Let's Do A Gay Nevada Tourism Story Without Any Gay American Tourists!

I've got a lot to do today to prep for tonight's show and to finish up a long-overdue NYT piece, but I needed to address this.

There's a woefully incomplete piece by Richard Lake in the Review-Journal today that addresses the loss of income to the state caused by the ban on gay marriage. Gee, I wonder where they got THAT idea from? Except that a lot is missing from this story, including comments from, say, anybody in the resort industry or the local gay community, any acknowledgment that almost every major hotel-casino performs non-legal same-sex weddings these days and aggressively advertises same (he made it sound like a gay-friendly chapel is rare) or any discussion of how that industry is making a play for the gay California honeymoon market.

Oh, and Lake errs in saying that American gay couples can go to Massachusetts to wed; the Bay State has a 1913 law on its books that for four years has been used to ban out-of-state gay couples from doing so. That may change, actually, this week, as the state's Senate already reversed it and the House is debating it today.

That's what you get for writing a piece about gay rights in Nevada without speaking to any gay Nevadans. Hell, Lake didn't quote any gay Americans or gay activists at all! The entire backbone of this story was a pair of lesbians who were entirely, completely irrelevant to the discussion of what Nevada is missing out on by having chosen to "protect the sanctity of marriage" that Nevada has been so adept at protecting for all these years. Why irrelevant? They're from Canada. They had absolutely no intention of coming to Vegas for a wedding. They can get married anywhere in their own country. They decided to do it here because one caught Tina's bouquet. Those aren't the people that would bring big money to the tourism market here were same-sex marriages legal.

No, the big money that Vegas is losing is from couples in U.S. states where they cannot legally wed. Those folks are flocking to California to do it but might have flocked to Vegas if Vegas were ahead of the curve. I doubt highly that Canadians, capable of having weddings in their own cities with their families and friends and nobody having to travel much are heading to California. It's not logical.

Bad piece. Missed opportunity. End of screed.

One more important R-J note, though: This was the second day this week without a stand-alone Living section. The entertainment news took up two pages that are normally devoted to Nevada and western U.S. news, the advice columns and puzzles are in the Business section. And the comics have always been a moving target, so they don't matter so much. Before this week, Saturday was the only day that had no separate Living Section. I suspect the Wednesday Living section on food will endure, but clearly the newspaper is shrinking before our very eyes. No word on layoffs, though. Yet.

Vegas Left BIG Gay $$$ On The Table

So the California Supremes have mandated today that gay couples must be allowed to marry, too. Not civil-union, but marry. No, Miles and I are not heading to glamorous Barstow or Needles any time soon, seeing how we wouldn't be able to take out newfound rights back with us to Vegas.

BUT. It was just a few hours after the ruling that the Wyndham Orange County put out a press release offering 50 percent off to the first 50 gay couples who book their weddings and receptions at the hotel and hold it by the end of 2008.

Here's what Tom Smalley, the general manager, said in a press release: "When we launched our same sex commitment ceremonies at the hotel last year, this was day I was waiting for. Today’s ruling brings to life this vision for supporting same-sex couples in Southern California, who want to be able to publicly and legally exchange their vows."

Yes, it's crass commercialism and opportunism. But that's just the point. Bring on all the crass commercialism and opportunism you can afford! When Nevada hypocrites decided earlier this decade to constitutionally ban same-sex nuptials after decades of symbolizing forces that conspire to defeat sanctity of marriage, they probably cost the state many, many millions of dollars in tourism revenues.

In fact, I'm going to do a little work on this question and see if there's someone who can give me even a vague estimate of how much money was lost. But I suspect the Vegas casino bosses who, a brutal economic downturn, must now watch a massive stream of gay-marriage tourists flood California -- even if it's legally meaningless from whence they came -- are wondering how the supposedly live-and-let-live voters of the Silver State got this one so darn wrong.

Perhaps it's just that they didn't flood the airwaves in 2000 and 2002 when the referendum was pending urging folks to defeat it on grounds not that it was a civil-rights atrocity but that it was economically stupid?

Just a thought.

