Posted on 09/30/2003 5:43:42 PM PDT by chance33_98
Wedded Bliss: Announcement Causes Stir
By Jill Burke Earlier this year Canada legalized Gay Marriage and today a local couple who traveled there to tie the knot, Dal and Al Carter-Incontro, ran their wedding announcement in the Anchorage Daily News. But not everyone sees it as cause for celebration; depending on who you ask it's either newsworthy, or simply a piece of someone's life worth noting but not worth all the fuss. When we asked people at the Northern Lights Post Office and City Market how they felt about the announcement, here are some of the responses we received:
"I don't like it all but they're shoving it down our throats anyway so there's not much you can do to stop it. It's the freedom of the press and the right to free speech."
"It's Long overdue. I'm very, very happy to see that. Very happy."
"The paper should have just thrown it in the trash." To that comment, one person we spoke with replied "I think that's ridiculous. That's being very judgmental. That's like back in the fifties when a black person couldn't marry a white person. They had the same reaction."
According to the ADN this is the first-ever same sex wedding announcement they've printed. Another first came a few years back when they printed the same couple's thirty-year anniversary announcement.
Editor Patrick Dougherty says as far as he knows the paper has never rejected a same sex wedding or anniversary announcement and says Dan Carter and Al Incontro, now the Carter-Incontros, are the first to make the request. The couple says they don't see this as a news story at all and that they are simply doing what other married couples do every day.
Treating them just like everyone else, Dougherty says, is why the paper stands behind its decision. Dougherty says prior to running either announcement newspaper staff discussed what would be an appropriate criteria for running, or not running, announcements. The conclusion, he says was that the criteria for printing anniversaries will be that a couple must have been together for a significant period of time like twenty five years or more, and for marriages that couples provide a valid marriage certificate from the location in which they were married.
Since the paper does not charge for wedding, anniversary or engagement announcements, Dougherty says they have journalistic value because they tell something about someone's life and community. The Carter-Incontro wedding announcement, he says, came from people within the Anchorage community and therefore should be treated the wedding announcement of any other couple.
BARF!!!!!!
Leni
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