ELY -- The Ely Shopper has been around 80 years and, according to its website, it's is the place to place an ad: "Whether you are a person selling your old boat and motor, a club announcing your next meeting or a downtown business announcing this week's sale."
But when the owner of the Shopper, Delia Whitten, came out against gay marriage just weeks before Minnesota voters weigh in a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as strictly a man-woman thing, a dustup was sure to follow.
A new "Boycott the Ely Shopper" Facebook page had registered 155 "likes" by Monday evening, two days after being launched. Whitten did not answer calls to her home number and hasn't returned messages yet to DatelineMN left with a co-worker who promised to text her our number. A staffer at the office said only Whitten could answer a question about how many people have asked to be removed from the Shopper's mailing list.
According to the Ely Echo, Whitten, 59, said: "We never dreamt that gays would marry when I was a kid. If you want to put your gay wedding announcement in the Ely Shopper, bring it somewhere else."
The Shopper boasts about delivering more than 5,000 issues to the northeastern Minnesota towns of Ely, Babbitt and Winton and rural routes in the area.
