Thursday, March 19, 2009

Gay Wedding Attracts Many to Berkshires

Do two men dare do this on the Ashtuwilticook Trail?
LENOX, Mass., June 16. -- This has been a gay week in Lenox on account of the Post-Adams marriage. Many young people who came up to the wedding have been members of various house parties, and informal dances and dinners galore have been given to them. Among those who have had house parties this week are George H. Morgan, William D. Sloane, Dr. Greenleaf, and Anson Phelps Stokes.

That was from the New York Times Archives of June 16, 1894. And today, as then, lesbian and gay weddings are routinely celebrated throughout Massachusetts, where they are legal and accepted. But can you think of any recent gay weddings in the Berkshires? Has the Berkshire Eagle or North Adams Transcript run any news of gay events, gay activities?
The Berkshires supposedly welcomes gays and lesbians. Yet try to find the word lesbian or gay anywhere on the thousands of Berkshire promotional materials.

Gays and lesbians in the Berkshires are still harassed by Jack Murphy whose hateful screeds are happily published, among others, by the weekly Advocate, the same basic vitriol he wrote the last time, and the time before that.

Are the Berkshires gay welcoming, or just the one place in Massachusetts you can't find a gay bar.

These and other questions will be explored in the weeks and months ahead. Your comments, opinions and insights are requested. Let's air out the Berkshires closet and deal with the dirty linen.

So, if you wanted to get married in the Berkshires, who would get your business, who would do the reception, where would your guests stay?

1 comment:

Nidhi said...

You raise a really good point. I help out with marketing at the Winthrop Estare which is a wedding venue in the Berkshires. how would you suggest we go about making ourselves more pro-gay weddings? Explicitly list it on our website? Google tags? Hmmm I'll see if I can update it today.