Local
Obstacles in the aisle
Local couple overcomes adversity, enters Crate & Barrel wedding contest
Washington residents Jonathan Howard (left) and Gregory Jones are hoping to strike it big in a Crate & Barrel-sponsored wedding contest. (Photos by Heather Lyons; courtesy of Howard and Jones)
It began as little more than a lark, but a Washington gay couple entered a Crate & Barrel wedding contest and have been shocked to find friends and allies have catapulted them to the top of a huge list of nearly 200 couples hoping to nab the top prize of a $100,000 company-sponsored wedding.
Jonathan Howard, who’s 29 and just 11 days younger than his partner, Gregory Jones, discovered the contest in a Crate & Barrel e-mail. They moved to D.C. together in 2008 and got engaged in October when Howard popped the question. They’re planning to take advantage of the District’s new same-sex marriage law, which went into effect this week, but having an extra $100,000 would obviously sweeten the deal.
Howard and Jones were in second place as of press time with 5,906 votes. They’d previously been in the lead. A Chicago police officer who was paralyzed in the line of duty, Densey Cole, is in first place with Mary Cole with 10,677 votes, but they may be disqualified — they’re already married, having wed in the hospital when he awoke from a coma following the May 2009 accident. They’re hoping for an ocean-side ceremony to renew their vows. The rules state couples entering the contest must be engaged.
Howard says it would be amazing if they win.
“It would be great for us but more than that for the community to really say, ‘Hey, we’re a normal couple and we’re getting married and it doesn’t matter if it’s two men,'” Howard says. “This company is supporting us and it’s a great story, it’s a great step for marriage equality but in a completely different venue, not political at all. I would be shocked and amazed and overwhelmed and overjoyed and it would be just great for everybody involved.”
So how did these two average Joes convince nearly 6,000 people to vote for them? A lot of it stems from a tragedy they only hinted at in their 100-word online bio. Howard made a lot of friends and contacts in the gay community following an August 2008 hate crime attack. He and three friends were in Boston, where he went to college and lived at the time, when it happened.
“We were walking home and a group of four guys pulled up to us in a car,” Howard says. “I turned around to see what the commotion was and the last thing I remember is hearing, ‘Die, faggot, die,’ as they stomped my head into the pavement.”
Howard says he’s lucky he wasn’t seriously hurt in the attack. His attacker, Fabio Brandao, eventually pleaded guilty but received a two-year suspended sentence that let him get by without any jail time, an outrage, Howard says.
He met hundreds of gay activists and friends after the attack and was friends with many of them on Facebook. When they heard he and Jones were soliciting votes, they rallied in support. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation wrote about the couple spurring more votes and Jones’ brother’s fiance in Chicago, Katie Lindner, went on a mini-crusade of sorts helping them get the word out. She’s working on a graduate degree in Chicago on new media and says the Facebook phenomenon is fascinating to observe.
“People kind of think of [Facebook] as this thing that doesn’t seem important, that wastes your time and fills your day, but it gives me chills to see how much support there’s been for them,” Lindner says. “It’s bigger than any one individual could achieve.”
“I think people see our story as a nightmare with a fairy tale ending,” Jones says. “We went through this horrible thing together and it made us better, stronger people and brought us closer to each other.”
Though the votes are important, it will ultimately be up to a panel of judges to decide who wins. Several prizewinners will be selected from among the top 50 vote getters by Crate & Barrel employees.
Is it realistic to hope the company might select a gay couple for one of the top prizes, even the $100,000 grand prize? Vickie Lang, manager of public relations and community affairs for Crate & Barrel, says it’s certainly possible and that the gay-friendly company is open to it.
“Ultimately our role is to be a resource to any couple celebrating a wedding, a commitment ceremony or any of that,” Lang says. “As part of that, we’re celebrating inclusiveness and we’re excited about that. … We’re looking for couples who really reflect the Crate & Barrel lifestyle, whether they’re same-sex couples or heterosexual couples.”
And just what is the “lifestyle”? Lang mentions “Timeless, classic, high quality, clean, vibrant and comfortable — things for a warm, approachable lifestyle.”
There’s been an ugly side to the contest, though. Anonymous Chicago blogger Detective Shaved Longcock, who knows and supports the Coles, wrote in comments that have since been removed from his blog: “A gay couple is giving Densey and Mary Cole a run for their money? Let’s really get the vote out for one of our own. … I am not politically correct and never will be. Period! I am not going to let this fruit loop couple beat one of our own!”
That posting inspired a litany of anti-gay anonymous posts against Howard and Jones including, “these are all guys who can’t please a woman,” “faggots deserve to die,” “Homos are as sick as child molesters and rapists,” “I hope they all catch HIV,” and more.
But there’s also been an upside. Jones says he’s heard from people who harassed him with anti-gay slurs in school who’ve now voted for he and Howard to win. One even apologized.
“I can’t even put it into words,” Jones says. “It’s a warm and amazing feeling.”
A handful of other same-sex couples are also in the contest. One couple, Ed and Erwin, who have two adopted sons, are facing Erwin’s terminal lung cancer and hope to wed before he dies. They have more than 1,000 votes.
If they win, Howard and Jones would like to wed on their anniversary — Oct. 10 (10/10/10). If not, they’ll likely bump to April 2011.
Regardless of how it turns out, they’re happy to have found each other and thrilled that they can marry in Washington.
“It is so affirming that this is our nation’s capital and this happening right here around people making our rights, laws and liberties,” Jones says. “It also makes a huge statement that Congress had the ability to veto this and they did not. It sends a really positive message that this needs to be accepted and that we are equal and deserve every right that every other couple in this country deserves.”
To vote, go to www.ultimateweddingcontest.com and register an e-mail address. Howard and Jones are couple number 22682.
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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