Apparently, the Washington Post printed the following photograph of Jeremy Ames and Taka Ariga kissing on the front-page of their paper last Thursday where it wound up on unsuspecting Washingtonian’s breakfast tables. Hopefully, you saw our own TerranceDC’s coverage of the event. He and his partner were 12th in line at the Moultrie courthouse to sign up for a marriage license.
Apparently, homophobic outrage at seeing the front-page picture was sufficient to cause enraged letters and cancellations all the way through this Monday. It even warranted a pitch-perfect response from the ombudsman.
Did the Post go too far? Of course not. The photo deserved to be in newspaper and on its Web site, and it warranted front-page display.
News photos capture reality. And the prominent display reflects the historic significance of what was occurring. The recent D.C. Council decision to approve same-sex marriage was the culmination of a decades-long gay rights fight for equality. Same-sex marriage is now legal in the District. The photo of Ames and Ariga kissing simply showed joy that would be exhibited by any couple planning to wed – especially a couple who previously had been denied the legal right to marry.
There was a time, after court-ordered integration, when readers complained about front-page photos of blacks mixing with whites. Today, photo images of same-sex couples capture the same reality of societal change.
Looking over some of the responses, I couldn’t help thinking to myself how nauseating it is to look from my morning oatmeal to the Post’s opinion page where I am subjected to the wisdom of Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson, George Will, William Kristol, Fred Hiatt, Richard Cohen, David Broder, Marc Theissen, Kathleen Parker, Robert Kagan, Ruth Marcus, and Dana Milbank, among others. Where is the outpouring of rage over those idiots’ collective output of dishonest hackery and drivel?
