Local
Anniversary for marriage
One year after the first same-sex couples wed in D.C., all eyes are on Maryland
Candy Holmes (left) and Darlene Garner on their wedding day last March. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
As the battle over marriage equality in Maryland reaches its endgame, the sparks it throws are reflected in the lives of real people, including a married couple wed just next door in Washington on the first day the D.C. same-sex marriage law went into effect in March of 2010.
Residents of Bowie, Md., one of the three couples wed with fanfare at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters on March 9, 2010 — Candy Holmes and Darlene Garner — looked back this week at the struggles to win equality in D.C. and the continuing efforts in Maryland.
“In retrospect, it’s been a mixed year,” Holmes says. “Because it was a great year to be married in D.C. in my hometown and Darlene’s adopted city, really it was a year of a piece of heaven, once we got through the murky waters that it might be taken away by the courts. It was the realization of something long desired by us, to be married, and legally acknowledged so, to the love of my life.”
“But when we come back to where we live, in Maryland, where our marriage is not recognized, the struggle goes on because we were free to be married in D.C., but we are not free to be married in Maryland — yet.”
Holmes and Garner — who dated on and off for 14 years before getting married — are both ordained ministers in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a liberal, mostly gay Christian denomination — and now they are determined to see the blessings afforded to them by marriage become theirs by right also where they live.
“We have so much enjoyed the last 12 months as a married couple,” Garner says. “We have been completely embraced by our extended and blended families — children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren, cousins — and I will be eternally grateful to the D.C. government elected officials, and also remain hopeful that the elected officials in my home state will follow the example set in our national capital.”
When Garner and Holmes boast of their blended, extended family, they are not talking idly. Garner is the mother of four, grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of three, the eldest of whom is now 3 years old.
Holmes considers Garner’s offspring hers too.
The giddiness and hoopla from a year ago now long since subsided, how do they assess what marriage equality means to them today? Once they were married, “there’s been a big difference at work,” says Holmes, who has worked as a manager in the federal government’s GAO (now called the Government Accountability office) for 34 years. “It shows up in how people greet me and treat me, the respect and regard from others.”
Statistics from D.C. Superior Court’s Marriage Bureau show a surge of weddings in the District, more than double the number from the prior year, March 2009-March 2010.
Those numbers — 6,604 marriages in D.C. from March 3, 2010, when the same-gender right to marry, enacted in December 2009, went into effect, through March 2, 2011 — vaulted over the number from the prior year, when only 3,101 couples applied for marriage licenses in D.C.
The city doesn’t track how many straight couples there were versus same-sex couples, but the court attributes the spike to the change in the marriage law.
Speaking last week at an event held to celebrate enactment of the new law, Mayor Vincent Gray said he “was thrilled to hear this,” adding that the new law “has been so smoothly implemented,” even though he acknowledged that he has lost some friends due to his own outspoken support for the measure when he served on City Council until being elected mayor in November. But he said that was a price he willingly has paid for doing what he called “the right thing.”
As for the possibility that the new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives might still seek to roll back the new law, the mayor said he was aware it could happen, but “I haven’t heard anything yet” about it.
And so the dust in D.C. has settled. And in the wake of the new law have come party planners and experts in wedding officiating like Deborah Cummings-Thomas and Sheila Alexander-Reid, both licensed and ordained to perform weddings, lesbians and partners since May of last year in Marry Me in D.C., which helps connect people wanting to marry in D.C. with what Cummings-Thomas calls “our network of gay and gay-friendly service providers who celebrate, not just tolerate them on their wedding day.”
On March 19, Marry Me in D.C. hosts a “Marriage Equality Wedding Expo,” from noon to 4 p.m. at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue NW, on Capitol Hill. Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. Advance registration is encouraged at marrymeindc.com.
Robin McGehee (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Marriage not a happy ending for all
With the legalization of same-sex marriage comes, inevitably, gay divorce.
Robin McGehee has felt its sting. The 37-year-old California resident and lesbian who decided to wed in June 2008, says she decided to un-wed a year and a month later, in July 2009. She and her partner took their vows under California’s same-sex marriage law prior to its being overturned by the state’s voters in November 2008 ballot when Proposition 8 passed. Their marriage remained valid however under a grandfather clause.
But it fell victim nevertheless, in an ironic way, says McGehee, since it was the fight against its passage that brought her into the fray to oppose Prop 8.
