New Hampshire’s Union Leader has long been known to have a somewhat conservative bias. They Endorsed John McCain in 2008 and in 2004 they endorsed Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary.
But that pales in comparison to this:
[Union Leader Editor] McQuaid said in a statement to WMUR the Union Leader, the largest newspaper in New Hampshire, is “not anti-gay,” but has a constitutional right to print or not print whatever it wants.
McQuaid continues:
“This newspaper has never published wedding or engagement announcements from homosexual couples. It would be hypocritical of us to do so, given our belief that marriage is and needs to remain a social and civil structure between men and women and our opposition to the recent state law legalizing gay marriage.”
Shorter McQuaid: we’re not anti-gay, but even if we were, it would be our right to be bigots, so screw you.
Paul Hodes, however, gets it right:
“The Union Leader’s disgraceful policy of exclusion harkens to a different time in this country when people were denied opportunity because of their race, religion and ethnic origin,” Hodes said in the letter.
The thing is, while technically the paper has the right to say whatever it likes, there is actual a question as to whether or not this is a constitutional right. They have the right to print or not print wedding announcements, but I think there’s a valid question here: if they, as a policy, print all wedding announcements without vetting them (I am not clear that this is the case, but it appears to me that it is, and their policy doesn’t seem to place any restrictions on this), it would seem to me that this is a public service, in which case it needs to be provided universally.
I’d like some input from lawyers on this: how do you view this case? While I fully support freedom of speech, I don’t see wedding announcements as a speech issue as much as I do see them as a public accommodations issue, in which case, refusing to include them sounds like it might fall afoul of anti-discrimination laws.
Obviously, this would be different if it were a paper that as policy, only included weddings from people from certain organizations. A Jewish or Catholic paper, for example, could be expected to provide wedding announcements specifically from Jewish o Catholic couples, and that seems like an acceptable policy, but a paper that doesn’t include specific organizations as part of its wedding policy? It seems to me that that paper has the legal obligation to print any wedding announcement which is legal and fits its announced timelines.
I don’t think we’ve encountered this problem in here in Vermont so far: no major paper that I know of has refused to include same-sex wedding announcements (when we got married we didn’t send any announcements out because we didn’t want people making a fuss, but everyone found out anyway).
Regardless of the constitutional issue, I do think it’s time to call for an active boycott of the Union Leader. What do our friends across the River think?
That’s an issue of discrimination rather than free speech.
No doubt it’s discrimination, but I’m not sure what legal grounds one has to pursue. I’d definitely go the boycott route.
…nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night, but I’d bet it’s discriminatory AND “legal.” It’s their paper & they can say what they want about whom they want to and pointedly ignore what they don’t want to recognize. I don’t think the First Amendment requires truth, fairness, or complete coverage. Activities aside from what they actually put in the paper may be subject to other kinds of laws, of course.
However, this is certainly an opportunity for lots of pressure to be put on the Union-Leader’s advertisers to exercise THEIR right not to pay for advertising in a stupid and bigoted rag. I’d love to see this happen, but I’m afraid that the U-L’s advertisers must already have very impenetrable skins when it comes to attitudes of prejudice and bias.
I’m afraid that the U-L’s advertisers must already have very impenetrable skins when it comes to attitudes of prejudice and bias.
That’s why an economic intervention can help.
My friend Spocko out in CA has done yeoman’s work on various hate outlets, capturing their bigoted commentary, forwarding it to advertisers, and mobilizing people to write them saying they will boycott their products. He’s gotten a lot of advertisers to take their money elsewhere.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
The question is, “Is that prohibited discrimination?”
There are lots of practices that constitute discrimination, like discounts for old people, that are not prohibited by law.
In this case we would need to look at New Hampshire law. With a little research I was able to find that New Hampshire’s public accommodations law does prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. What I don’t know is whether newspapers, or newspaper advertising, are covered by this prohibition. That would be a key question.