GALA Media

'Kansas City Star' Publishes Its First Same-sex Marriage Announcement

By E&P Staff

Published: July 06, 2009 12:09 PM ET

NEW YORK The Kansas City Star ended almost two months of controversy by publishing the marriage announcement of a same-sex couple this past weekend. In Sunday\'s "Celebrations" section, the Star ran the wedding announcement of Michael and Charles Hewitt, a gay couple from Missouri who were married in Iowa on May 17.

Originally, the couple tried to place announcements in both the Star and their local paper, the Independence Examiner. Both papers refused to print the ads, but the Examiner ran the announcement online for a week before pulling it and refunding the Hewitts\' money.

According to the Hewitts, they were told that the Examiner would not recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions. "We were sad that we couldn\'t just go and put our happy announcement in the local paper," Chuck Hewitt told The Pitch, a Kansas City-based Web site, at the time. "That just surprised us more than anything."

On June 3, the Star\'s reader representative Derek Donovan announced that the policy regarding marriage announcements would be changed. In Sunday\'s newspaper, Donovan addressed the controversy to readers.

"\'Celebrations\' notices are paid classified advertising, and I can’t see why The Star shouldn’t accept ads such as this," Donovan wrote. "The one objection I’ve heard — that Missouri and Kansas don’t recognize the marriages — doesn’t really work for me. After all, the section also runs announcements of engagements, anniversaries, birthdays and other commemorations that aren’t legally sanctioned or binding.

"As ever more gay people open up about their lives, everyone begins to recognize those same people among family, friends and neighbors. Newspapers reflect the world around them, and there’s no reason for them to refuse an ad that simply states an objective fact. My experience tells me most readers agree."

According to Donovan, readers of the Star approved of the policy change by roughly a 3-to-1 margin.

Read the original article here.