The following column was published in the April 11 edition of the Purcellville Gazette after the editor, Kim Weber, was warned that it was riddled with known defamatory falsehoods and endangered a child. Ms. Weber was offered assistance and education by two different individuals in the community with expertise in this area, and failed to respond to those offers. The email from Equality Loudoun is reproduced below.
After being contacted by the child’s family’s attorney and others, Ms. Weber pulled the column from the Purcellville Gazette website. However, the same personally identifying information (redacted here) appears in the print edition of the paper, now distributed all over western Loudoun.
The column was also published earlier on a local political blog, “The Bull Elephant,” by Republican activist Jeanine Martin. It was sent to her by Delegate David LaRock (and initially attributed to him). We do not link to it here because it also contains the personal information endangering the child. The comments to that blog post follow at the end.
The removal of the online article by Ms. Weber constitutes acknowledgement of her poor judgment in publishing it. Unfortunately, she is unable to retract the print edition that has been distributed to, by the Gazette’s own estimation, “over 40,000 readers.” Other measures will be required to address the damage done by this entirely avoidable error in judgment.
Contact information:
Publisher & Editor-In-Chief: Kim Pregartner-Weber
Editor@PurcellvilleGazette.com.
Phone: 540.431.8507
Mailing Address:
PO Box 65
Purcellville, VA 20134
Physical Address:
130 North 21st Street
Purcellville, VA 20132
First up: Oral arguments in 
A funny thing happened when those who find marriage equality so upsetting started loudly complaining about alleged violations of their religious freedom: People whose religious freedom actually is being violated stepped forward.
Update: As expected, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has filed a
Yes, Virginia, Marriage is a Fundamental Right
On November 7, 2006, Virginia voters were presented with the choice to add an amendment to our state constitution. This amendment would not only prohibit civil marriage between two people of the same sex – which had already been banned legislatively several times over – but would also ban any other “union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage,” or which “intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.” This expansive language gave Virginia the dubious honor of having adopted the most extreme so-called “marriage amendment” in the nation.
In a decision announced Monday, The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that prohibition unconstitutional, joining an unbroken series of rulings affirming marriage as a fundamental right that cannot be denied because of gender.
At the time of the amendment’s passage (it was approved by 57 percent of voters), I was told jubilantly by a local supporter that it would “protect” his model of marriage in Virginia “for at least a decade.” This prediction has turned out to be remarkably accurate. In the past decade, we have witnessed a shift in opinion like no other toward support of the right for loving gay and lesbian couples to marry. At the same time, courts have come to the long overdue conclusion that the U.S. Constitution really does mean what it says about the rights guaranteed to ALL Americans.
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