A reader alerted me to it, in the wake of the Kansas House of Representatives passing a law that would allow widespread discrimination against any gay or straight people who could even faintly be connected to a wedding or even commitment ceremony. The obit is for a pillar of the local community:
Bruce G. “Butch” Neis was born March 15, 1953 in Lawrence, KS the son of Samuel G. Jr. and Elizabeth Kindig Neis. He was a farmer, a welder and owned Bruce Neis Trucking. He was a lifetime member of the Eudora Township Volunteer Fire Department. He also was a member of Eudora Emergency Medical Services for 22 years and a 14-year sponsor of the All-Night After Prom Party at Eudora High School.
Among his survivors are
two sons; Richard B. Neis (spouse Carrie) of Eudora, KS, Aaron M. Neis (partner, Thaddeus Winter) of Honolulu, HI … and two brothers; Samuel D. Neis (spouse Bill Spinney) New Bedford, MA, Russell D. Neis (spouse Tina) …
My italics.
You know why the Christianists will lose? Because they are insisting that a man like Neis disown his partnered gay son and his married gay brother. Happily the far right does not seem to have succeeded in tearing this particular family apart. Update from a reader:
A footnote to your post: The Lawrence Journal-World, on whose website that obit appeared, will not, as a matter of corporate policy mandated by its extremely right-wing ownership, run notices of same-sex marriages. However, their obituaries run exactly as submitted by funeral homes, with no editing, so the mention of the man’s sons’ partnerships slipped through. And in fact, the obit you linked to actually is on a third-party site, Legacy.com, which handles online obituaries for the Journal-World (and many other newspaper websites). So it evaded the newspaper’s own editorial/advertising policies against honoring gay life events. Sadly, there’s still quite a ways to go in acceptance of gays in Kansas – even in Lawrence, by far the most liberal and open community in the state.
The Dish 