“Journalistic ethics” may not be the most exciting topic to nonjournalists, but something smelly is afoot at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The newspaper has removed its lead City Hall reporter, Rachel Gordon, and its lead City Hall photographer, Liz Mangelsdorf, from reporting on the ongoing San Francisco same-sex marriage story because they ... got married to each other.

Executive Editor Phil Bronstein said the women’s wedding, which took place in their home, created the potential for the appearance of a conflict of interest.

“Chronicle journalists directly and personally involved in a major news story – one in whose outcome they also have a personal stake – should not also cover that story,” Bronstein said. “The issue is the integrity and credibility of the paper, as well as conflict and perception of conflict.”

But did the two journalists become personally involved in a major news story? I strongly doubt that Rachel and Liz’s private marriage was some kind of political, activist act. I think all they did was get married. I think they are in love, they long wanted to get married and, when it finally became possible to get married, they did it.

The fact that other people are filing lawsuits about the general fact that 8,074 gay people got married in San Francisco doesn’t make Rachel and Liz newsmakers.

Do they have a personal stake in the outcome of those lawsuits? Sure. But no more so than any sexually active gay reporter in Texas and 12 other states had a personal stake in the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court sodomy case – which determined whether that reporter would continue to be a criminal or not. And no gay reporters were barred from writing about that case.

No more of a stake than any pregnant reporter had in the outcome of the Roe v. Wade case. Were pregnant reporters forbidden to cover that story? There’s no record of that.

It has long been a tenet of U.S. journalism that reporters must be “objective” and unbiased. In much of mainstream journalism, this means reporters are not permitted to do such things as join the ACLU or donate to the Human Rights Campaign or otherwise take personal actions that would suggest the reporter supports a cause or has taken a side.

In recent years, some of these guidelines have been relaxed in some sectors of the media. For example, I am a news reporter but my editors let me write this opinion column. But I still do not belong to any organizations – except for journalism organizations – or donate to groups or causes. Another example is that it is not uncommon to see reporters on Sunday morning talk shows giving their opinions about news events. It is unlikely, however, that these reporters are card-carrying members of organizations or make donations to the Bush or Kerry campaigns or what have you.

There are a few reporters – probably very few – who take “journalistic ethics” to the extreme, choosing not to vote or belong to a church or engage in any activity that could betray favoritism toward any entity that they might ever have to write about.

Some of all this makes sense and some of it doesn’t. For example, over the course of this column, I have both criticized and praised the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. If I were an NGLTF member, my praise of the group in this space would be suspect in the eyes of readers. I’d be using this space to talk up an organization I supportwith my donations.

However, journalists surely should be allowed to have normal lives – they should certainly be allowed to vote, go to church if they want to, get married, have kids, play on a softball team, etc.

If the San Francisco Chronicle is going to prohibit lesbians from covering same-sex marriages because they themselves are married, then the Chron should prohibit married straight reporters from writing stories that have anything to do with marriage as well, since married reporters may not be able to be objective about marriage.

Similarly, to be consistent, the Chron should prohibit any reporter who is a member of any church from writing about churches. And it should probably prohibit atheists from writing about religion as well. Ditto for believers.

This quickly becomes an endless spiral that leads to the point where no reporter can write about anything unless his or her personal life is structured in such a way as to create the illusion that the reporter could not possibly have an opinion or bias one way or the other about whatever.

The goal in American journalism should be – and is – to produce news stories that are fair and that give equal voice to equal sides of a story. The stories should, of course, be devoid of obvious bias or opinion - and they nearly always are. Language used to describe people and events should be as neutral as possible - and it usually is.

That is the best that our profession can do. It is goofy to say a married lesbian couple cannot write a fair story about – or take accurate photographs of! – same-sex weddings, unless you also want to say that a Democrat reporter could not write a fair story about a Democratic (or Republican or Green Party) candidate. Unless you want to say that a straight reporter could never write a fair story about straight people, or about gay people. And on and on.

I think the Chronicle has singled out these two lesbian journalists for special treatment. The Chronicle needs to regroup and take a second look at the entire equation.