It staggers the imagination that a newspaper would do this. But – briefly until the outcry was too great – PennLive/The Patriot News of Harrisburg Pennsylvania, took this stand (and what you are about to read is the paper\’s words, not mine):
“As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage”
This is a NEWSPAPER?
Did the editorial board of this “newspaper” refuse to print op-Eds and letters to the editor in favor of gay marriage until this decision? Does it also reject op-eds and letters to the editor on all other positions the Supreme Court has not ruled in favor of?
If you censor an opinion page so that it provides only reinforcement of what the editorial board thinks, you are not publishing a legitimate newspaper….unless you consider the North Korean press legitimate, that is.
Not surprisingly – at least not to me (though this may not be true of the geniuses who run PennLive/The Patriot News) – its proud declaration of censorship resulted in an angry, negative reaction from a good many people in the area it covers.
So the paper hurriedly put out this revised policy:
“In the more than four decades since, a union that was viewed as unnatural and even a hideous provocation to violence is now commonplace and celebrated. On Friday, the United States crossed a similar threshold, continuing a long road to acceptance of same-sex unions. And this news organization now crosses another threshold. As a result of Friday\’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.”
In other words, maybe we\’ll allow you to see a dissenting opinion every now and again…completely on our terms, of course.
That\’s supposed to be better? That\’s supposed to show PennLive/The Patriot News values an exchange of ideas?
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I favor the right to same-sex marriage. But I do not in any way favor shutting up people who feel differently. A newspaper which shuts down opinions other than its own is not a newspaper.
With that in mind, I offer my congratulations to PennLive/The Patriot News on its new status.
