This kind of reaction is bullshizz!!
There's a newspaper in Mississippi, right? It does what newspapers are supposed to do: it reports the news. This especially includes stories that are historic, whether you like them or not. Even if you slap a negative connotation on the county's first gay marriage, it is historic regardless!
That's something a lot of the paper's readers didn't understand when they lost their shizz and decided to throw a hissy fit over the front page story, claiming it was putting their youth in danger. GIVE US A BREAK.
On Feb. 7, the Laurel Leader-Call published a story with the headline Historic Wedding: Women Wed in Laurel Through Smiles, Tears. The article was about the wedding of Jessica Powell and Crystal Craven, and how they were the first gay couple to get married in the county, and that Crystal has been battling brain cancer. How is that not a heartwarming story, if not heartbreaking, with the news of this brave woman's brain cancer??
Ignoring that fact (and all facts, really), residents in the county were OUTRAGED that the newspaper would run such a story! Awful and mean calls and emails were directed to the newspaper's offices, and subscription cancellations came like a tidal wave. Their Facebook page was on fire with countless hateful comments! WTF!
So the paper's owner stepped in and got everyone nice and quiet before he told them to eat it!
Here's some of what he said:
"I took the bulk of the irate phone calls from people who called the paper to complain. Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the headline, "Historic Wedding," and the fact that we chose to put the story on the front page. My answer to the "Historic Wedding" headline is pretty simple. You don't have like something for it to be historic.
The holocaust, bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Black Sox scandal are all historic. I'm in no way comparing the downtown wedding of two females to any of those events (even though some of you made it quite clear that you think gay marriage is much worse).
We have stories about child molesters, murders and all kinds of vicious, barbaric acts of evil committed by heinous criminals on our front page and yet we never receive a call from anyone saying 'I don't need my children reading this.' Never. Ever. However, a story about two women exchanging marriage vows and we get swamped with people worried about their children."
We doubt that every single person in the county had an issue with this — and we suspect a lot of good and tolerant people live there. We also bet there are at least a few people from the LGBT community who live there that were inspired by this story!
For all the other people out there that either have the wrong impression or just have plain hatred in their hearts: it's time to learn a thing or two about love and humanity, before you lose yourselves in fighting something that has no negative effect on you, your community, or those around you!
Love is love!! Bravo, Laurel Leader-Call, and a warm congrats to Jessica and Crystal!!
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