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Dallas Morning News includes gay couples in wedding pages
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Dallas Morning News includes gay couples in wedding pages
Dallas Morning News includes gay couples in wedding pages
The Dallas Morning News has begun publishing announcements of same-sex unions alongside paid marriage and engagement announcements in its Sunday editions. In doing so, the publication joins 205 other papers that publish same-sex union announcements, including 10 in Texas, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination. "The publication of same-sex union announcements is a logical step for The Dallas Morning News to take," said James Moroney III, the paper's publisher and CEO. "We are now in line with practices of most major metropolitan newspapers across the country." The paper's parent company, Belo Corp., began offering benefits to same-sex partners of Belo employees in January, and the new policy on union announcements is a natural progression, he said. The paper's criteria for publishing an announcement are that the ceremony takes place in public, and that somebody officiates. The New York Times's decision last August to begin publishing same-sex union announcements spurred many large papers to follow, according to GLAAD. At some papers, executives had argued that printing same-sex announcements was tantamount to taking a political stand, but GLAAD representatives responded that not running them was also taking a political stand. Pamela Strother, executive director of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, praised The Morning News's new policy. "It's fantastic that The Dallas Morning News has moved forward on this," she told the paper. "It shows that a newspaper in a region that might be seen as conservative is willing to step out on this."