Mark Reed and Dante Walkup of Dallas received a fair mount of media coverage during October when they worked around Texas’ ban on same-sex marriages.
They exchanged vows from a Dallas location while an officiant in Washington, D.C., where same-sex marriages are cool with district leaders, conducted the ceremony by way of teleconference. A clever work-around, and bingo, press coverage.
The couple is back in the news after a news outlet denied their request to publish a wedding announcement. Ironic, eh?
Reed-Walkup and Walkup, and that is not a law firm, tried to pay the Dallas Morning News to run a wedding announcement. Officials with the paper, citing the legal status — or rather illegal status — of same-sex marriages in Texas, said, no, no thanks but the announcement can run under the heading “Commitments.”
Reed-Walkup and Walkup said, no, no, we’re married and you’re discriminating, and they then filed a discrimination complaint against Dallas’ only daily citing “a 2002 city ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, and public accommodation,” according to the Dallas Voice. Wedding announcements in newspapers of record, they maintain, fall under the “public accommodations” category, and so the legal machinations begin.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Now they’ve managed to garner more attention for their union than likely could have been generated with a wedding announcement. Well played, Walkups, well played.
Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He still believes gay and lesbian couples should have the legal right to marry in Texas. Odds are, they’ll divorce anyway.
