It’s been a monumental week for same-sex marriage as the Supreme Court recently rejected appeals to marriage equality in five different states. Recently, Nevada had a triumph of its own after the state’s gay marriage ban was ruled invalid. And though many of the state’s citizens were overjoyed about the news, one of the state’s senators, Kelvin Atkinson, celebrated the news by proposing to his boyfriend on national television.
Atkinson was on stage at a Freedom Nevada event discussing Nevada’s next steps in pushing for marriage equality when he brought his longtime boyfriend, Sherwood Howard, onstage and popped the question to him in front of cameras.
“Woody I know it has been six years. They haven’t always been great, but we have been great partners and as a lot of you know in a lot of my political work [you are] the one person that I trust the most, to be there with me, to be there for me, to be that confidant, to be my friend and my partner, so I’m saying it in front of everybody, will you marry me?” Atkinson said as he proposed.
After Howard said yes, Atkinson shared his joy about sharing the proposal with the world.
“I come from a big, supportive family. I have 10 siblings and an 18-year-old daughter, and they all are very happy for us,” Atkinson said.
Atkinson and many other of Nevada’s gay and bisexual couples were given the legal right to marry on Oct. 6 when The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in California concluded that bans in Nevada and Idaho violated the equal protection rights of same-sex couples to legally marry.
Atkinson and Howard have been together for 6 ½ years and Atkinson told CNN after the proposal that he and his partner might become Nevada’s first legally married gay couple.
“We have been asked to be Nevada’s first same sex-couple to get married tomorrow, but we haven’t decided yet. I’m going home to talk about it right now, actually,” he said.
Despite the good news, the couple will have to wait to wed because the hold on gay marriage in Nevada is back on after Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy issued an order stating that his stay of the 9th Circuit’s ruling only applies to Idaho.
Well, the fight for marriage equality certainly isn’t over and we assume that couples across the nation will be able to wed soon enough. In any case, congratulations are still in order for Atkinson and Howard on their engagement. –nicholas robninson
