Wedding Pride, News
Corporation's glossy devoted to gay and lesbian weddings, has been
described as “flawed” by gay rights proponents.
Wedding Pride: The Magazine for Gay
and Lesbian Wedding Planning is published by CNG Publications, a
unit of New York-based Community Newspaper Group, which is owned by
News Corporation, the parent company of the right-leaning cabler Fox
News.
Equality
Matters' Carlos Maza criticized several articles published in the
glossy's premiere
issue.
In Planning Your Big Gay Wedding,
the author writes: “Now that same-sex marriage is legal, you're
anxious to say, 'I do' – but planning your wedding means redefining
a process that has been set in stone for thousands of years.”
“[R]eferring to marriage equality as
a 'redefinition' is a tactic frequently used by anti-gay groups and
activists to gin up fears about the consequences of allowing gay
couples to marry,” Maza wrote.
In a second story, the author – a
self-described heterosexual – uses the word “homosexuals” to
describe recently married gay couples.
“Listen here, homosexuals – we know
you've been having plenty of great sex for years, and you don't need
this hetero (no matter how 'gifted' I am) to give you pointers. But
wedding night is a whole different ball game. And you need to be
ready to hit a grand slam,” Gersh Kuntzman wrote in his column
Parting Gift.
The word “homosexual,” Maza notes,
“carries some serious anti-gay baggage.”
“It's possible that Kuntzman was
using the term 'homosexuals' to be facetious, but the magazine uses
the word in four other instances in two other articles.”
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation also
owns the New York Post. The
tabloid opposed passage of the law which made New York the sixth
state to legalize gay marriage in June.
And Fox News has been criticized for
its coverage of the law's start in July. According
to Equality Matters, MSNBC devoted six full segments to the
topic, CNN ten and Fox News zero.