Local
'Today was like a dream'
Couples, D.C. officials celebrate arrival of same-sex marriage
(DC Agenda video by Steve Fox)
Under the watchful eye of nearly two dozen television cameras and news photographers, three same-sex couples took their wedding vows Tuesday morning before about 150 guests at a ceremony held less than a mile from the White House.
The weddings, held at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters, were among the first to take place after the city’s same-sex marriage law took effect last week.
D.C. residents Angelisa Young, 47, and Sinjoyla Townsend, 41, who have been a couple for 12 years, were the first to say “I do” after exchanging rings before a barrage of clicking cameras.
“Today was like a dream for me,” Young said after the ceremony. “I always felt like it would come true. But it’s here now, and it’s really real, we want to thank everyone who made this possible.”
Next to exchange their wedding vows at the ceremony were Reginald Stanley and Rocky Galloway, both 50. As Rev. Sylvia Sumter performed the wedding, the couples’ two 16-month-old daughters watched with interest as they were held in the arms of two adult family members just a few feet away.
The last of the three couples to marry during the HRC ceremony were Rev. Elder Darlene Garner and Rev. Lorilyn Candy Holmes, members of the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, which has a mostly gay congregation. Rev. Dwayne Johnson, pastor of the church, performed the marriage.
“Today, the love you have is recognized by the District of Columbia,” Johnson said. “I now declare you legally married.”
HRC Vice President David Smith said the building’s first-floor meeting hall, which the group calls the Equality Forum, has been host to numerous same-sex commitment ceremonies in the past and the group was delighted to provide its facility for one of the first same-sex marriages in the District.
But while the three weddings at the HRC building drew most of the media spotlight, two other same-sex weddings Tuesday morning held at the D.C. Superior Court building are believed to have been the first such marriages to take place under the city’s Religious Freedom & Marriage Equality Amendment Act.
District residents Jeremy Moon, 31, and Bryan Legaspi, 30, both of whom work in the Obama administration, wed shortly after the court opened at 8:30 a.m. in a courtroom ceremony performed by Judge Brook Hedge.
At the same time, D.C. residents Robb Hawthorne, 24, and James Betz, 23, were married on a plaza outside the courthouse by Rev. Bonnie Berger. Hawthorne and Betz, who met while they were students at George Washington University, both work at the university’s affiliated clinic, Medical Faculty Associates.
Hawthorne said the two met Berger through her role as a chaplain at George Washington University Hospital.
“We arrived at the courthouse at 3:30 in the morning to get in line,” Hawthorne said, noting that the couple wanted to be among the first to pick up their marriage licenses.
The city’s existing marriage law requires a waiting period of three business days between the time people apply for a marriage license and the time it is issued by the court. More than 200 same-sex couples applied for marriage licenses beginning March 3, when the same-sex marriage law took effect, through March 5, according to a court spokesperson. Tuesday was the first day same-sex marriages could be performed.
Among the people attending the ceremony at the HRC building were D.C. Council members David Catania (I-At Large), who wrote and took the lead role in advancing the same-sex marriage bill, and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), a long-time supporter of same-sex marriage rights. Both are gay.
The two were joined after the ceremony by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who stood alongside the newly married couples to congratulate them and talk to reporters. Fenty signed the marriage bill shortly after the City Council passed it 11-2 in December.
“It’s tough to represent a city,” he told the couples. “It’s tough to represent a community, and it’s also tough to represent a nation. But the six of you today do that. Whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not, you represent what this entire country is about.”
Fenty added, “As mayor of the District of Columbia, I cannot be more excited or proud to be here. I think this is not only a great step forward for all six of you, but…it is also great step forward for equality in general, for our great city…and for our great country.”
Catania, who called the ceremonies “incredibly moving,” drew nods of approval when he compared them in at least one respect to most other weddings.
“Council member Graham said we all cry at weddings and that was especially true today,” Catania said. “This is one of the most profoundly rewarding experiences I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of.”
Catania and Graham said they never thought they would see same-sex marriage happen in their lifetime.
“There’s been no event in my life that has been more uplifting, more positive, more affirming than these three marriages this morning,” Graham said, “because it says so much about human dignity, about valuing each other or who they are and nothing less — nothing short of that.”
Also attending the ceremony and participating in the press conference was veteran D.C. gay activist Frank Kameny, who is credited with founding the city’s LGBT rights movement.
“This represents a major victory, one that has been in the making for 35 to 40 years, although back then we never remotely thought it would really come to pass,” Kameny said. “And hopefully it sets the tone for other victories. This is not the last that we need. There are others that are in the making, and we’re going to have to continue working on those and hopefully with equal success in the very near future.”
The ceremonies at the HRC building were sponsored by the Campaign for All D.C. Families and D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality, two groups that were part of a coalition of gay and straight organizations that lobbied for the same-sex marriage bill.
Rick Imirowicz, 43, and Terrance Heath, 41, both District residents and a couple for ten years, were married Tuesday afternoon at All Souls Unitarian Church in Northwest D.C. Rev. Robert Hardies, pastor of the church, performed the ceremony.
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
A gay man was murdered in Petersburg, Va., on March 13.
Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, who was also known as Saamel and Mable, was a drag queen who won the Miss Mayflower EOY pageant in 2015. Reports also indicate Sanchez-McCray, 42, was a well-known community activist in Virginia and in North Carolina.
Local media reports indicate police officers found Sanchez-McCray shot to death inside a home in Petersburg.
Sanchez-McCray’s brother, Jamal Mitchell Diamond, in a public statement the Washington Blade received from Equality Virginia and GLAAD, said Sanchez-McCray was not transgender as initial reports indicated.
“Our family has always embraced the fullness of who he was. He used the names Saamel, Shyyell, and Mable interchangeably, and we honor all of them. There is no division within our family regarding how he is being represented — only a shared commitment to preserving his truth with love and respect,” said Diamond.
“He was also deeply committed to community work through Nationz Foundation, where he worked and completed multiple state-certified programs to support marginalized communities,” added Diamond. “That work meant a great deal to him.”
Authorities have not made any arrests.
The Petersburg Bureau of Police has asked anyone with information about Sanchez-McCray’s murder to call Petersburg-Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at 804-861-1212.
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