Editor Censors Gay Man's Obituary
January 29, 2009
I picked up a copy of the new freebie community newspaper last night at the laundromat. They’ve decided to print the headlines in Arial Rounded MT Bold for some reason, but it was otherwise unobjectionable. Unobjectionable, that is, until I got to the obituaries.
The first one on the page had a picture of a relatively young guy. Turns out he was 50. As I read the family roll call I realized that he must’ve been gay. The list of survivors began with the sentence Jeffrey is survived by his friend, Ronald S. Ronald was followed by a listing of Jeffrey’s living brothers and sisters, who were followed by a listing of Ronald’s living family.
I thought that was sweet. Sweet that the obituary had been written to include both of their families, just as you see in many obituaries of straight married people. Sweet that Jeff and Ronald were comfortable enough with their homosexuality to do that so publicly in rural Ohio. It’s a real sign of progress. But something bothered me about it, and as my clothes hit the final spin cycle I figured out what it was.
Friend. Ronald was identified as Jeff’s friend. That’s not typical use even in a small town like this one, especially when you make it clear in the same paragraph that you consider each other’s family your family. An out and proud person generally doesn’t willingly downgrade his apparently long-term, committed relationship to friendship.
Later, I checked the funeral home’s website for the original version. It didn’t say friend. It said Jeff is survived by his partner, Ronald S.
I checked the websites of two other newspapers, one in the nearest city and one where Jeff had lived. Both used the word partner. Clearly someone at this little community newspaper made the change on his/her own. I sent an email requesting clarification on the change this morning, but I don’t expect to hear anything. 1
This is one more reason that civil marriage equality needs to happen. We need to be permitted to marry just like straight folks do and finally use the terms that they do.
It was easy for some small town editor to cross off the word partner and substitute it with friend. Would it be as simple or as accepted to cross off the word husband from a man’s life?
As a final insult, the reality of Jeff’s life was whitewashed even after he died. Presumably it was done for the comfort of people reading the obituary. But Ronald didn’t bury a friend last week. He buried his long-time companion, his lover, his partner.
His husband.
1 Less than an hour after publishing this post, I received the following response from the editor of the New Carlisle (Ohio) News:
Matt,
Thank you for contacting the New Carlisle News.
The editing of Jeffrey [redacted]‘s obituary was an editorial decision.
Dale Grimm
New Carlisle News
(Here’s a screencap of the email.)
Just so everybody’s clear, Mr. Grimm censored an obituary to hide the fact that the person who died was gay. Unbelievable. I find more than a little pathetic that Jeff’s pride and honesty in life was trampled immediately upon his death.
Dale Grimm, who also owns ISP KBAnet.com, can be contacted at 1-877-652-2638 or (937) 284-2715. Or if you prefer email, contact him through this contact form at NewCarlisleOhio.net or this one at his hosting business, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see that disappear again (like it did a few minutes ago). ⇧
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He buried his husband! You are right: words do matter.
The editor has now confirmed what I suspected. (See footnote above)
Even in death, they (in this case, Dale Grimm) try to erase us from existence. Unbelievable.
I have more to say about it, but right now it’s coming out all swears.
I contacted this man. Here is a copy of our communications. Judge for yourself.
I have a gay brother and a gay son; I would hate for either of them to have this happen to them.
Just be careful if you decide to reach out to him; he traced my ip address. (some info deleted for privacy purposes only)
—–Original Message—–
From: Mrs. Beth Peterson
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 12:30 PM
Subject: KBAnet Website Feedback
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted on Friday,
January 30th, 2009 at 12:29 PM.
Message : Dear Mr. Grimm,
I wanted to contact you regarding the recent editorializing of an obituary
of Mr.%********.
I understand that there may be a level of discomfort when confronting the
reality of this mans life. But that does not excuse changing the impression
or reality of his life by means of his last public statement – his obituary.
For a company that is so proud of their privacy policy as to print it on
every page, I am disappointed to discover your willingness to arbitrarily
change a simple word that means so much. This man did not lose his “friend”.
