Washington Post

John Fortunato, left, and Wayne Schwandt are homosexuals ... and they are "married" in their eyes, if not those of the law, or society or the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C. However, they hope theirs will be the first homosexual marriage offically blessed and thus recognized by the Episcopal church.

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'Big step' leaves trail of outrage

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Gay marriage: Happily ever after?

By Jeannette Smyth

"Washington Post

"And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord. Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination...

"For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from their people.

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For Wayne Schwandt, with a master's degree from Wesley Theological Seminary, and John Fortunato, a former Carmelite brother, those words from the Bible can have no meaning. To believe them is to be annihilated.

They are homosexuals and they were "married" in their eyes, if not those of the law, or society, or the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C.

a few weeks ago in a ceremony at

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the Metropolitan Church, an ecumenical group of gay worshipers founded by a gay pastor.

Their marriage vows were profoundly simple. The minister said, "John, what is your intention?"

"To have Wayne as my spouse," he replied. "To love him and to help him grow; to laugh with him and cry with him; to make a home and a life with him; to be his best friend, and to honor him alone with my body as long as we are both alive. That is my will."

FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 1977

"And Wayne," said the minister; "what is your intention?”

"To have John as my lifelong companion and spouse," he replied, "to be with him in celebration and sorrow, in strength and weakness and to help him become who God intends him to be; to help make our home a sign of God's love and a place of peace, and to honor him alone with my body as long as we are both alive. That is my will."

Somewhere between the Bible's condemnation and the marriage

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ceremony they wrote themselves, the couple hopes to find a niche in the church, some solace beyond the New Catholic Encyclopedia's conciliatory psychology interleaved with damnation: ... grave transgression of the divine will."

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They hope theirs will be the first homosexual marriage officially blessed and thus recognized by the Episcopal church.

Their apartment in Washington is adorned with a church banner, 2,000 theological books Schwandt has indexed with the Dewey Decimal System, a chic trestle dining table In the study, stuffed animals on the pull-out couch await the monthly visit of Schwandt's 5-year-old son.

"Sometimes I'm asked, 'Who's the girl?" says Fortunato. "We're both men. Both of us have male genitals and male psyches."

"What's a male psyche?" says Schwandt. "I don't know how to define that without being a male chauvinist. I think we have both been reared in a society that is chauvinistic, which teaches us that we have to be strong.

"I am embarrassed sometimes to admit that I am not strong, that at some point, some of us cry, some of us need to give comfort. And to accept it."

"The traditional role models for homosexuals and heterosexuals are dominant-passive," says Fortunato, "in which one is the man and one is the woman. It's not truth with us, "I think as sex roles have been liberated in heterosexual relationships as they were in my (heterosexual) marriage," says Schwandt, "they have been liberated in homosexual relationships." vs

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So Schwandt does the cooking-he finds it "therapeutic." And Fortunato does the cleaning "I'm compulsive about it," he says. They both hate it. They both do the shopping because they both like it. "These functions don't go away just because we both happen to be males," says Schwandt.

They fight, mainly "over space definition," says Fortunato, "when I need time to myself, when he needs time to himself."

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Unlike heterosexual couples' fights, male couples' battles can be and sometimes are settled with fist fights. But not in this case. “We don't resort to fisticuffs," says Fortunato. "He'd win. He's bigger than I am."

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"I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to find out Wayne had a son, says Fortunato. "There are restrictions in any kind of relationship you choose, and the one thing I regret or miss is probably that I will never be a father.”

Schwandt's little boy carried the incense in the marriage ceremony, and lives with his mother, who has remarried. A 26-year-old educational consultant, she is quite reticent in discussing the situation but asked that her name not be used.

"It's very difficult to really say if knew Wayne was a homosexual wher I married him," she says. "I guess. knew in one sense, but impact didn' really hit me. I can't talk about tha too well.

"He had talked about it a little bit but I didn't really recognize it. He hat talked about his experiences growing

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