After getting iced out of volunteer work at her son’s Catholic school, she became a gay activist and helped organize the National Equality March, held in Washington in October 2009. As a newly mobilized activist, she says, she was “on the road almost every weekend for months at a time.”
And that activism led her away, she acknowledges, from placing a focus needed at home, to repair the fraying ties that bound her with her spouse, a woman 19 years her senior, with whom she had joined in 2001 in a domestic partnership contract under California law. They had been a couple for 11 years at the time of their wedding.
She says she “met someone on the road, someone I connected with emotionally.” Basically, she admits, “I fell for someone else.” They have now been together for a year and a half, and they face, McGehee says, “the same challenges,” because now she is also working a second job, as executive director of GetEqual, a group that focuses on using non-violent civil disobedience to advance LGBT rights.
As for her former spouse, they remain in constructive discussions over dual issues, caught up still in legal proceedings over the terms of ending both their marriage and their earlier domestic partnership. Closure should come, she expects, “any time now.”
Rehoboth Beach
Susan Stewart could make history as Rehoboth’s first openly gay mayor
Aug. 8 election features four candidates for top job
(Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a three-part series profiling the candidates for mayor of Rehoboth Beach, Del.: Commissioners Suzanne Goode, Susan Stewart, and Craig Thier; a fourth candidate, William Raak, filed to join the race but has not responded to Blade inquiries.)
Residents of Rehoboth Beach, Del. will elect a new mayor this summer after Stan Mills announced plans to retire after serving six years as mayor and 12 as a commissioner. One candidate who could make history is Commissioner Susan Stewart, who identifies as part of the LGBTQ community, a potential first for the town, which has never had an openly gay mayor.
Stewart is a current city commissioner for Rehoboth Beach and has served as a member of the Mixed-Use and Stormwater Utility Task Forces.
A Pennsylvania native who spent her adult life working in Washington, D.C., Stewart has owned a home in Rehoboth since 2013 with her partner of more than 20 years and began living there full time during COVID.
Stewart described her campaign as offering vision, leadership, and integrity. She has a background as an attorney and financial adviser.
She spoke about the work that she is doing as city commissioner that she would continue as mayor, specifically with Reimagine Rehoboth.
“I’ve been shepherding through a master planning initiative for the first time,” she said. “We’ve never really had an overall study with urban planners and transportation consultants.”
Stewart highlighted the upcoming ‘Charrette Week’ from July 13-17 when members of the community can learn about the city from urban planners and give their input on the planning initiative.
“We’ve got this natural beauty and we’ve got some things we can work on,” said Stewart. During ‘Charrette Week’, Stewart said that the community will also have the chance to rename ‘Reimagine Rehoboth’ due to the pushback it initially received.
“Getting the community engaged and united behind is the big goal,” said Stewart.
Stewart also mentioned that she is the liaison with Clear Space Theatre Company as it aims to build their own venue in town. She expressed hope in bringing this vision to fruition as she values the art and culture that the company brings to town.
“It hasn’t been lost on us that the Kennedy Center has sort of cut loose a lot of its patrons,” said Stewart.
Stewart also said she wants to increase age and racial diversity in Rehoboth through supporting the construction of more workforce housing.
“We don’t generally have [racial and age diversity] here. I wish we did,” said Stewart.
According to the 2024 census, the median age of Rehoboth in 2024 was 63 with 44% of the population being 65 and over. Additionally, 89% of the city’s population was reported to be white.
Stewart also said that she aims to maintain Delaware’s perfect score on the Human Rights Equality Index in 2025, which she credits to the work of the assistant city manager, Evan Miller, and CAMP Rehoboth for getting Rehoboth to be recognized.
“Rehoboth is a great place for our broader LGBTQ+ community,” said Stewart.
She also said that she is proud to support organizations like CAMP Rehoboth, which the city was able to give a grant to for the first time this year according to Stewart.
“The city and CAMP Rehoboth have such a productive and wonderful relationship.”
Stewart said that she wants CAMP to know that they are always welcome to reach out if they ever have issues that require help from the city.
“We’ll continue to have a very productive and warm relationship.”
The Blade also asked Stewart about her public disagreement with fellow City Commissioner and mayoral candidate Suzanne Goode in March of this year.
During a commissioners meeting on March 9, Stewart outlined allegations that Goode used derogatory language in emails, particularly toward City Manager Taylour Tedder.
“All of our emails are public information under FOIA. I simply asked the city to link them on the website, and then the city published a transcript of [Goode’s emails].”
Stewart said that she did this on behalf of the city’s employees such as Tedder: “We have a moral and legal obligation to support our employees.” She also said that this situation has escalated since the March 9 meeting.
