Re: g_b Here Comes The Bride...... And The Bride
Really Good Article. I am so excited that I am getting married to my partner. I met Josh 2 years ago and finally we decided to tie the knot early this year (after he proposed to me). The D-Day is in August in Sydney. Looking forward to it. My parents are flying down from Mumbai. Cheers, Rahul. naughty confessions [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here Comes The Bride.. And The Bride By: Kavita Chhibber The gray cat dozes contentedly on a bench in the afternoon sun as Arvind Kumar, his head shaded by a floppy blue hat, plucks weeds from his garden. Upstairs in the San Jose home they have shared together for over a decade, Ashok Jethanandani is enjoying his Sunday siesta. It's a scene of cozy, almost Normal Rockwellesque Americana. But in it lie the seeds of a domestic revolution that has caught the attention of everyone, including the White House. Ashok and Arvind are gay. They have the house, the cats, the twin Toyotas, the joint bank account and the Costco shopping card. Now they would like to get married. Ashok Jethanandani and Arvind Kumar just got an email from the city of San Fransisco cancelling their April 30 marriage appointment. On Friday, Feb. 20, Ashok and Arvind rose at 5:30 am and drove an hour to San Francisco to do just that. When they reached City Hall, there were already some 300 couples ahead of them in line. Around noon they realized it was futile. But Ashok has no regrets. It was so festive. So many people were rooting for us. Even the garbage truck went by and honked its support. Though they came home empty handed that day, Ashok, editor of India Currents magazine, found on their doorstep a huge bouquet of flowers and a card from all his co-workers. It was completely unexpected, says Ashok. I hand't really given them any warning. The weekend before when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom set the nation abuzz by instructing City Hall to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Mala Nagarajan and Vega Subramaniam were visiting Mala's sister in San Francisco from Seattle. They watched the excitement but decided not to be a part of it. They had already had their own wedding ceremony at their home in Washington in 2002, what they laughingly call perhaps the first lesbian Hindu wedding in America! Personally I would rather have the state be out of our personal relationship, says Vega. For me the most important thing was to have a ceremony with our loved ones. We were not sure we wanted to take the legal step. But within a month the repercussions from San Francisco had reached Seattle. On March 8, the Northwest Women's Law Center and Lambda Legal Defense Education Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of six gay and lesbian couples who were denied marriage licenses. One of the couples was Mala and Vega. We wanted to help get the right to choose whether or not to get married. We wanted people to be able to bring their partners over (from another country) and have access to health care benefits, says Mala. A decade ago, few lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) Indians were visible in the United States. though major cities like San Francisco and New York had organizations like Trikone and SALGA. While mainstream gay America was fighting about the right to serve in the military or job discrimination, LGBT South Asians were grappling with issues of coming out and marriage. Now as America wrestles with the idea of same-sex marriage, LGBT desis find their Number One issue is suddenly headline news. Yatin Chawathe married his boyfriend of five years Thomas Zambito III in Seattle this FebruarySamina Ali can relate to this desi preoccupation with marriage. The San Francisco writer entered into an arranged marriage 13 years ago with a man who turned out to be gay. In Western culture, children grow up, leave the home, have lovers, get married or not; in the end, a person's life belongs to him/her, says the author of Madras on Rainy Days. In India, children's lives belong to their parents, to their community. So the idea of a person having the freedom to declare his/her homosexuality and then getting married to a person of the same sex seems almost unbelievable. But that was what happened to Aditya Advani. When he came out his mother suggested running a matrimonial in the Hindustan Times looking for a husband. I think Indians can understand marriage, even same-sex marriage, more easily than singledom, says Aditya, a landscape architect in Berkeley. In 1993 when he took his partner Michael Tarr home to New Delhi, he resisted going to yet another family wedding. No one is ever going to come to my wedding, he complained. His mother thought for a moment and then said, Why not? We could have a ceremony for you and Michael. Swami Bodhananda, the family's spiritual mentor, presided over the ceremony dedicating it to Ayyappa, son of
