Clad in a champagne-colored Victorian wedding gown with a mauve, tiered bustle, Cara Hanes circled her betrothed seven times, giggling during the last go-round because she was getting dizzy.
A few minutes later, after poems were read, after their ketubah, or marriage document, was shared with the 70 family members and friends who attended and after the blessings were cited that are components of a traditional Jewish wedding, the groom, Faye Foltz, stomped a cloth-covered glass that marks the end of the ceremony.
Faye then led her bride down the aisle.
The ceremony was a milestone for the couple who some four years ago went on a date that never ended.
Faye quipped that they’d virtually lived up to a popular joke about lesbians where the third date is marked by the appearance of a U-Haul (with cohabitation immediately following). Very quickly, they had become Faye-and-Cara to those who knew them.
But despite their closeness, the prospects that they would stand before their friends to formally declare their love were slim, Cara said.
“I felt like it didn’t make any sense for gay people to get `married,’ ” she said. “It was something that, as a gay person, you don’t do.”
But gay people have been getting “married” in commitment ceremonies such as Cara and Faye’s–sometimes called holy unions–for decades. They have done so without governmental recognition, sometimes without family approval, and often without friendly nods from those in church hierarchies.
No one knows how many gay couples exchange vows each year because no records are kept, no licenses are filed. Churches do not report how many such couples they have united, and many ceremonies do not take place in churches anyway.
But those who do undergo such unions say they do so with the same romantic seriousness as their heterosexual counterparts, even if their wedding gifts will not include tax breaks and other benefits.
Everybody loves a wedding
Mary Becker, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said she didn’t realize how important the ceremony was until she “married” her partner, Joanne Trapani, last September.
“Rituals are really important to human beings,” Becker said. “They are important to the couple for the sense of security and mutual commitment they give. And they allow families to show how supportive they are.”
Becker, a former nun who in 1967 left the order at age 21 when she found herself drawn to the social changes taking place in the world, said all of her and Trapani’s closest relatives attended their ceremony.
And their union, held in a small nondenominational chapel, was conducted by a Roman Catholic archdiocesan priest, she said.
Toni Carrigan, who works for Horizons Community Services, the Midwest’s largest provider of social services, counseling, information, advocacy and education to lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgendered people and their families, said she has been to seven commitment ceremonies in San Francisco and Chicago in the last nine years.
She’s been to a potluck ceremony for a couple who had love but no money; guests provided the food, donated the flowers and did the videotaping, while the couple provided the occasion and the cake.
Another time, she attended a poolside service for two men who eschewed anything traditional. And one of the more touching services, she said, was held at the home of a bride’s parents. Their approval of the woman’s partner was total, but that didn’t keep the bride’s sentimental father from weeping about giving his baby away, Carrigan said.
“People want to create a tradition and to do something similar to what we know our parents did,” Carrigan said. “And being `queer’ doesn’t mean you can’t be spiritual or as interested in nesting as anyone else.”
Steve Lobatz, a Chicago-area United Methodist clergyman, said he is planning a commitment ceremony for two men in June who are about to adopt a child. “They want to make sure they’re married before the child arrives,” Lobatz said.
And Pastor Jeff Doane of the Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church is one of three ministers who soon will perform a covenant ceremony for two female church elders, one from his congregation and one from the First United Church of Oak Park.
Doane said he performed a ceremony last fall that joined a man from his congregation with a man of the Greek Orthodox faith. The priest from the Greek Orthodox Church was prohibited by his superiors from performing the ceremony, but he did attend, Doane said.
“It is one of the less common, but amazingly powerful, worship opportunities, yet I don’t find my professional colleagues talking about this,” Doane said. “When you have an opportunity to stand with people and lead a service that celebrates their relationship and their love, it’s an amazing gift.”
Ceremonies go on
Attorneys for the Marriage Project of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said the question of whether such ceremonies will become legally binding in parts of the U.S. could be answered within the next year.
Last December, a Hawaii Circuit Court judge ruled that attorneys for the state had failed to show any compelling reason for a ban on gay and lesbian unions and ordered the state to stop denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The case is pending before the Hawaii Supreme Court, said Evan Wolfson, director of Lambda’s Marriage Project, which litigated the case on behalf of the couples.
