Greg and Aurelio, who are marrying this weekend in Manchester, New Hampshire, where same-sex marriage became legal on January 1, are being denied a wedding announcement by the Union-Leader, New Hampshire's second-largest paper
Kate Parker writes: The wedding is this Saturday and I received a phone call from Greg yesterday letting me know that he tried to get their wedding announced in the Union Leader, since Greg was from the Manchester, NH area. He was told that they don’t allow gay weddings to be announced and he asked to talk to the editor. The editor simply told him it has been the “policy of the newspaper” and that as the editor, he has the write (sic) to print whatever he’d like. This immediately outraged me, as Greg and Aurelio are legally allowed to marry in NH, NH has anti-discrimination laws in place that include sexual orientation, but because of the 1st Amendment, they were out of luck.
This is where this story gets so much more upsetting, and I thank Greg and Aurelio for allowing me to share their situation:
Aurelio is in the process of becoming a US citizen. He has his social security number, and his driver’s license. Venezuela is a very conservative country and many citizens don’t support gay marriage or homosexuality in general. Actually, this fact is so true, that half of Aurelio’s family just discovered he was gay when we sent their wedding invitation to them last week. Because of this fact, Greg and Aurelio wanted to make their wedding as public as possible in the US in order to plead to a judge to allow him to stay in the US for fear of his safety from his countrymen should be return to Venezuela as an openly gay man.
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