Petrelis Files

36 QUEER COUPLES HITCHED IN SAN FRANCISCO, ZERO NOTICES IN THE B.A.R.

Rev. Mayor Willie Brown, acting like Rev. Sun Myong Moon, staged his annual mass registration of queer domestic partners this week, and it generated a fair amount of media attention. You may recall that Moon once rented Madison Square Garden and married thousands of his followers in one night. Anyway, I saw stories on the local TV about Brown's event, and the current BAR has a photo about the ceremony conducted on Tuesday at City Hall. The caption says 36 couples participated in the event.

But there isn't one announcement from any of the couples in the BAR. This paper, which only started a free section for commitment ceremony notices _after_ the NY Times amended its editorial policies to allow such notices to appear in the Grey Lady, doesn't have a single notice about any of the 36 couples who got hitched this week.

Why wouldn't any of them want a public notice to appear in their predominant local gay rag?

I believe there have been a maximum of five commitment notices in the BAR since they added this feature. One of them was from Jerry Threat and his partner, along with a photo of the couple.

In its announcement about the notices, the BAR asked readers to include a goodly amount of info about themselves, their backgrounds, their careers, their ceremonies, and real push was made by the paper who get this feature up and running. The list of guidelines practically demanded social security numbers and your mother's maiden name, it was so long.

(I recall at least one letter to the paper bemoaning how much data they wanted.)

And scant few, if any, gay wedding notices have appeared in the BAR for the last three to four months. If I'm wrong on this point, I'm sure BAR news editor Cynthia "Laird," the lurker, will correct me by making a legal threat.

The paper over this time began a series of its own ads, trying to drum up interest and get folks to send in their notices. The ads were running on page two, and were illustrated with a montage of muscular leather men letting it all hang out at own of the local leather streets fairs. Some of the faces of the hunks had images of either George Clooney or George W. Bush superimposed over their faces. No one women were in the ads.

"How can we send you a wedding present if we don't about you and your beloved getting married?" read the copy.

Well, it's kind of like you're asking folks to send in notices about their latest tricks from a leather festival, and you're making fun of gay commitment ceremonies and those who choose to have them by slapping Clooney and Bush's mug shots over photos in the ad! Who want to endorse and participate in the BAR mockery of queer marriages?

If the BAR can't convince one queer couple, out of 36, to send in info about their commitment this past week, it does say something wrong about how some people in the community feel about the paper. Namely, that it ain't worth trying to get a free public notice about your ceremony and relationship in this offensive rag, that is edited by a liar from the East Bay.