Actually no, Nick. Why, why would they have to “draw the line somewhere”? This is not a free service they are providing. According to their form:
http://marketplace.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=10300&frm_id=3

“A Wedding Essentials consultant will contact you to help design your personalized announcement with this information.
Wedding announcements are charged by the inch with a 2 inch minimum.”

Their generic form(Use this form to announce a milestone Birthday, Graduation, Retirement or event.) has similar language:
http://marketplace.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=10300&frm_id=5

“PAYMENTS: All ads must be prepaid. Please give a number where you may be reached during the day. The announcement must be confirmed and paid for before the deadline (described above) or the announcement will not appear in the newspaper. All changes and corrections must be made prior to the deadline (described above).”

Nowhere on the wedding announcement form do they ask for any legal information, license number, anything with which they could verify someone’s marriage. In fact they explicitly state “PLEASE COMPLETE AND SUBMIT ONLY THE INFORMATION WHICH YOU DESIRE TO HAVE PUBLISHED.”

The generic “celebrations form” just has a box for you to fill in the “Type of Celebration”. I don’t see why “Commitment Ceremony” would be out of bounds.

You are providing factually incorrect information. They data you are providing is not about “fatherless homes” but is rather about single parents.

The cumulative data shows that two parent homes do remarkably better than single parent homes, on average, but that there is not discernible benefit to having the two parents be of different sexes.

And, incidentally, your cut and paste posting seems to be wildly inaccurate. For example, there does not appear to be a “National Principals Association” and the NASSP website does not provide any “Report on the State of High Schools”.

Have you ever heard of Alan Chambers? ;)

Whenever one spouse is gay and the other is straight, there is a cause for invalidation. I can think of half a dozen examples:

Immigration assumes fraud. The IRS can claim fraud. Heirs can get inheritance reversed. Divorce court assumes fraud. Even the Catholic Church will give an annulment because of fraud. And society in general – your Aunt Millie and the girls in her bingo group – all consider it to be invalid.

When you think about it, there is no one at all who thinks such a marriage is “real”.

Are they requiring copies of Marriage Certificates? I’ll bet they do not require them for Straights. Are they posting Engagements too?…or just Proven Weddings after-the-fact?

Good point. Are they asking the heterosexuals to prove that they are getting legally married? Are they asking about whether previous divorces are final, whether a license has been purchased, or any questions at all?

Or is it only when it’s a same-sex couple that any questions come up about legality?

The World Herald has announced that it will publish announcements related to marriages that are legal in the jurisdiction where they are performed–not necessarily where the couple lives. In other words, they will publish marriage notices for gay couples who marry in Iowa (or Massachusetts, DC, etc), even if they live in Nebraska.

Given all that, why is it such a big deal in your mind they don’t want to extend their marriage announcements to other types of commitments? I think they can reasonably argue that they have to draw a line somewhere. Since legal marriage is available in their region to all couples, gay or straight, they can draw the line without discriminating against gay couples.

I feel a little personal connection with all this. For one thing, my partner is from Omaha. But even more important to me–close to 100 years ago, my own grandparents crossed the border from Omaha to Council Bluffs, Iowa to get married. They couldn’t legally marry in Nebraska, because he was Japanese, and she was Spanish. Nebraska prohibited interracial marriage between Asians and Europeans.
So they were very much in the same position as gay couples today.

Of interest for this discussion: an Omaha newspaper DID publish a notice of my grandparents’ marriage–which led to the two of them being fired by their employer, who disapproved.

It’s useful to remember that the OWH is a middle-of-the-road newspaper that serves a lot of very conservative people. I understand why they would want to steer clear of any position that looks like “advocacy”. In the context of the people they serve, this seems like a sensible compromise, and given the physical proximity of the city to Iowa, the barrier they’re creating is relatively trivial, and it’s one that most couples would want to transcend anyway.

I can see why one might have some disagreement with their position and would prefer a more open policy. I probably would prefer a more open policy myself. What I can’t see is the kind of hyperventilation about likeness to “literacy tests” and the unjustified amount of heat that their decision has provoked.

Didn’t Renee Zellweger ennull her marriage to Kenny Chesney with an accusation of “Fraud” (meaning you better give-in because you’re a fag)?

and Dan L,

“Unreasonability” is not the issue here. The policy was clearly enacted as an affront to Gays.

Hope Iowans are posting their weddings.

Does the paper publish Legal Anniversaries? Mine is coming up in October. How would they know? Are they requiring copies of Marriage Certificates? I’ll bet they do not require them for Straights. Are they posting Engagements too?…or just Proven Weddings after-the-fact?

Do they have online access?