Two small town papers in Iowa and Texas
published what appear to be fake lesbian wedding announcements.
Le Mars, Iowa's Le Mars Daily
Sentinel announced the upcoming nuptials of Le Mars' own Candace
Leigh Collins to Maria Ava Johns in Massachusetts. The women, the
announcement explained, met while attending Texas State University.
Gawker.com
reported that a separate engagement announcement using the same photo
ran the same day in San Marcos, Texas. In this announcement, Collins
is from Austin and engaged to Andrea Kathleen Kaufman.
The photo used in the engagements is a
composite of two high school students: Melanie from Ann Arbor,
Michigan and Jamie from Pensacola, Florida.
A representative from the Roxbury,
Massachusetts church were the brides were to marry confirmed that the
engagement was fake. “We do not know these people,” Crystal
Tullos emailed Gawker.
“Why would someone bother to invent
fake lesbian wedding announcements?” Gawker asked. “Is someone
testing the same-sex marriage policies of small-town publications and
these are the only two that were published? Or is this just the work
of a dirty pervert?”