Colorado daily refuses ad blasting state's anti-gay-rights law p.

By: Tony Case

COLORADO'S VAIL DAILY has refused to publish an advertisement aimed at visitors of the popular tourist destination that blasts the state's controversial new anti-homosexual-rights law.
Craig Wutsch, who works for a local ski area, was so outraged that voters approved Amendment 2 that he composed a display ad to run in the 11,000-circulation daily newspaper.
Wutsch maintained that a Vail Daily ad representative told him that the newspaper would run his appeal, as long as it was signed at the bottom and paid for.
So, Wutsch says, he was shocked when publisher Jim Pavelich rejected the ad.
"I didn't feel it was in the best interest of the community to promote a boycott of the community," Pavelich explained, adding that the idea of people boycotting themselves is "absurd."
"We would gladly accept an ad taking a stance on Amendment 2, but this was taking a stance on the boycott," he said. "We believe people have a right to speak out on issues, but we don't feel people in the community have a right to boycott the community."
In the ad, Wutsch asked visitors to "boycott Colorado in the future until equal rights for all her residents and visitors are restored and Amendment 2 is reversed . . . Please help us end discrimination here, so it won't spread to the rest of the U.S.A."
Wutsch understands that newspapers have a right to reject advertising, but he laments that the town's most visible medium?its only daily newspaper?has, in effect, compromised his right to free speech.
"If there was another paper here, it wouldn't be a problem," he said, "but this is the only game in town."
In a letter to the editor, which the Vail Daily did publish, Wutsch wrote, "Usually it is the press that demands respect for First Amendment rights. This time it is the oppressed."
Wutsch says he is annoyed that on Christmas Day?the same day his ad was supposed to appear?the newspaper published a quarter-page advertisement by the Eagle County Chapter of the Colorado Right to Life Committee, depicting the first Christmas under the heading: "History's best loved crisis pregnancy."
Although the Vail Daily refused his ad, and City Hall has established an ordinance that prohibits displaying signs and passing out fliers, Wutsch remains determined to get his message out?even if it means breaking the law.
Lately, he has resorted to going out at three in the morning to hang banners from the bridges, he related.
"I'm trying to reach 20,000 people who visit Vail with the message that this law did go through here," he said. "With similar amendments on the ballot in nine other states, they need to be aware that what the religious right did in Colorado can happen to them."