20 years after landmark ceremony, New Paltz celebrates LGBTQ pride, early same-sex weddings

Jay Blotcher and Brook Garrett are celebrating their 20th anniversary.

Or their 24th, if you count from the day they entered into a domestic partnership in New York City, and later that year, joined in civil union in Vermont. Or 16th, from the time they flew to California for a full legal ceremony.

But it is two days before the 20th anniversary of the day they said “I do” in New Paltz, in what was described on CBS News as “the nation’s largest civil rights movement in a generation.”

And it is here, at a drag brunch just outside the village on Sunday, in front of hundreds of friends and strangers, that they have chosen to renew those vows they made 7,303 days prior.

In neutral-toned dress slacks and button-down shirts they clasp hands — the rings no longer removable from their fingers after two decades of wear — and recite verbatim the promises they made to one another in front of the same man who guided them through the ceremony the first time.

Former New Paltz Mayor Jason West reads from the same palm-sized brown notebook in which he handwrote the ceremony as a 26-year-old two decades prior — an act that would result in his arrest, his face plastered on more than a hundred newspapers around the world, a mountain of legal battles over the ensuing year and a half, and his inclusion on People magazine’s 2004 list of the 50 most eligible bachelors.

In the excitement of the moment, Blotcher stumbles and agrees to take Garrett as his “awfully wedded husband,” garnering a collective chuckle from an otherwise teary audience, many of whom were present for the original ceremony.

But soon they are kissing — a slow, passionate embrace between two men who, decades before, uprooted their lives as an activist and a talent agent in New York City in favor of the tiny hamlet of High Falls, where they share evening walks with their rescue mutt, Roxie Louise, and Garrett improvises fabulous home-cooked meals nearly every night.

The couple are no strangers to public rites, as their New Paltz nuptials were first said in front of a crowd numbering in the thousands.

New Paltz couple wed in 2004 ceremony that drew national attention

Blotcher and Garrett were the fourth of 25 couples to be wed in New York state on Feb. 27, 2004, seven years before same-sex marriage was officially signed into state law and more than a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that right nationwide.

“The unconditional support from strangers was so gratifying that it reminded us that we were in a loving, supportive community,” Blotcher recalled. “We stuck our necks out and had taken a chance by being so visible, and in return, we were getting the greatest affirmation from strangers.”

On a bright Friday afternoon in 2004 – unseasonably warm for February – they were the first couple to kiss upon the conclusion of their vows, and the first to ask to be referred to as “husband and husband” instead of “partner and partner.”

A Poughkeepsie Journal photo by Darryl J. Bautista showing Garrett uncharacteristically blowing kisses to the crowd while Blotcher stands by in an uncharacteristically frozen smile made its way onto the pages of 97 news publications around the world, by the couple’s last count.

A florist in town was summoned to provide flowers to decorate the collapsible stage, and a local violinist and pianist volunteered their talents to play the couples down the grassy aisle in a triangular patch of land in the corner of the Village Hall parking lot, dubbed Peace Park.

College students and townies alike trekked to the park in their pajamas and their gym clothes, skipping class or pulling over their vehicles at the sight of the ceremony — or the army of satellite news trucks filling the parking lot.

A wall of police separated the wedding guests from a handful of protesters, some of whom clutched rosary beads while others held hand-painted signs with such declarations as “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

A friend even snapped a few photos of the newlywed Blotcher and Garrett posing with some of these disgruntled onlookers.

In their nearly three decades of upstate residency, Botcher and Garrett have yet to stop giving back to the community that supported them in one of their happiest and most vulnerable moments. Blotcher co-founded New Paltz’s first Pride Parade – held in 2005, a year after the marathon of marriages – then helped found the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center in Kingston in 2007.

The occasion of their 20th anniversary stands not only as a celebration of their love and how far they’ve come, but how far there is yet to go.

New Paltz marriage ceremony generated lawsuits, charges against West

Jason West cited the ongoing battle for civil rights in a speech he made at Sunday’s drag brunch while accepting the inaugural New Paltz Pride Award and a proclamation in his honor from the Ulster County government.

“I could tell you stories about 20 years ago,” West told the audience. “But things are worse now than they were then.”

West went on to cite the recent decision by Alabama’s top court that frozen embryos are legally children and that people can be held liable for their destruction, as well as the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade — attributing it all to the rise of Christian nationalism.

“I mean, my God, George W. Bush looks good now!” the former mayor, who ran as a Green Party candidate, quipped to a resounding chorus of laughter.

It was Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address, delivered barely a month prior, that prompted the marathon of New Paltz weddings to kick off in February, months ahead of schedule.

After spending several minutes teeing up the coming war with Iraq and extolling the virtues of the Patriot Act, the president pivoted to the Defense of Marriage Act, pledging to defend “the sanctity of marriage,” which he alleged was under threat at the time by “activist judges” who insisted on “forcing their arbitrary will upon the people.”

West might still be conducting weekly same-sex weddings were it not for a restraining order signed by the late Judge Vincent Bradley of the New York State Supreme Court.

While judges are not required to publicly rationalize the decisions handed down from the bench, a restraining order in New York state requires an outline of the “immediate and irreparable harm” that would be prevented by the order’s issuance.

For conducting same-sex weddings, Bradley wrote that West’s actions would bring “anarchy, chaos and the breakdown of Western civilization.”

“I’m pretty sure people are still looking at Renaissance paintings and reading Aristotle in their freshman philosophy classes, so Western civilization must be alive and well 20 years later,” West told the drag brunch crowd.

A stack of lawsuits — including one filed by Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Counsel on behalf of a disgruntled village board member — sought to annul the marriages West performed, even though it was unclear whether the ceremonies were legally binding to begin with.

A memo by the village attorney at the time found that New York’s Domestic Relations Law required marriage applicants to seek a license from their respective municipal clerk and contract an officiant to conduct the ceremony, but a “loophole of sorts” allowed the solemnization of marriages even in the absence of a marriage license, which the New Paltz Town Clerk at the time refused to issue.

“Either it worked and they were married, or we formed the basis for some interesting case law,” West said.

At the conclusion of the three-hour marathon ceremony, West was arrested by New Paltz police and charged with 19 counts of solemnizing unlicensed marriages, a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and a month in jail.

Finding it unconstitutional to prevent same-sex couples from marrying, then-New Paltz Town Justice Jonathan Katz dismissed the charges against West. Shortly thereafter, then-Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams successfully moved to have them reinstated before ultimately dropping them altogether, citing the mounting expenses of the ongoing proceedings, now about to drag into a third calendar year.

By that time, the now-defunct New York City law firm that had agreed to represent West pro bono had dedicated eight lawyers and 12 paralegals to the case full-time.

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'We need community. We need each other'

Though he remained a local celebrity, West finished out his time in office in relative quiet, supplementing his mayoral income with house painting jobs, and ran unsuccessfully for a second term in 2007. He won again in 2011, but lost to current mayor Tim Rogers in 2015.

“At that point, I decided I should probably stop running for things,” he joked.

But this was not to be the end of his career in public service. Later in the decade, West went on to co-found the Wallkill River Watershed Alliance and teach sustainability classes at a local trade school.

In 2019, he received a Master’s degree in climate science and public policy from Bard College, and the following year took a job as the city of Albany’s energy manager. He has since been promoted to director of sustainability, which he considers his dream job.

Though he is best known these days for his sustainability and environmental efforts, West said his role as wedding officiant remains his proudest accomplishment to date.

“We need community,” he told the drag brunch crowd in closing. “We need each other. The rest we can figure out along the way.”

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Former New Paltz mayor honored on 20th anniversary of same-sex wedding