He lost his partner, his spouse.
I see nothing honorable or delicate in what is essentially censorship. On
the contrary, this single small action on your part displays a level of
hypocrisy you should be ashamed of.
I sincerely hope you will make a correction and honor this man and his
family for the final time now that he has passed.
My family and friends of Ohio can not agree with what you have done here.
From your about us page:
We believe in treating our customers the way we would like to be treated
ourselves.
If this is your example of the golden rule, you are misguided. My husband
and I try to teach our children to respect others even if they disagree with
them.
By altering this man’s obituary you have disrespected his life.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Beth Peterson
Beth,
Thanks for contacting us.
The idea that a man can consider another man his “spouse” is ludcrious. Had
the obituary come in identifying his daughter as his “spouse”, should I have
printed it that way? What if it had identified his dog as his “spouse”?
If you had cared so much about this individual as you imply in your e-mail,
why did you not encourage him to seek help for his problem? Homosexuality
is a demon that thousands of people have escaped.
We are not in the business of promoting sexual activity or political
agendas. We are a small town newspaper informing our community of events
that they will want to know about. We have the right to print what we wish
and to edit anything that we find objectionable.
Your IP shows you to be from New York, and this is not the e-mail address
publicized for comments to the New Carlisle News, so your e-mail must be
from some organized effort. Since you are not in the community that we
serve, your comments will carry no weight.
Dale Grimm
Sent: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 2:49 pm
Subject: RE: KBAnet Website Feedback
Dear Mr. Grimm,
Thank you for your reply.
I am now living in QQ not NY. I am from xxxxxxxx Ohio where my parents still live. I have family in and around xxxxxx. I stay on top of Ohio news as I had lived there so long and I have so many family and friends there. The link I used to contact you was from a news story, but I am certainly not from an organization.
While I used the term spouse to make a point the word submitted to you was partner. Which is not ludicrous. No one is asking you to promote any activity or agenda. Simply printing the obituary as submitted would have done neither. Altering the submission is promoting an agenda. If you personally believe homosexuality is a demon that is your prerogative. To have your beliefs influence your reporting is the definition of censorship.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Beth Peterson
When this man knows he’s not addressing someone gay he has no problem speaking his mind. I have since contacted people I know in Ohio. We’ll see what happens.
Thank you so much for following through on this, Beth! I have a few contacts out as well.
“We are not in the business of promoting sexual activity or political
agendas.”
Ugh. Why does this always come up. By this logic, if you identify a woman as a man’s wife in an obituary or elsewhere you are also implying and therefore “promoting” sexual activity.
Small town doesn’t always have to equal small minds, and yet . . .
“We are not in the business of promoting sexual activity or political
agendas.”
…except our anti-gay, bigoted and biased agenda to keep things as unequal as possible.
This is disgusting. Obits aren’t usually done for free. They charge per line, and his family should demand, and if not given sue for a reimbursement, as well as a retraction/correction.
Oh, I get it now. I was wondering about the disparity of the responses.
He knew Matt was gay and that you, Mrs. Peterson, were straight, so he didn’t have the guts to be forthright with Matt.
What a coward.
As a married woman there was no implied threat to his viewpoint. That’s precisely why I did not mention my son or my brother. Not that it should have mattered. But it does show that this man does not want to deal with the exposure of his true feelings and opinions.
A coward indeed.
I know ole’ Dale personally, and the funny thing to me is his so-called christian stance. This is the same guy who went behind a former employer’s back to support his own website. He’s hardly a Christian.
Editorial decision? Give me a break. More like a bigoted decision. The man is dead. The least they could do was show some respect. Apparently that was too much to ask.
Note: Disqus hasn't been able to recognize ten more comments on this post. I'm not sure why.
Here's a screencap of the comments taken with Disqus turned off.
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Note: Disqus hasn't been able to recognize ten more comments on this post. I'm not sure why.
Here's a screencap of the comments taken with Disqus turned off.
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