- Mark Reed-Walkup, left, and Dante Walkup
After filing a discrimination complaint against The Dallas Morning News for refusing to publish their marriage announcement under “Weddings,” a local gay couple reports that they received a $1,034 bill in the mail for the unpublished ad.
Mark Reed-Walkup, who filed the discrimination complaint against The DMN after marrying his partner Dante Walkup in Washington, D.C., says he wrote the following to James Moroney III, publisher and CEO of the newspaper:
“Does the DMN always send out invoices to ‘customers’ who placed an ad online but it was never published due to the paper’s discriminatory policies? We just received an invoice today for our December ad that you banned from your paper because our wedding wasn’t ‘really’ a wedding in your eyes. Unbelievable.”
Reed-Walkup says Moroney responded as follows:
“Not a good practice. I’ll take up with sales. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.”
Reed-Walkup also notes that more than 8,000 people have signed a petition launched by Change.org calling on The DMN to publish same-sex marriage announcements under Weddings. He’s hoping to get the petition up to 10,000 signatures.
As for the complaint filed against The DMN, the director of the Fair Housing Office told Instant Tea recently that the city was still in the process of reviewing it. The Fair Housing Office investigates discrimination complaints filed under a 2002 ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations. Reed-Walkup maintains that Wedding announcements are a public accommodation.
Yet another reason to abandon the Dallas Morning Snooze. The last Dallas daily lost touch with the city years ago and has been declining since. Though I would hate to see Dallas without a newspaper, perhaps none would be better than the DMN.
What does Moroney mean? “Not a good practice. I’ll take up with sales…” Marriage equality is not a good practice? Texas sucks. Fly over it.