For the record, Ronda Moorhead and Kelli Shaw are engaged.

But these Canton-area lesbians can't celebrate their love like other couples can, in their daily paper, The Canton Repository. Editor Jeff Gauger is putting his foot down - there will be no girl-on-girl action in his paper. Nuh-uh. No way. You take your funny business elsewhere, thanks.

When Moorhead and Shaw submitted their engagement announcement in June, Gauger himself called them at home and asked if they were a same-sex couple. When he found out they were, he told the women that his paper would not publish their announcement. Gauger has since mandated that no gay engagements be published in his paper or The Repository sister papers.

"Given the current state of the law in Ohio, The Repository does not intend to publish same-sex engagement and wedding announcements. We also don't intend to address this topic on our editorial page or in letters to the editor," writes Gauger, in a letter to the women's pastor, who tried to intervene on their behalf.

"I'll have no comment," he said, when contacted by the Free Times.

The Rev. D. Gene Kraus says it's not about Ohio's (archaic and embarrassing) ban on gay marriage. "This action discriminates against the free practice of religion at [our church] and violates our First Amendment rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution," he writes in a letter sent to The Repository, which Gauger refused to publish.

Eric Resnick, a reporter for the Gay People's Chronicle, points out that, ironically, the staff at The Repository who might be gay are protected from similar discrimination at work. "Repository employees are protected by the city of Canton's 2006 ordinance which covers sexual orientation for all employees, public and private, in the city of Canton," he writes.

When reached later, Resnick continued his assault on unreason. "As people who run a newspaper, these guys use words for a living and ought to know a bit about public policy," he says. "So it is disappointing that when they want to announce to the world that they have issues with men loving men and women loving women that the best they can do is blame it on an irrelevant law."

A Plain Dealer classifieds sales manager says his paper would probably accept it, even though he doesn't believe they've ever run a same-sex engagement announcement before.

But the situation has left the women feeling less than excited about sharing their good news. "We're so disappointed in The Repository, that we're just like "forget it'," says Shaw. "We don't want to go through that again."

For what it's worth, Kelli and Ronda, you can consider your engagement announced. - James Renner

TWO-BUCK CHUCK DUCK

Perhaps it makes you feel like the responsible upper-cruster to peruse the oft-glutted aisles of your friendly neighborhood Trader Joe's, buying organic guacamole in Earth-friendly containers for just a few cents more than discount prices. But you should know about all the sweat pouring to facilitate your check-out peace of mind.

Case in point: A California family sued Merced Farm Labor Contractors last week after Maria Isabel Vasquez-Jimenez, a two-months-pregnant 17-year-old from Mexico, died of heat stroke in May after working nine hours in a vineyard without proper hydration or shade breaks. It took two hours for management to get her to the hospital, according to the Sacramento Bee. She was the 10th migrant to die from the heat in four years.

Merced provides migrants for Fred Franzia's Bronco Wineries operation, which is the sole provider of Trader Joe's $1.99 "Two-Buck Chuck" wine, officially named Charles Shaw. Bronco is also part-owner of the vineyard where Vasquez-Jimenez met her end. Trader Joe's has exclusive rights to distribute the surprisingly un-Thunderbird-like hooch.

The United Farm Workers of America - the lasting legacy of another famous grape-picker, Cesar Chavez - argues that Trader Joe's has the power to leverage change, what with an estimated $720 million being made on the 360 million bottles of the stuff sold in just six years of production. UFW is asking the company to pressure vendors to follow worker safety legislation already on the books.

"We all know that even a just law is only a piece of paper unless it can be enforced," said UFW president Arturo Rodriguez in a recent speech. "There has never been adequate enforcement of laws protecting farm workers, under either Democratic or Republican administrations."

As of press time, Trader Joe's only response had been to point out that it doesn't own the vineyard or the contracting company allegedly responsible for Vasquez-Jimenez's death, and that more than just Two-Buck Chuck is made from the grapes harvested there. And while that may be true, it hardly responds to the UFW's challenge, earning it the Wal-Mart Medal for Evasive Publicity. - Dan Harkins

ASK A BASTARD

Dear Bastard: When you work in the service industry, is it ever acceptable to add, shall we say, unorthodox ingredients to the food or drink of particularly obnoxious customers? Nothing dangerous, just gross. In an informal survey of coworkers and friends in the business, at least half have said it is.

Dear Soupshitter: Good employee sabotage stories always win my smile on some level - so long as it doesn't descend to personal injury or death, of course - but the idea of fucking with food always makes me squirmy. I do my utmost to be respectful of service employees since I've been there myself, but as bad as customers could get, I never once tainted anyone's meal. (Stop laughing, seriously, I never did!) That said, so long as you're not spreading any illness with whatever you're doing, and so long as it's done only to exceptionally asshole-ish customers (meaning don't fuck with some poor dope's food because you're mad at your shift supervisor or because you're having a bad day in general), I'm more than willing to look the other way. In other words, don't do a farmer-blow in the Manhattan Clam Chowder if you have a cold, asshole, but if someone's being a dick, a teabag seems a natural accompaniment. Happy code-violatin'!

Dear Bastard: A guy I've been dating for a few weeks said that he wanted to "take our relationship to the next level." I laughed and made a joke about him just wanting sex, and he got really angry and did a complete 180, saying that he doesn't know "if we're really right for each other." The relationship is probably over, and that's fine - I could never love someone who falls back on "Lifetime Original" clichés for serious conversations - but I am curious: Did he get angry because I was wrong, or exactly right?

Dear Dream Date: Someone opened up to you, your response was to LAUGH AT HIM, and you're surprised he got all sore and closed right back up? Suppose he cracked wise at you when you'd made yourself vulnerable to him. That would make him an asshole, a giant one, so why's it OK for you to do it? Because he used a "Lifetime Original" cliché? You shot him down because he isn't Cyrano de Bergerac? How would you have put it? He didn't get angry because you were right or wrong, he got angry because you were a fuckin' twat about it.