At the meeting, Goode denied all of the allegations and said that they were based on falsehoods.
“The challenge with Suzanne Good is that she burns through so much time in a public hearing because she wants to talk about all these things in the past,” said Stewart.
If elected mayor, Stewart said that she would look into measures to help meetings run smoother and prevent disruptions such as turning off mics and moving public comment to the end of the meeting instead of the end of each topic.
“We want public input, but the people that come there for good reasons to talk about things that they need help with get drowned out by these disruptions.”
The election will take place on Aug. 8, from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center.
District of Columbia
SMYAL receives $25,000 award for ‘courageous acts’
D.C. group provides support services for LGBTQ youth
The D.C.-based organization SMYAL, which provides services for LGBTQ youth in the D.C. metro area, including housing for homeless LGBTQ youth, announced on June 30 that it received a $25,000 award for its “courageous acts” in support of the community it serves.
The award was a monetary grant from The Courage Project, which describes itself as a “national initiative investing in acts of courage and compassion that strengthens our communities and democracy.”
A statement on its website says it was launched in May 2025 and is funded and backed by leading national foundations in the U.S.
“At SMYAL, we are deeply grateful to receive support from The Courage Project and are inspired by their bold investment in LGBTQ+ youth at such a critical moment,” SMYAL CEO Erin Whelan said in a statement. “For queer and trans young people, simply showing up as themselves each day requires immense courage, and that courage is strengthened when organizations like The Courage Project stand behind them loudly, proudly, and without hesitation,” Whelan said.
In its statement announcing the award SMYAL says The Courage Project will recognize SMYAL and other awardees and their work on July 3 at the Washington National Cathedral as part of a special interfaith service marking the U.S. 250th anniversary.
“The Courage Project is a bold initiative honoring everyday acts of bravery – the quiet, often unseen acts of heroism that reflect the best of the American spirit and strengthen democracy at the community level,” the project states on its website.
Delaware
Delaware approves amendment protecting same-sex marriage
Measure must pass second vote in next year’s session
The Delaware General Assembly passed Senate Substitute 2 for Senate Bill 100 on the last day of the legislative session on Tuesday after being rescinded last week.
Senate Substitute 2 for Senate Bill 100 (SB-100) passed with 28 ‘yes’ votes, meeting the two-thirds threshold required for the bill to pass. Tuesday was the last day of the 153rd General Assembly.
The amendment would enshrine the right to same-sex and interracial marriage in the Delaware Constitution.
SB-100 was rescinded last week after it did not receive enough votes to pass. Democrats were short by three votes, with two Democratic members missing from the vote.
Rep. Josue Ortega (D-03) voted ‘no’ on SB-100 and Rep. Medinah Anton-Wilson (D-27) did not vote. However, both members voted ‘yes’ for Senate Substitute 2 for SB-100 on Tuesday.
Prime sponsor of SB 100, Rep. Claire Snyder-Hall (D-14), made the technical decision to change her vote last week from a ‘yes’ to a ‘no’ at the last minute to keep the bill alive.
Additionally, Republican Assemblyman Michael Smith (R-22) joined the Democrats with a ‘yes’ vote after voting ‘no’ on SB-100 last week.
In order for SB 100 to be enshrined into the state Constitution, it must be passed by two consecutive General Assemblies. Thus, the amendment will not be officially added to the Constitution unless it passes in the 154th General Assembly next year.
Rep. Snyder-Hall introduced the measure earlier this week.
“Just one week ago, we failed to pass this legislation. We failed the people of Delaware. But today, on the final day of the legislative session, the 153rd General Assembly affirmed that every Delawarean has the fundamental right to marry the person they love, regardless of race or gender,” said Snyder-Hall.
“Thank you to my colleagues for recognizing that the right to marry is a right worthy of protection and for voting yes on this important constitutional amendment.”
As Washington shifts right, Democratic Socialists gain ground
Susan Stewart could make history as Rehoboth’s first openly gay mayor
Silky Nutmeg Ganache talks sex and dating, gender, politics, weight loss journey
Madonna roundup: Reviews, sales, and love for ‘Danceteria’
Three overlooked court rulings limited White House anti-trans policies
‘Transcendent’ a tough but important read
‘My Favorite Sociopath’ debuts at Shepherdstown’s CATF
Under-the-radar Delaware beach towns smart buyers are targeting
In Trump’s divided America, Michael Weinstein’s AHF responds
