Why we should boycott the Arizona Daily Sun and other Flagstaff businesses run by the anti-gay marriage crowd.

By Dan R. Frazier
Posted Nov. 25, 2008

Fifty-six percent of Arizonans recently voted in favor of amending the state’s constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. This vote, and similar votes in Florida and California, was a set-back and a great disappointment to those who believe, as I do, that gay marriage is a fundamental civil right. 

The good news is that in Flagstaff, where I live, the situation was much different. Here, 58 percent of votes cast opposed Prop. 102. 

But still, there was substantial support for Prop. 102 even in some quarters of Flagstaff. Two weeks after the election, the Arizona Daily Sun reported that donors in the Flagstaff area had donated $339,000 to YesForMarriage.com in support of Prop. 102. The Sun even published a list of local donors, complete with their addresses and the amounts that they donated. 

The list was compiled from finance reports on file with the Arizona Secretary of State. (I have compiled my own version of the list.) My wife, a gay-rights activist, had shown me some of this donor information before the Daily Sun published its list. What caught my eye right away was a donation in the amount of $5,000 from a man named Don Rowley. The publisher of the Daily Sun is named Don Rowley. I called him up and asked him if he was the same Don Rowley who had donated $5,000 to YesForMarriage.com. He said he was. I asked him if he was concerned about a potential boycott of the newspaper. He said that his donation had nothing to do with the newspaper. It was his personal donation.

After I hung up with Rowley, I called the newspaper back to cancel my subscription. I will not renew my subscription to the Sun until Don Rowley steps down from his position of leadership. Rowley has a right to donate to any cause he pleases. But he should be prepared to accept the consequences. If he donates generously to any controversial organizations, whether it be the Ku Klux Klan, the National Rifle Association, or YesForMarriage.com, he should not be surprised if a large segment of the Sun’s readership is appalled and reacts accordingly.

It is also worth mentioning that Neal Clark, a member of the Sun’s rotating citizen editorial board, also donated $5,000 to YesForMarriage.com. Clark even wrote his own essay defending supporters of Prop. 102 that was published in the Sun after the election.

After learning about the donations of Rowley and Clark, I sent a letter to Mary Junck, the CEO of Lee Enterprises, parent company of the Arizona Daily Sun. (201 N. Harrison Street Suite 600 Davenport, IA 52801).  I wanted to make sure that Junck was aware of Rowley’s unprofessional conduct.

Rowley defends his donation as a personal and private affair unrelated to the operations of the Arizona Daily Sun. Randy Wilson, the editor at the Sun, has also defended Rowley, saying in an e-mail to one local activist:

“…publishers throughout this country are active in a broad range of civic affairs, from the Chamber of Commerce (which takes positions on local political issues) to the United Way. At a newspaper, only the editor and the newsroom he/she supervises operate under rules of conduct designed to assure political neutrality. They also act independently of the publisher. Citizen members of the editorial board carry no burden of neutrality – most are assumed to be active in the community and a variety of civic and political causes, which is why they were chosen for the board. Because it rotates every few months, the board is guaranteed a fresh set of perspectives. The newspaper does have a duty to make the political process as transparent as possible, which the Prop. 102 story served.”

The truth is that many news organizations do have policies that limit the political activities of publishers and top managers, even if they don’t work in the newsroom. This is only common sense. The appearance of neutrality cannot be maintained if some of the top brass are active in controversial causes. Why would I rest easier knowing the newsroom staff never marches with the Ku Klux Klan if I also know the publisher marches with the Klan?

About ten years ago, I worked in the newsroom of the Sun myself. I worked with some of the same people who are working at the Sun now, including Wilson. People who work at newspapers are not stupid. They know who signs their paychecks. Though the Sun has given some attention to issues surrounding gay-rights, we will never know how much more attention might have been paid to these issues had Rowley not been the publisher.

