When Luke Carine treated Zak Tomlinson to a KFC in Douglas for their first date in 2010, he had no idea that six years later, they would be making history. Yesterday, wearing matching grey suits and blue cravats, trailed by four men-maids, the opthalmic scientists became the first same-sex couple to get married on the Isle of Man. Pronounced husband and husband, they began married life by walking down the aisle to Etta James’s At Last and on to a reception that included a bucking bronco.
With equal marriage now on the statute books in many western countries, two loved-up young men getting hitched on a little windswept island in the Irish Sea might not raise many eyebrows. But when 26-year-old Carine was born on the Isle of Man, gay sex was punishable by life imprisonment. It wasn’t until 1992 that homosexuality was decriminalised, after a campaign by a few tenacious local politicians and the queer pressure group Outrage!
Local activist Alan Shea bore the brunt of the hatred and bigotry that reigned on the island in those days. In 1991, backed by Outrage!, he dressed up as a concentration camp inmate to attend Tynwald Day, a Manx national holiday when ordinary citizens are allowed to present a “petition for redress” to Tynwald, the island’s parliament. He customised a pair of striped Marks & Spencer pyjamas with the pink triangle used in the Nazi camps to mark out gay people, felt-tipped with the Isle of Man’s three-legged symbol. Below that he printed a “prisoner number”, which was actually the government’s phone number.
A video taken by Outrage! showed soldiers hissing at Shea as he walked to Tynwald Hill to argue that he should not face life in jail just for having sex with his partner, Stephen Moore. On camera, a furious man denounced Shea and his friends as “bum-blasters” as local children looked on with interest. Shea and Moore showed me the footage last year when I went to visit them in their Douglas townhouse, recalling how, just a few decades ago, undercover police would monitor everyone who came and went from their home. The pyjamas are now housed in the Manx museum as a historical artefact, they told me proudly.
We discussed a plan being promoted by the island’s chief minister, Allan Bell, to introduce equal marriage. Civil partnerships had been legal on the Isle of Man since 2011 – Shea and Moore had taken the plunge in 2012 with a big party on Douglas seafront – but they were sceptical that marriage would be open to all any time soon. Happily, they were wrong. Bell, a quietly determined 69-year-old, who announced his retirement from politics last week, decided to make the legalisation of same-sex marriage his legacy. A member of the House of Keys, the Manx equivalent of the House of Commons, since 1984, he and a few others have spent their political careers fighting for LGBT rights.
Sitting in his grand office in Douglas, Bell told me about the “dark days” in which elected politicians made the kind of statements that would be seen as objectionable today. Take the remarks by Mr RE Quine, representing the Ayre constituency, during a debate in 1987 to discuss “provisions to legalise homosexual acts between consenting males in private”.
“I will not give such questionable and such objectionable practices a veneer of legality and respectability,” spluttered Quine, “for it would be the thin edge of the wedge, and I am sure that it will lead to a charter for wimps and perverts to further infect society.” Another member, Mr Kermode, told a cautionary tale from a trip to London with his wife, “where, sat in a picture house in the main centre of London, two fellows were necking behind me”.
Bell was in the chamber that day. History records him remarking that: “There (can) be few more awesome sights in life than bigotry, ignorance and hypocrisy united in moral outrage.”
When I visited the island 28 years later, everyone I spoke to knew that Bell was gay, but told me he would never admit it in public. They were wrong. I asked him if he would like to be able to get married. First, he dodged the question, saying everyone who loved their partner should have the opportunity to marry if they wanted. He looked uncomfortable, and I told him so. Wouldn’t it be progressive if he could talk openly about his own relationship? “People know the situation very clearly. People know that I’m gay. I’ve never made a secret of it, but no one has ever asked me,” he said quietly. When the article came out it made headlines on the island: “Chief minister comes out to UK newspaper.”
Chatting to Carine before his wedding last week, Tomlinson said he was thankful to Bell and Shea for making the island’s first same-sex marriage possible. (Another couple, Marc and Alan Steffan-Cowell, both 26, became the first pair to convert their civil partnership to a marriage, last Monday, but Carine and Tomlinson celebrated the island’s first marriage ceremony.)
Just six years previously, Carine was still dating girls when Tomlinson, then 16, kept on turning up at the petrol station where he worked, “stalking me, basically”. Three months after their KFC dinner, Carine came out to friends and family, who, he said, showed the couple nothing but support. It boggled his mind to think that their love would have been illegal in his own lifetime, and yet there they would be on Saturday, having their first dance to Paolo Nutini’s Loving You.
