Features
Peter Jacobson Named CARES Director
SMC Equality
SMC Equality
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
by Euan Bear
William
Docker graduated from Saint Michael's College in 1975, married a woman,
and divorced three years later. On September 11, 2004, he married again:
this time with his partner of 10 years, Tom Stearns. It is a legal marriage
in Massachusetts, where the couple lives.
If you go to the St. Michael's
College web page and click on Alumni, Parents and Friends, then on publications,
you'll get to St. Michael's Magazine online. The alumni magazine is in
its 5th year of quarterly publication, full of just what you'd expect:
a feature or two, college news, and page after page of "Class Notes,"
interspersed with a few pages of wedding photos and marriage and birth/adoption
notices. (As of mid-May, the most recent issue online was "Autumn,
2004, Vol. 4, No. 4.")
So, naturally, Docker, who has been
a regular donor to his alma mater, called to find out the procedure for
marriage announcements. "I called the editor, Caroline Crawford,
and asked about the procedure, and she told me. Then I said it was for
a same-sex wedding and asked if the college had a policy. She said, 'This
is the first! I've been waiting for this call!' She seemed genuinely excited,"
Docker recalled in a phone interview.
He sent in the news to the alumni
magazine along with a photo including himself, his husband, and two other
St. Mike's alums who attended the wedding. "And then I waited for
the next issue," Docker said.
His expectation that his wedding would make
the wedding page wasn't unrealistic. After all, the college has a gay
student alliance, and gay faculty and staff work there without sexual
orientation-based difficulty. St. Mike's just promoted a gay faculty member
to the dean's office.
But Bill Docker's wedding photo wasn't
run at all, and his announcement wasn't listed with the other marriages,
but with the small-type "Class Notes" for 1975. "It wasn't
treated the same as other marriages," Docker said. And they didn't
even get the date right, printing that Docker was married on September
11, 2001.
Docker said he then called Crawford
back. “‘Oh, I’ve been dreading this call,’”
he remembers her saying. According to Docker, Crawford told him that the
president of the college, Marc vander Heyden, pulled the announcement
from the page proofs.
In a phone interview last month,
Crawford confirmed that Docker did send a wedding announcement and a photograph.
The Winter issue had been laid out "before I was made aware of the
policy," she said.
"The policy was revealed to me
this way: Because we are a Catholic college, our publications must reflect
the mission and policies of the Catholic Church, and we could not treat
his marriage the same way we treat other marriages. Marriage is a sacrament
in the Catholic Church," she continued. Crawford confirmed Docker's
recollection of the content of the conversation, but said she's not sure
that the decision to pull the photo and announcement was actually made
by vander Heyden.
Crawford said the alumni magazine
has run photos and announcements of civil unions, most notably that of
Stan Baker and Peter Harrigan, and that they have run in the same section
as the "gallery of wedding photos."
So, Bill Docker, a Provincetown
resident and fundraising consultant, then called his other contact at
the college, Richard ("Rit") diVenere, the Associate Vice President
for Alumni Relations. "He said there were a lot of issues, a lot
of older, conservative Catholic alumni, and it was an issue of serious
donors, what wealthy donors want from the college and from the magazine,"
Docker recalled.
Docker was indignant enough
to insist that his name be removed from all solicitation and donor call
lists. "I told him I did not want to be contacted any more or contribute
to a college that would not treat my marriage equally." He also confirmed
that he had requested the return of the money he had already donated to
the college.
When asked for a comment for this article on William Docker's situation,
DiVenere said, "We are not at liberty to discuss anything with you
at the present time."
Called for a comment, Buff Lindau,
executive editor of the magazine and director of public relations for
St. Michael's said, "We are very respectful of individuals. We never
intended to cause the upset that we have caused. We are a Catholic college
and we live within our mission."
Lindau said the "editorial
board" made the decision to withdraw Docker's wedding photo from
the magazine. The editorial board consists of the "Institutional
Advancement Office managers," she said, which does not include the
editor, and suggested that the issue of how to deal with same-sex alumni
marriages is the subject of "ongoing dialogue." She said she
did not have the dates on which the policy was decided.
"It is important to be clear,"
said Publisher Anne Whitmore Hansen, "that the alumni magazine is
a marketing tool, not a news journal. It is published to promote the mission
of the college, to provide a liberal Catholic education."
Hansen added, "St. Mike's has
done a great deal in support of individuals and toward promoting tolerance
and acceptance." Printing a same-sex wedding photo "would put
the college in direct challenge to the Catholic Church." The situation
has been the occasion for "a tremendous amount of dialogue"
on how to handle such issues in the future.
The publisher denied that as a marketing
tool for the college, the magazine's concern was to avoid offending wealthy
conservative alumni and donors.
The real issue for him, Docker
said, is hypocrisy. "They're saying 'We'll let you on the bus, but
we'll put you in the back seat.'"
"There's nothing I can come up
with to answer that," said Crawford. "Part of the mission of
St. Mike's is to uphold the values and mission of the Catholic Church.
We absolutely support the worth and dignity of every person."
Docker also wrote to President
vander Heyden and copied the letter to magazine editor Caroline Crawford,
to Rit DiVenere, and to the Diversity Office. "No one has contacted
me. Nobody has called to say 'We're right and you will always be wrong'
or 'We're reviewing our policy,' or anything. Nothing.
"I know I'm not going to change
the Catholic Church. But I'm concerned that they want to have it both
ways: it's okay to be gay on campus, there’s a gay student alliance,
there are gay faculty. But [they’re saying] don’t expect to
have a traditional life afterward, and if you manage to make one, we won’t
recognize it.
"If they're going to have a litmus
test for 'legitimate' marriages, why aren't they asking other couples
to sign affidavits? 'I have never used birth control,' 'I have never had
an abortion,' for the women; 'I have never been divorced or married a
second time.'"