Last year, 16 states, including Illinois, adopted defense-of-marriage legislation that bars the states from legally recognizing marriages between same-sex couples, Wolfson said. Seven more states have done so this year.
But the ceremonies continue all across the U.S. as couples gather their families and friends to celebrate their love.
Metropolitan Community Churches, a network of congregations created in 1968 by openly gay Pentecostal minister Rev. Troy Perry, have conducted such ceremonies for 29 years, said Cynthia Markard, who works for one of the four local MCC parishes.
“When we first started doing them, we would often get calls from people saying, `Please, please can you send (a clergyperson) to Clark and Diversey right now?’ ” Markard, of Oak Park’s MCC of the Incarnation, recalled.
The phone callers, who had been raised in traditional households, mistakenly thought they needed a religious service before they could be intimate. She said she repeatedly told those early callers that the church blesses unions that already exist and not those on the verge of occurring.
“I prefer to do them for members of the church,” said Rev. Wayne Bradley, of the MCC’s Good Shepherd Parish on the North Side. “It is a religious ceremony. If people are not members of any church anywhere, why come to a church for the ceremony?”
`In it for the long haul’
Rabbi Suzanne Griffel, acting director of the Hillel Center at the University of Chicago, said Faye and Cara’s ceremony was the first commitment ceremony she has conducted.
The ceremony, she said, was close in many ways to a traditional ceremony, but it did not conform to Jewish law, or halacha, which states marriages only may be contracted between a man and a woman.
For Faye, who wore a yarmulke and a prayer shawl over her tuxedo, getting to the altar was a challenge. She said that she had proposed to Cara three times only to be turned down because Cara didn’t feel the need to marry.
“I knew I was in love with her very early on in the relationship because Cara was like a part of me,” she said. “I thought I’m in it for the long haul. But what did hold us back for a long time was the difference in our religious backgrounds.”
Faye was a Methodist. But Cara’s interest in Judaism recently had been rekindled when she went to services at Congregation Or Chadash, a gay and lesbian congregation that meets at the Second Unitarian Church in Lake View. There she heard a rabbi discuss how important life events, like marriage, should be observed among gay congregants.
After considering the matter, Cara said she asked Faye if she would marry her in a real Jewish wedding. She even dropped to her knees to propose.
Faye accepted, and after some thought, she surprised Cara with her decision to convert to Judaism.
Griffel helped Faye convert and agreed to marry them in a formal ceremony.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Cara’s mother, Carol Langdon, of Bloomington, Ind., said after the ceremony. “I love Faye. I think Faye has been a wonderful influence on Cara and I’m thrilled they will be together forever.”
Cara’s sister and other relatives also attended.
Faye’s sister attended, but her mother, who lives out-of-state, did not.
“She’s not dealing well with my converting to Judaism,” Faye said. “That’s the block. But I already know I have her love and support and that’s good enough for me.”
The Victorian clothes were a perk because they both have a love of costuming.
The local MCCs said they do between 10 and 15 services per year. Rev. Bradley, who said the ratio of gay marriages he performs averages out to three lesbian couples to every male one, says he’s not sure why lesbians seem to outnumber men at the altar.
He wondered if it has to do with the image many girls are weaned on of being a bride someday–while boys don’t necessarily grow up with the idea of becoming grooms.
Pastors from many denominations reported receiving numerous calls from couples seeking information about the ceremonies, but few couples follow through and schedule the events.
Opinions vary on why. Some pastors believe couples experience second thoughts when they learn they will have to undergo counseling to ensure their ideas of commitment match. Others question whether most gays and lesbians feel they need ceremonies to declare their love. Some think gays are angered by the official pronouncements of various churches on the matter, and others posit that couples may be waiting until gay marriage is legal someplace in America.
Faye and Cara said they were not concerned about the legality of their union or that some people might disapprove.
“I feel like our relationship has an incredible weight to it now,” Cara said a week after the ceremony. “It was worth every moment. If you know you’re ready for it, it’s a phenomenal feeling.”