With equal marriage now on the statute books in many western countries, two loved-up young men getting hitched on a little windswept island in the Irish Sea might not raise many eyebrows. But when 26-year-old Carine was born on the Isle of Man, gay sex was punishable by life imprisonment. It wasn’t until 1992 that homosexuality was decriminalised, after a campaign by a few tenacious local politicians and the queer pressure group Outrage!
Local activist Alan Shea bore the brunt of the hatred and bigotry that reigned on the island in those days. In 1991, backed by Outrage!, he dressed up as a concentration camp inmate to attend Tynwald Day, a Manx national holiday when ordinary citizens are allowed to present a “petition for redress” to Tynwald, the island’s parliament. He customised a pair of striped Marks & Spencer pyjamas with the pink triangle used in the Nazi camps to mark out gay people, felt-tipped with the Isle of Man’s three-legged symbol. Below that he printed a “prisoner number”, which was actually the government’s phone number.
A video taken by Outrage! showed soldiers hissing at Shea as he walked to Tynwald Hill to argue that he should not face life in jail just for having sex with his partner, Stephen Moore. On camera, a furious man denounced Shea and his friends as “bum-blasters” as local children looked on with interest. Shea and Moore showed me the footage last year when I went to visit them in their Douglas townhouse, recalling how, just a few decades ago, undercover police would monitor everyone who came and went from their home. The pyjamas are now housed in the Manx museum as a historical artefact, they told me proudly.
We discussed a plan being promoted by the island’s chief minister, Allan Bell, to introduce equal marriage. Civil partnerships had been legal on the Isle of Man since 2011 – Shea and Moore had taken the plunge in 2012 with a big party on Douglas seafront – but they were sceptical that marriage would be open to all any time soon. Happily, they were wrong. Bell, a quietly determined 69-year-old, who announced his retirement from politics last week, decided to make the legalisation of same-sex marriage his legacy. A member of the House of Keys, the Manx equivalent of the House of Commons, since 1984, he and a few others have spent their political careers fighting for LGBT rights.
Sitting in his grand office in Douglas, Bell told me about the “dark days” in which elected politicians made the kind of statements that would be seen as objectionable today. Take the remarks by Mr RE Quine, representing the Ayre constituency, during a debate in 1987 to discuss “provisions to legalise homosexual acts between consenting males in private”.
“I will not give such questionable and such objectionable practices a veneer of legality and respectability,” spluttered Quine, “for it would be the thin edge of the wedge, and I am sure that it will lead to a charter for wimps and perverts to further infect society.” Another member, Mr Kermode, told a cautionary tale from a trip to London with his wife, “where, sat in a picture house in the main centre of London, two fellows were necking behind me”.
Bell was in the chamber that day. History records him remarking that: “There (can) be few more awesome sights in life than bigotry, ignorance and hypocrisy united in moral outrage.”
When I visited the island 28 years later, everyone I spoke to knew that Bell was gay, but told me he would never admit it in public. They were wrong. I asked him if he would like to be able to get married. First, he dodged the question, saying everyone who loved their partner should have the opportunity to marry if they wanted. He looked uncomfortable, and I told him so. Wouldn’t it be progressive if he could talk openly about his own relationship? “People know the situation very clearly. People know that I’m gay. I’ve never made a secret of it, but no one has ever asked me,” he said quietly. When the article came out it made headlines on the island: “Chief minister comes out to UK newspaper.”
Chatting to Carine before his wedding last week, Tomlinson said he was thankful to Bell and Shea for making the island’s first same-sex marriage possible. (Another couple, Marc and Alan Steffan-Cowell, both 26, became the first pair to convert their civil partnership to a marriage, last Monday, but Carine and Tomlinson celebrated the island’s first marriage ceremony.)
Just six years previously, Carine was still dating girls when Tomlinson, then 16, kept on turning up at the petrol station where he worked, “stalking me, basically”. Three months after their KFC dinner, Carine came out to friends and family, who, he said, showed the couple nothing but support. It boggled his mind to think that their love would have been illegal in his own lifetime, and yet there they would be on Saturday, having their first dance to Paolo Nutini’s Loving You.
Source: theguardian
They helped us put together a great menu, from the consultation to the tasting to the actual event. At wedding venues chicago they had biscuits and gravy, cornbread muffins, fried catfish, jambalaya, enormous pieces of fried chicken
ReplyDelete