Apparently, even if you get legally married, and your State Supreme Court declares that you are, indeed, legally married, it doesn't matter to some states, or at least some cities and their newspapers.
The Associated Press is reporting today that The Spectrum newspaper in St. George, Utah, rejected a wedding announcement for a gay couple who were legally married in California on June 17, 2008.
Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones wanted their wedding announced prior to a family event in St. George next week. Both Barrick and Jones are from Utah, with Jones being from St. George, and both were raised in the Mormon Church.
Originally, a clerk at The Spectrum accepted the wedding announcement, as well as payment.
Donnie Welch, publisher of The Spectrum, rejected the annoucement, stating that the newspaper's policy is "to publish announcements only for marriages legal under Utah law.
Spencer Jones, an attorney, stated in an email to the publisher that their "marriage is just as real and legal and entitled to celebration as any of the others that are announced each week in the pages of The Spectrum." Welch objected: "This simply is not true. While that may be the case in some states it is not the case in the state of Utah. As our policy is to run marriage announcements recognized by Utah law, I have made the decision not to run the announcement."
Interestingly, the clerk who took the announcement information and credit card number "never disclosed such a policy" and later told Jones that "it was a new policy she had not known."
As with inter-faith marriages and inter-racial marriages which were illegal in many states at one time, we need the United States Supreme Court to put an end to the senselessness of newspapers like The Spectrum and outdated, intolerant thinking like that of Utah and Donnie Welch.
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