Brian Williams Loves Me, Tho

This little flap arose today. Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, finished last night's newscast with a piece on Queen Elizabeth II's 60th wedding anniversary by saying something like, "In an era when marriage is under attack...". You can see a shaky YouTube version here.

Some gay bloggers and fellow members of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association pointed to it as a reference to the same-sex marriage movement. It's not that farfetched because "under attack" is a phrase used routinely by anti-gay activists.

But in this context, it seemed to me like something else. So I wrote on the NLGJA list-serv: "It seemed to me he was talking about the sky-high heterosexual divorce rates. Marriage IS under attack -- by straight people. This was a story about a surprisingly durable straight relationship. It had nothing to do with the gay marriage movement."

And Brian Williams responded tonight on his blog. And he quoted... ummm... me!

The Congresswoman Sends Her Love

We awaken in a lovely suite at the Garden Gate B&B in Palmer, Alaska, with views of glaciers and a gas fireplace and the sense that everything is perfect. We are together, we are happy, we are marveling over our beautiful Tiffany Atlas wedding bands.

And then, a little more icing: A voice message left this morning by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. She was calling in from her Washington D.C. office to congratulate us on our wedding and to say that she had read my piece in CityLife all about our difficult search for a rabbi.

The conclusion of that piece, of course, was that we discovered Rabbi Mel Hecht, who performed his first same-sex wedding on Sunday for us and spoke movingly during the ceremony about the epiphany that he had about the equality of gay and straight relationships.

The congresswoman told us in the message that she "wasn't surprised in the least" that Rabbi Hecht had done the ceremony and that "if you had called to ask me, he is the one I would have told you to get in touch with." I hadn't even considered asking the congresswoman for such advice, but she always has seemed to us to be a full-service representative!

Berkley concluded her exuberant (Berkley and exuberant are redundant terms, actually) message by saying she would be sending a donation to Temple Beth Am in our honor to show the rabbi her support for his decision to officiate our marriage.

Berkley, who has appeared for us at several fundraisers for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and came on "The Strip" podcast in February 2006 to speak openly about her cosmetic surgery among other matters, is a fascinatingly genuine politician in these days of phonies.

I do wonder, though, if Berkley's position on legalizing same-sex marriage has changed. In 2004, I quizzed her about it while we were standing around at the Democratic caucuses and she said she supported full rights for same-sex couples but not "marriage." I imagine that's a political hair-splitting thing that's sort of unlike her and that, sooner or later -- perhaps already -- she'd come over to the full-on marriage-rights side.

Easy Like Sunday Morning...

...or Going To The Chapel... whichever. It feels somehow just any old Sunday. Miles is reading the paper in the recliner, I'm in bed on the laptop. There is a surreal zen that has come over us as we plod to the altar in...uh...seven hours?!?!

There isn't really much to do. We don't know which suite we're having our wedding in nor what time we'll be able to get into it yet, so until that the speed of the day is unclear. There is virtually nothing left to do except that Miles must go to pick up the cake and we need to go over the checklist again to make sure we've got all the things we need. We've got some terrific little details planned.

Yesterday was pretty great, seeing our family for dinner at Aureole at Mandalay Bay, one of my very favorite restaurants ever. They took amazing care of us, especially my mom who has a list of food allergies and Miles' stepdad, a vegetarian. It was such a great meal that my parents and sister and bro-in-law decided to miss the first 20 minutes of Barry Manilow to stay and enjoy dessert.

Mostly, though, I'm stunned at how confident and happy I feel. The nervousness has all been about executing the plans, it turns out. Now that it all is unfolding with minimal blips (my oldest sister's a no-show because her son is really sick, and that's a bummer), I realize that despite the fact that I've been married before and that that was a disastrous mistake, I have no real fear that I might be making another mistake. I have learned, I have grown and I am a pretty different man since that last time out in 1999.

And so...here we go. Wish us luck!

My big fat gay wedding essay

Actually, I have a lot more to write and hope to find a place to write it after it's all over and done with, but here's the piece I wrote about our troubles finding a rabbi here in Las Vegas to officiate in our wedding this Sunday.

Out of curiosity, which of these two poses is better?