Aug 26, 2005  |  By: ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG  | COMMENTS     

should not be addressed.”

UNFORTUNATELY, RUMORS MAY be all obituary writers can know for many of the gays, lesbians and bisexuals who are now dying. They are of a generation when their sexual orientation was not discussed openly, further complicating reporters’ ability to corroborate a person’s sexual orientation, as Eric Hegedus, president of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association pointed out.

“Part of the problem is if someone hasn’t lived openly or spoken openly, you’re not going to be able to prove it journalistically,” Hegedus says.

That was the problem Washington Post reporter Adam Bernstein encountered when he wrote an obituary for Ismail Merchant and omitted mentioning his 44-year relationship with James Ivory.

“I could not find evidence of a romantic relationship,” Bernstein told the Blade.

Of the mainstream news accounts reviewed for this article, only the Los Angeles Times explicitly stated that the two were a gay couple. The New York Times obituary mentioned the men shared a house and listed Ivory among Merchant’s family members, as one of his survivors.

Reuters and the Associated Press mentioned Merchant and Ivory were “partners,” but didn’t explain the extent of their relationship.

Bernstein says he did not include author Susan Sontag’s sexual orientation in her obituary because of space constraints.

“I was told to cut back on what she was known for,” he said.

After Sontag’s death last Dec. 28, media outlets often omitted the “open secret” of her lesbian relationships, most recently with famed photographer Annie Liebovitz, or mentioned them only in passing.

In the cases of Sontag and Merchant, obituary writers like Bernstein were asking themselves: “To what extent do you point something out that they were not open about discussing?”

Several obituary writers that the Blade spoke with said they will only explicitly state a person’s sexual orientation if it advances the story or played a central part in their career.

“Family members may know Uncle Joe is gay but there’s no reason for it to come up in conversation,” Powell said. “Why should you make it an issue when they die?”

If a “life partner” or “companion” is listed among the survivors, they feel it’s redundant to state the person is gay.

“Why do you need to spell it out?” asks Baranick at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

U.S. obituary writers are also constrained by the American formula for obituaries, which are more résumé recitations than personal anecdotes, noted the Post’s Bernstein. British obituaries, he says, unlike their U.S. counterp