Posted on 07/06/2003 6:38:29 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Same-sex unions in 'News'Announcements are a 'logical step,' says publisher
07/06/2003
Starting July 6, The Dallas Morning News will publish announcements of same-sex unions. The announcements will run alongside paid marriage and engagement announcements on Sundays.
"The publication of same-sex union announcements is a logical step for The Dallas Morning News to take," says James Moroney III, the paper's publisher and CEO. "We are now in line with practices of most major metropolitan newspapers across the country.
"We convened a meeting of representatives from the Cathedral of Hope as well as four other men and women from various businesses in order to represent a good cross-section of Dallas' gay community," he says.
The paper's parent company, Belo Corp., began offering benefits to same-sex partners of Belo employees in January, and the new policy on union announcements is a natural progression, he says.
Heather Jace of Melissa and her partner, Jandy Jace, are one of the couples running announcements in today's paper.
"We're real happy," says Heather Jace, 25, an office manager. "We want people to know, 'Hey, we're just like you. We've got a house, we've got a job, we have pets, we pay bills.' "
The couple had a small commitment ceremony in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on June 9, followed by a reception when they returned home. She says she isn't worried about any sort of backlash from the announcement. "I would like to think the community is mature enough to accept it and embrace it," she says.
Vanessa Benavides and Amy Davis, two Dallas attorneys who had a black-tie commitment ceremony in Dallas on June 14, are also buying an announcement. The couple also got married in Canada on June 23, and Ms. Davis took the name Benavides.
"I think it's important to let the community know that we go together, that we have made this commitment," says Vanessa Benavides, 28.
"I think that's the importance of marriages – to have witnesses to know that we've made this commitment together."
The paper's criteria for publishing an announcement are that the ceremony takes place in public, and that somebody officiates.
A two-inch announcement is free, while photos or longer announcements are charged according to size.
The Dallas Morning News joins 205 other papers that publish same-sex union announcements, including 10 in Texas, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, or GLAAD.
"I'm so happy and so glad to hear this," says Monica Taher, people of color media director for GLAAD.
She worked last year on the group's project to get additional papers to publish same-sex union announcements.
The New York Times' decision last August to begin publishing same-sex union announcements was a watershed, she says.
Since then, many more papers have begun publishing such announcements, she says.
At some papers, executives had argued that printing same-sex announcements was tantamount to taking a political stand, but GLAAD representatives responded that not running them was also taking a political stand, she says.
Pamela Strother, executive director of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, also praised The Morning News' new policy.
"It's fantastic that The Dallas Morning News has moved forward on this," she says.
"It shows that a newspaper in a region that might be seen as conservative is willing to step out on this."
NLGJA leaders have also been meeting with newspaper executives, including The New York Times' publisher, says Robert Dodge, last year's president and a writer in The Dallas Morning News' Washington bureau.
"Our work was journalist to journalist, colleague to colleague, behind the scenes," he says.
E-mail amckenzie@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/texasliving/stories/070603dnlivsamesex.a86e9.html
The only place that ANY OF US have any right to control what is said, heard or seen is our own homes (or property).
My impression of you from everything I have seen in your posts is that you go from thread to thread hurling insults at reasonable people without offering "reasonable" replies
And My impression of you is a repressed fundie obsessed with the sex lives of others, who runs from thread to thread trying to stir up hatred against 'faggots'.
You wouldn't know REASON if it hit you upside the head.
Where do you get the idea that you can stop people from kissing in public?
Let's start with THAT if you want to reason. Or better yet, respond ON POINT to #55. Demonstrate a source for the rights you claim to have. (And what you call rights is merely the right to control others and force them to obey you.)
Did they intend for heterosexual sodomy to be covered in that exclusion?
