Pioneer Press tries to clarify editorial on marriage amendment

The St. Paul Pioneer Press is still under fire from readers for a Saturday editorial in which the newspaper seemed to lay out an argument for the marriage amendment, although the piece said it was not an official "endorsement." The newspaper has written a follow-up piece in an effort to clarify, and it acknowledges that many found the piece disingenuous. "We should have been more direct about the premise, and we should have made our respect for the anti-amendment arguments more evident," the newspaper writes.

Author:

BMTN Staff

The Pioneer Press is trying to further explain its lengthy Saturday editorial on the marriage amendment. The piece said the editorial writers were not endorsing the amendment, which would define marriage in the state's constitution as between a man and a woman.

But the piece was widely considered to be just that – an endorsement.

Fierce criticism from amendment opponents came swiftly. Among them were Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, who quit his Pioneer Press blog over the issue.

Critics slammed both what appeared to be the newspaper's pro-amendment stance – and what appeared to be the lame way the paper tried to make an argument for the amendment without officially taking that stand.

Now the newspaper has now offered a clarification: "Many people considered our "not endorsing one way or another" line to be disingenuous at best. Clearly, we failed to deliver what we had meant to. And it's easy enough to see why people read the editorial as favoring the arguments for the amendment." In fact, the new piece says, arguments against the amendment are clear and compelling.

It goes on: "Some of the arguments for the amendment are complicated. In the context of the broader, longer-term discussion of how we define marriage, we thought it useful to give weight to those arguments. The premise of that approach, as well as how we executed it in Saturday's editorial, is arguable."