americans, for one thing, and though we're states apart in residence, we share a common national identity.

But you don't know me.

We're journalists, for another, people who ply their trade with the written word. If you're like me, when you write a particularly poignant or witty sentence, you can get high on life for the rest of the day. I write that with a smile, confident in assuming it because of our common backgrounds.

But I don't know for sure, because I don't know you. And you don't know me.

Yet this week, you made several assumptions about me.

A third thing we have in common, you and I, is a horror for the events that have unfolded in Littleton, Colo. People are dead; people are wounded; and a town -- and indeed, our nation -- will never be the same.

Perhaps our shared horror surprises you. I assume that, because I am a goth.

According to you -- and you wrote it like God's honest truth this week in columns and multiple articles read by hundreds of thousands of people -- I am a satanist because I am a goth.

Can you tell me how you know that?

You don't know me, after all, and yet you brand me evil. The bridge we are building grows shaky because of your erroneous assumptions. Please tell me why you think I'm a satanist.

I'm a goth, after all, and you've refused to know me.

Until the shootings in Littleton, you never made overtures to me. You didn't start building this shaky bridge from your side of the span. Indeed, until a couple tormented misfits who happened to dress in black snapped, you chose to ignore me, and others just like me.

I'm sure you saw us. Black-clad, and hidden behind ghoulish makeup, we're everywhere. Much like the cockroaches you see us as. Or scorpions, really, with the devilish stings you think we have.

Maybe you didn't beat me from the time I was little, or those who rotely stand for me in your home town. Maybe you didn't throw rocks and bottles at me. Maybe you didn't call me "faggot" or "freak" or "scum" or "druggie" or "psycho."

But you thought it, didn't you?

If you didn't, you never would have told the world that I, as a goth, am a satanist; that I, as a goth, am evil; that I, as a goth, am a Nazi who hates minorities.

You could have asked me, I suppose -- maybe even put your question in one of the beer bottles you threw at me as you drove by me on the street.

But you wouldn't waste trash on a satanist, now would you?

Would it surprise you to know that I am a professional with a college degree, or that many of the other black-clad, so-called "satanists" who look like me are too? Would it surprise you if I told you that I am a volunteer counselor in my spare time and that others just like me volunteer nationwide to help the isadvantaged? Would it surprise you to know that I speak to children's homes and community groups to increase community awareness of the dangers and effects of sexual assault in our society?

I imagine it would, because you don't know me.

I blush. We goths aren't good at being satanists, are we?

Would it surprise you to learn that even though the gunmen in Littleton appreciated some gothic and industrial music, they weren't goth and don't represent goths at all?

Would it surprise you to learn that gothic and industrial music isn't satanic, and that, indeed, there are Christian gothic and Christian industrial bands?

Would it surprise you to learn that goth is about art and music and literature and beauty and, above all, acceptance of people for who they are? Would it surprise you to learn that gothic culture embraces all ethnic groups?

It doesn't have to surprise you, because you can know me, and others like me. I'm building a bridge to you.

Please stop seeking scapegoats. Your erroneous stories have led to many innocent goths getting assaulted by brutes who see us not as individuals but as a group of people who are easy to hate.

And you dare link us to Nazis.

Even as I build this bridge to you, I am bruised by your ignorance.

Todd Foltz

Todd Foltz was goth when goth was really goth. A long time ago when the Cure was green.