Referencing that article at your link, I took the liberty to fire off a note to The Dallas Morning News to the address at the bottom of that article:
Subject: Gay Policy at The Dallas Morning NewsSo let me see if I have this 'straight' now. In the article referenced below [your link], the new Dallas Morning News policy is that you will give Gay Unions (which are NOT recognized in the state of Texas) FREE space to announce their same-sex unions. And at the same time, you have chosen to discontinue accepting paid advertising for Gentlemen's Clubs (heterosexual oriented and legal establishments). It would appear to me that The Dallas Morning News has officially come OUT of the closet. If I subscribed to your publication, I would cancel immediately.
Five were enough to impose her agenda on America.
Here we are, thousands of years and billions of people down the road of time and relationships and we still go about our nighttime activities the same way as we did in the caves.
It's time to change all that, after all, coitus is too draining to be sustained for more than a few minutes at a time a few times a day and there is so much more time to fill.
Why not be gay? Romp and frolic, kiss and fondle, tease and heckle, stand on one foot, spin about and throw your hands in the air; it is such a wonderful time to be alive.
Let's all wear lipstick and paint our faces pretty pink, festoon our soft body parts with shiny rings and silvery studs, wash our hair in purple cabbage soup and rinse with purified lemon-yellow essence.
And celebrate the sheer joy of breathing, while we can.
That's exactly what I thought when I read this article. The liberal Chronic-Ill will want in on this action and I'll cancel my subscription if they do it. Gag me.
That Jesse Dirkhising case was mentioned in comments by at least one Freeper in that link.
I used to smoke. Don't follow you though.
Wrong again. 9th and 10th Amendments. If a power is not explicitly listed as beloning to the Feds, it belongs to the states or the people.
For you to be right there'd have to be a "The people do not have a right to privacy" clause in the Constitution.
Not so. Your misinterpretation of those amendments puts the Feds in charge of ajudication between which implied rights trumps which, the "people's" or the "states". When you get into that game, the Feds can make up all the "implied rights" the want, "balance" them the way they want, and thus they all become useless.
What will happen then is that "compelling state interest" will cause them to say that the state's rights triumph in "hate crimes" and "affirmative action" et al....., but that the "people's rights" trump any effort to regulate destructive sexual misbehavior....or whatever else is in vouge with the elites at that moment.
All that misintepretation does is give all power to the Feds. What the ammendment actaully means is that there are other areas that the FEDS can't trample the people's rights, and there are other areas the FEDS can't trample the statet's rights.
In other words, maybe the FEDS can't violate your implied "right to privacy", but the feds have no business preventing the implied right of a state to make its own laws in regard to sexual misconduct in the name of protecting an individuals "right to privacy". The only places where the Fed can step in against a state are in the areas where the Constitution guarantees an INDIVIDUAL something- like due process.
IN all other areas THE STATES have implied rights against the FEDS, and the individual PEOPLE have implied rights against the FEDS, but the Feds should never, never, never, be allowed, as they are doing, to use the implied rights of one group against the "implied rights" of the other group to destroy the implied and stated rights of BOTH.
Ok. Now cite for me the Texas law on record denying its citizens a right to privacy.
Worse than that, it is Tyrany of the Minority mascarading under cloaks of Liberty, Equality, Freedom, the Pursuit of Happiness, or any other cover that is available.
Rush, The Trees
There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.
The trouble with the maples,
And they're quite convinced the're right.
They say the oaks are just too lofty,
And they grab up all the light.
But the oaks can"t help their feelings.
If they like the way they"re made.
And they wonder why the maples.
Can"t be happy in their shade?
There is trouble in the Forest.
And the creatures all have fled
As the Maples scream "Oppression!"
And the Oaks just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union,
And demanded equal rights.
"The oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light."
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
WELL DONE!! (Applauding your entire post.)
You said it all and you said it well. :)
Perhaps nobody has a legal right to not be offended, but entire societies have fallen when too many members have been.
Some of us wonder just exactly what the motives are of those who make this new-found liberty to be gay their crusade.
Then stay away from conservative websites if you don't want to be offended by "Fundies."
This is not a right you have.
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