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

WHEN MELODI Knapp was killed in a car crash in May 2002, her family submitted two obituaries to the Dallas Morning News. Both included her date of birth, her hometown and a list of relatives and friends she left behind.

But in one of those lists, Knapp’s life partner was omitted. The family split was even more noticeable when they held two funerals and Knapp’s corpse was only present at one.

When obituary writers report on a gay person’s death, or any death for that matter, they can step into a thorny mess of secrets, family squabbles and conflicting memories, several sources said.

“My sense from even the most out, comfortable, well-adjusted, emotionally healthy gay people is that there is concern about when to identify as gay in the newspaper,” explains Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a school in St. Petersburg, Fla., for journalists.

The issue becomes more complicated after the person has died and the reporter has to rely on siblings, parents and children to articulate their loved one’s wishes. And it is not only the dead person’s privacy that is at issue, McBride points out; a partner may not want to be identified as gay.

“All of those people won’t agree,” she says. “Competing with all of this is the truth. Portraying the truth is your ultimate goal.”

KAY POWELL, OBITUARY editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, notes that there are some local older gay couples who have worked hard to keep their sexual orientation a secret. It’s “disrespectful” to out them against their wishes in an obituary, she says.

“I would not out somebody in an obit,” Powell explains.

If the surviving partner agrees to be identified as gay in the story, however, it can be enormously helpful for readers.

“We have a lot of long, longtime couples,” Powell says. “They are business partners, as well as companions in life. They worked assiduously to keep it private from family, from co-workers. … They had two separate phone lines.

“A lot of people don’t realize the efforts they had to go through. It’s a slice of Atlanta history that’s an important story to get out there. More people can read it and say, ‘I knew her all this time and I never knew she was gay…. I knew his mama through the circle at church.’”

Powell says the more ordinary it seems the more, bit-by-bit, peoples’ thinking changes.

While journalists seek to publish verifiable truths, a person’s sexual orientation can be a difficult fact to prove without legal documentation like a marriage certificate.

“I found a general willingness, on the part of obituary editors in [ Australia, the UK, the U.S. and Canada] to include references to same-sex surviving partners,” Nigel Starck told the Blade in an e-mail.

Starck, a program director at the University of South Australia, wrote his dissertation, “Writes of Passage,” on obituary practices in the four countries.

“I still find that actual practice is haphazard. Sometimes same-sex partners are included in the text; at other times they’re ignored,” he said. “Yet there appears to be a global obsession with including spouses.”

Absent legal standing, reporters must rely on interviews, family and biographies. Rumors, several reporters say, have no place in obituaries unless they were previously reported.

“If the rumor has risen to the point that it’s been broadcast then you say ‘it’s rumored,’” says Alana Baranick, an obituary writer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. But reporters shouldn’t include it if “it’s just scuttlebutt you’ve heard around.”

Carolyn Gilbert, founder of the International Association of Obituarists, agrees that sexual orientation, like other information in an obituary, should only be included if it can be confirmed by other sources.

Next month, Gilbert is to serve on a panel, “The Closet Six Feet Under,” at the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association’s conference, which will be held in Chicago.

“The news obit requires the writer to do research and to check facts; therefore, if sexual orientation is a publicly known factor, it would likely be included UNLESS (and this is a big UNLESS) it cannot be corroborated by several sources OR unless the family of the deceased has indicated it not to be a factor in the obituary,” Gilbert told the Blade in e-mail.

“The obit writer does not have an obligation to ‘out’ someone. Likewise, an obit writer does not have an obligation to ‘de-gay’ someone intentionally,” she says. “If facts re: sexual orientation cannot be confirmed by a number of sources, it ...