g_b Here Comes The Bride...... And The Bride
Here Comes The Bride.. And The Bride By: Kavita Chhibber The gray cat dozes contentedly on a bench in the afternoon sun as Arvind Kumar, his head shaded by a floppy blue hat, plucks weeds from his garden. Upstairs in the San Jose home they have shared together for over a decade, Ashok Jethanandani is enjoying his Sunday siesta. It's a scene of cozy, almost Normal Rockwellesque Americana. But in it lie the seeds of a domestic revolution that has caught the attention of everyone, including the White House. Ashok and Arvind are gay. They have the house, the cats, the twin Toyotas, the joint bank account and the Costco shopping card. Now they would like to get married. Ashok Jethanandani and Arvind Kumar just got an email from the city of San Fransisco cancelling their April 30 marriage appointment. On Friday, Feb. 20, Ashok and Arvind rose at 5:30 am and drove an hour to San Francisco to do just that. When they reached City Hall, there were already some 300 couples ahead of them in line. Around noon they realized it was futile. But Ashok has no regrets. It was so festive. So many people were rooting for us. Even the garbage truck went by and honked its support. Though they came home empty handed that day, Ashok, editor of India Currents magazine, found on their doorstep a huge bouquet of flowers and a card from all his co-workers. It was completely unexpected, says Ashok. I hand't really given them any warning. The weekend before when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom set the nation abuzz by instructing City Hall to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Mala Nagarajan and Vega Subramaniam were visiting Mala's sister in San Francisco from Seattle. They watched the excitement but decided not to be a part of it. They had already had their own wedding ceremony at their home in Washington in 2002, what they laughingly call perhaps the first lesbian Hindu wedding in America! Personally I would rather have the state be out of our personal relationship, says Vega. For me the most important thing was to have a ceremony with our loved ones. We were not sure we wanted to take the legal step. But within a month the repercussions from San Francisco had reached Seattle. On March 8, the Northwest Women's Law Center and Lambda Legal Defense Education Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of six gay and lesbian couples who were denied marriage licenses. One of the couples was Mala and Vega. We wanted to help get the right to choose whether or not to get married. We wanted people to be able to bring their partners over (from another country) and have access to health care benefits, says Mala. A decade ago, few lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) Indians were visible in the United States. though major cities like San Francisco and New York had organizations like Trikone and SALGA. While mainstream gay America was fighting about the right to serve in the military or job discrimination, LGBT South Asians were grappling with issues of coming out and marriage. Now as America wrestles with the idea of same-sex marriage, LGBT desis find their Number One issue is suddenly headline news. Yatin Chawathe married his boyfriend of five years Thomas Zambito III in Seattle this FebruarySamina Ali can relate to this desi preoccupation with marriage. The San Francisco writer entered into an arranged marriage 13 years ago with a man who turned out to be gay. In Western culture, children grow up, leave the home, have lovers, get married or not; in the end, a person's life belongs to him/her, says the author of Madras on Rainy Days. In India, children's lives belong to their parents, to their community. So the idea of a person having the freedom to declare his/her homosexuality and then getting married to a person of the same sex seems almost unbelievable. But that was what happened to Aditya Advani. When he came out his mother suggested running a matrimonial in the Hindustan Times looking for a husband. I think Indians can understand marriage, even same-sex marriage, more easily than singledom, says Aditya, a landscape architect in Berkeley. In 1993 when he took his partner Michael Tarr home to New Delhi, he resisted going to yet another family wedding. No one is ever going to come to my wedding, he complained. His mother thought for a moment and then said, Why not? We could have a ceremony for you and Michael. Swami Bodhananda, the family's spiritual mentor, presided over the ceremony dedicating it to Ayyappa, son of an unusual union between two male gods, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva. I couldn't believe my luck, hreflects Aditya. Openly gay and married in my parents' drawing room at the age of thirty. Right on schedule as a good Indian boy should be. Not everyone's mother is quite so understanding. My father and brother were excited because Mala is so likeable, says Vega. But my mother
