<!-- START article -->
Revelers celebrate in Manhattan's west village following the
passing of the same …
Revelers celebrate in front of the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan's
west village following …
NEW YORK (AP) — As the news flashed around the globe that New
York state had legalized gay marriage, New York fashion designer
Malcolm Harris didn't waste any time. He dashed off a Twitter
message to his boyfriend of nine years: "'Will you marry me?"
A city away, in Boston, Bernadette Smith decided to immediately
relocate her business planning gay weddings to New York City.
In Brooklyn, pastors Ann Kansfield and Jennifer Aull received
their first two requests to wed gay couples at their church in the
borough's Greenpoint section. They scheduled one for Labor Day
weekend.
Even as supporters of gay marriage celebrated victory in New
York on Saturday, preparations were being made to make gay weddings
a reality in the state.
Couples who had talked about going out-of-state to wed changed
their plans. Reception venues got their first calls. Churches that
accept gay unions said they were looking forward to hosting
ceremonies.
After a lifetime of waiting, there was a sense of urgency.
The law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo late Friday night doesn't
take effect for 30 days, but Harris — who got a "yes" to his
Twitter proposal — said he and fiancé K. Tyson Perez planned to get
a marriage license right away, wed on paper, and then have a
blowout reception in six months.
"I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him," Harris
said.
"This is going to be as traditional as it gets. We're going to
do it at the Four Seasons, a place that is like gay church to me,"
he added about the atmospheric restaurant where he planned to hold
the event.
The law passed amid opposition from the largest and most
influential religious groups in the state, but in New York City, at
least, there were still an ample number of churches that have
already said they would happily officiate a gay marriage
ceremony.
The Rev. Stephen H. Phelps, senior minister at the Riverside
Church, in Manhattan, said he was looking forward to replacing the
commitment ceremonies that have been done there for years with
something state-sanctioned.
"I think it is an occasion for members of our society who have
been burned by narrow-minded religion to see that it doesn't have
to be that way," he said.
At a gay pride celebration in Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park, the
Rev. Joseph Tolton of the Rehoboth Temple Christ Conscious Church,
a Pentecostal congregation that is predominantly gay, said he
couldn't wait to start.
"I'm going to be very busy on Saturdays," he said.
Congregants Yvonne Lindesay, 55, and her partner Elaine
Livingston, 62, said they're planning to get married after living
together for two years, after watching the results of New York's
critical Senate vote on television Friday night.
"I cried. Our phone was ringing off the hook — from straight
people too," Lindesay said.
Smith, who founded a gay wedding planning business in
Massachusetts after it legalized gay marriage, said she had been
hoping to relocate to New York for some time, and had already begun
laying the groundwork to establish a New York officer for her
company, 14 Stories, in anticipation of the vote."
The move is partly a matter of survival, she said. Over seven
years, her client list has been dominated by people traveling to
Massachusetts from elsewhere to wed — a type of tourism that may
now shift to the Big Apple.
"I was supposed to have a gay wedding today with a gay couple
from New York," she said. "They were a no-show. Of course, for a
good reason."
She said New York has quite a set of parties to look forward
to.
"The weddings are incredible," she said. "I think maybe because
there is a lot of pent up anticipation ... It's really about
appreciating and savoring the legality of it. Because some couples
have literally been waiting for years and years. To be around that
energy, where they are not taking a thing for granted ... there's
usually not a dry eye in the room."
At the Greenpoint Reformed Church, Aull said she and co-pastor
Kansfield, who got married themselves in Massachusetts years ago,
have presided over same-sex unions before. But she expects there
will be something different, more joyous, about being able to do it
legally at home.
"There is always a little bit of a bittersweet aspect when you
are doing a marriage, and there is a sense that it is not
recognized by anyone," she said.
___