The Washington Blade reports that the Baltimore Sun first declined to run the announcement of a lesbian “life commitment” ceremony between two local gay rights activists on its “Celebrations” page, and then ran finally ran it–in the classified ads. The exchange of e-mails between Ingrid Ackerson, who submitted the announcement, and the Baltimore Sun advertising staff is documented here.

The root of the problem is that the responsibility for the content of the announcements section of “Celebrations” was moved in 2002 from the Sun's news staff to the advertising department–and, in the process, the editorial policy decision in favor of running same-sex “union” announcements was thrown out. Apparently, the folks in advertising and marketing felt that a ghetto in the classified section was “separate but equal” enough for gays, who they would rather not have sully the otherwise very vanilla pages of the Sun.

The Sun is currently the monopoly daily newspaper in Baltimore; however, the Washington Post is apparently starting home delivery here. Perhaps there will be some changes in circulation as a result.