It is interesting to note that while nearly every other newspaper in Arizona published official editorials opposing Prop. 102, the Arizona Daily Sun did not do so. After the election, the Daily Sun did not publish a list of local donors who supported Prop. 102 until days after a similar list had started circulating by e-mail. Though the Sun interviewed at least one gay-rights activist in advance of the story that was published with the list of donors, no gay-rights activists were mentioned in the final story. And the Sun did not point out that the Don Rowley who donated $5,000 to YesForMarriage.com was the same Don Rowley who is the publisher of the Arizona Daily Sun. When I tried to make some of these points in the online-comments section of Sun’s Web site, my comments were posted briefly and then removed with no explanation. It was this last indignity that inspired me to write this essay and post my own list of donors to Prop. 102. My wife, Lisa Rayner, also has had several of her comments concerning Don Rowley removed from the Sun's online comment forum. So much for transparency.

Most of the 50 or so local donors to YesForMarriage are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). History has shown that Mormons can and do respond to outside pressure. It was outside pressure that forced Mormons to renounce polygamy in 1890. It was also outside pressure that forced Mormons to accept blacks into their priesthood in 1978. 

One other thing I would like to talk about is the staggering amounts that individuals and families donated in support of Prop. 102. I have not calculated the average Flagstaff donation, but I would not be surprised to learn that it was more than $3,000. One person, Donald Hales, donated $50,000. At least three other Flagstaff families donated $25,000 each. And at least seven other local families donated at least $10,000.  It appears to me that about 90 percent of donors in the Flagstaff area donated $1,000 or more. These staggering sums were donated during a time of frightening economic turmoil and falling home values. Where did all these people get all this money? Why are so many of the donations for the same nice, round amounts, like $3,000, or $5,000? Why is it that out of more than four-dozen local donors, only a handful provided their occupations on campaign finance forms?

Unless I am mistaken, Arizona law requires that campaign donors provide their occupations. According to information available from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Web site, if the occupation is not provided by the donor, the campaign finance committee is required to make at least one request of the donor to get the information: 

“The request must clearly ask for the missing information and inform the contributor that the committee is required by law to obtain the mailing address, occupation and employer of each individual contributor and the mailing address and identification number of each political committee contributor.”

The law goes on to say that donations accepted in violation of the law may be subject to a penalty equal to three times the amount of the donation(s). I will personally be following up with the appropriate Arizona authorities, asking for an investigation.

Could it be that these donations came not from individual donors, but from the Mormon Church itself? What if the church members have, in effect, assisted in laundering money for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? I think that this could be illegal, though I am not an expert in this area of the law.

Boycotts have long been used as effective tools to bring about important social change. The most famous in recent times may be the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, which was led by Martin Luther King Jr.

I have printed the list of Prop. 102 donors and I will avoid doing business with any of the people or businesses on the list. I hope that other Flagstaff residents will also boycott these people and their businesses. If these donors can afford to donate so much to take away the rights of others, they can afford to get a little less business from their more civilized neighbors. Maybe eventually the supporters of bigotry will recognize that what they are doing is wrong, plain and simple.

Meanwhile, I am going to miss having the Sun delivered to my home. For now, I will probably read the Sun online. I believe newspapers and newspaper reading are important. But I don’t want to pay my hard-earned money to support bigotry. I know there are good people who work at the Sun. I know there are gay people who work at the Sun. Some of the best people at the Sun are the gay people. I would hate for these people to lose their jobs. I hope it does not come to that. I believe that Don Rowley will step down rather than sit by and watch his newspaper crumble around him on his account. As the only local daily newspaper serving Flagstaff, it is high time that the Sun management aligned itself more closely with its highly educated and enlightened readership.

I will close with these words from Martin Luther King Jr.: “You know my friends there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends when people get tired of being flung across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amidst the piercing chill of an Alpine November.”

Dan R. Frazier is a writer and the owner of CarryaBigSticker.com. He lives with his wife in Flagstaff, Arizona.    

Read also Dan Frazier's follow-up essay about how the Arizona Secretary of State turns a blind eye to campaign finance rules.