Hurray, NY Times

[CT Dick]

Yesterday (9/1), The Times published its first civil union announcement, with photo. They have renamed the section "Weddings / Celebrations."

 

Daniel Andrew Gross (cum laude, Yale) and Steven Goldstein (summa cum laude, Brandeis) went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal for a Jewish ceremony and to North Hero, Vermont for the civil ceremony.

 

Bless them both, and the Times!

 

:D :D

 

Dick

[Guest Les]

The 'old gray lady' isn't so gray any more!

No picture in the internet edition. :-(

 

Daniel Gross and Steven Goldstein

 

Daniel Andrew Gross and Steven Goldstein will affirm their partnership today in a civil union ceremony at the Shore Acres Inn and Restaurant in North Hero, Vt. Assistant Judge Barney Bloom of State Superior Court in Montpelier will preside. Last evening, Rabbi David M. Steinberg led an exchange of Jewish vows at the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal.

 

Mr. Goldstein, 40, is the founder and owner of Attention America, a public affairs consulting firm in Manhattan. He was a co-manager of Jon S. Corzine's campaign in 2000 for the Senate from New Jersey. A summa cum laude graduate of Brandeis, Mr. Goldstein holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard and a master's in journalism and a law degree from Columbia.

 

He is a son of Carole and Dennis Goldstein of Bayside, Queens. His mother is a fund-raiser for the Friends of the Lukas Foundation, which she helped found to support the Lukas Community, a village for adults with developmental disabilities in Temple, N.H. His father is the founder and senior partner of the Barrister Reporting Service, a court transcription concern in Manhattan.

 

Mr. Gross, 32, is a vice president of GE Capital in Stamford, Conn., working on the financing of international projects like power plants and pipelines. He graduated cum laude from Yale, from which he also received an M.B.A. and a master's degree in environmental management. He was a Fulbright scholar in 1994-95 in Thailand, studying and teaching natural resources management at the Asian Institute of Technology near Bangkok.

 

He is a son of Merle and Barry Gross of Chicago. His mother ran Merle Ltd., a former coat manufacturer in Chicago. His father retired as a partner in Shefsky & Froelich, a Chicago law firm.

 

The couple met in October 1992 in Washington, where Mr. Goldstein was working as a television news producer and Mr. Gross as a consultant. Mr. Goldstein was one of 35 respondents to a personal ad that Mr. Gross had placed in Washington City Paper. It read: "Nice Jewish boy, 5 feet 8 inches, 22, funny, well-read, dilettantish, self-deprecating, Ivy League, the kind of boy Mom fantasized about." They arranged to meet one evening at Kramerbooks & Afterwords, and had their second date the next night.

 

That Thanksgiving, Mr. Gross went home to visit his parents. "My mom said, `You seem like everything's great,' " he recalled. " `You seem like you're in love.' I said, `I am.' They said, `That's great.' I said, `His name is Steven.' My mother said, `Oy,' and was silent for a while."

 

Both sets of parents now support the relationship.

 

While Mr. Gross was in Thailand, Mr. Goldstein had a $1,500 telephone bill one month. They were apart again while Mr. Gross was in graduate school. Finally, in 1998, they moved to New York together.

 

They postponed a commitment ceremony until leaders of Reform Judaism had voted to support rabbis who perform same-sex unions and Vermont had given legal recognition to civil unions, both events in 2000.

 

"Sept. 11 accelerated the process," Mr. Goldstein said. "We all began to think of our own mortality."

[Bilbo]

It has often seemed to those of us in the social ranks below that the top echelon is by and large more closeted and less likely to be involved in gay beneficent causes. Perhaps that is incorrect. However, as one friend of mine pointed out to me, this move by the Times will make it more fashionable for the creme de la creme to be out in the open, etc. and might be a very good shot in the arm for gay charities in the long run, as well as other aspects of gay culture.