Today's blog is about this news story.
Gay guy mad newspaper doesn't put his name in FREE obit
Terrence James' gay partner died, he had the funeral home submit a FREE obituary to his local paper. His name was omitted because of a policy that doesn't list unmarried partners in free obits, whether they be the boyfriend of a girl or the boyfriend of a boy.
Now he's claiming discrimination and another newspaper is getting calls from a bunch of "tolerance" groups.
The Batesville Daily Guard is a family owned paper with less than 9,000 subscribers and if they're anything like every other smalltown USA paper, they're Obit policy was set before the invention of the Gay Rights Lobby.
Now that doesn't excuse them from being behind the times, but it does excuse them from discrimination and here's why.
This policy is applied to all people regardless of orientation. It is not the paper's fault that gays cannot be marries in Arkansas.
And my second point is this guy can shut up, and so can everyone else who uses free obituaries. They are FREE. Most newspapers that still have free obits are trying to do you a favor.
They're using ink and space on each edition during a time when they're struggling to keep profitable.
In a paid obit, you can have whatever you want. You can put your boyfriend's second cousin's goldfish in there if you want. You can have a list of all your jobs. You buy it, it's yours.
But when a newspaper gives you a freebie and you local funeral home doesn't explain the policy to you, that's not discrimination. It's a failure to communicate.
Maybe the paper should consider updating it's policy, but a newspaper isn't a government service, it's a private company. It can do what it wants.
I sympathise with the guy, since, if it's a small town, that may be the only outlet to get the information he wants to his neighbors.
ReplyDeleteBut still, I agree. Legally, the paper has the right to publish info however they choose. And from the way this sounds, it does not qualify as descrimination.
Sometimes I wonder if cases like these get started, not because of the plain fact, but some little personal detail. Like the editor on the phone was extra rude to him or something. Doesn't change anything of course, but I think a large swath of the population doesn't understand the difference between what's legally actionable and what isn't.