Dallas Morning News to Publish Same-Sex Wedding Announcements

The Dallas Morning News last week joined a growing number of newspapers around the country that publish same-sex wedding announcements.

Mark Reed-Walkup, who filed an anti-gay discrimination complaint against the paper with the city of Dallas in late December, and his partner Dante Walkup met with CEO Jim Moroney and Editor Bob Mong late last month to present the case for publishing the announcements. It was then the paper agreed to change its policy.

Moroney referred to the decision as "the right thing to do."

The paper has previously published same-sex marriage announcements under a separate header called Commitments. They will now be published under Weddings.

This move begged the question of whether other newspapers in Texas and around the country publish same-sex wedding announcements. A call to the Houston Chronicle revealed that that paper does publish such announcements. The Fort Worth Star Telegram, however does not. This broadsheet may soon be in the minority in both Texas and the nation.

A 2008 survey from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation reported that many newspapers around the state would publish these announcements, but many had yet to do so. Aaron McQuade, deputy director of news and field media for GLAAD, said decisions to begin publishing same-sex wedding announcements often happen under the radar. Sometimes there is an editorial staff or management change or the person at the paper who receives the announcement simply asks an editor if it can be published. The change can happen without fanfare.

McQuade added GLAAD has been working with the Dallas Morning News for quite some time on improving its overall coverage of LGBT issues. And on the particular topic of wedding announcements, he said the paper has made great strides.

"We are very happy to see the Dallas Morning News take a step dozens and dozens of other papers around the country have already taken, which is leading this change and recognizing that even though their state doesn't recognize marriage equality, other states do, and respecting that," said McQuade.

The landscape around marriage equality has certainly changed since 2008.

David A. Steinberg, national president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, said that there is no current data showing which newspapers do and don't publish same-sex wedding announcements. "I think it's great that the Dallas Morning News is publishing the announcements," he told EDGE. "As we have seen major publications such as the New York Times publishing these announcements, its' obvious there is no reason to treat the relationships of LGBT people any different from anyone else."

Iowa is among the handful of states in which gays and lesbians can legally tie the knot, but marriage for same-sex couples was not yet a reality in the Hawkeye State in 2008. According to GLAAD, the Des Moines Register had already been publishing same-sex wedding announcements prior to 2009. And a call to the paper this week confirmed as much.

GLAAD's 2008 list is sizeable, but it needs updating. McQuade said, however, he isn't sure if the number of papers publishing the announcements versus not publishing them has peaked.

"I don't know if it's a crest," he said. "Just last week we saw the Charlotte Observer print its first ever wedding announcement for a gay or lesbian couple. The list is bigger now than it was in 2008, and it was bigger in 2008 than it would have been if we had called in 2004, and it was bigger in 2004 than it was than when the New York Times published a same-sex wedding announcement in 2002. I'd say we're in the middle of a slowly moving wave that's moving in the right direction."

The Walkups wedding announcement is expected to be published in the Dallas Morning News on Sunday, July 10.