Source: Altoona Mirror
State College, Penn. -- As he recited vows of commitment Saturday, Frank Vasquez stopped speaking, overcome with emotion.

He got past the snag only after partner Paul Datti leaned over their double-clasped hands and kissed him, setting off sympathetic laughter from the crowd at Alumni Hall in the HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State.

Vasquez and Datti were one of four couples in what Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission Chairman Steve Glassman guessed was the largest-ever same-sex commitment ceremony held in public in Pennsylvania.

The vows were not legally binding, but couples there "consider it binding and permanent," said Mayor Bill Welch, who presided over the ceremony.

Pennsylvania is among 44 states without the functional equivalent of gay marriage, Glassman said.

Tom Koerber, co-director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual & Transgendered and Allies suggested the ceremony because members wanted to do something different than the usual educational forum for Gay Pride Week.

Glassman, the highest ranking openly gay official in the state, hit an emotional snag himself before finding his voice to recite short love poems from Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman and Maya Angelou to the capacity crowd of several hundred friends, family and supporters.

Audience member Stanley Sobieski of State College is straight, but he clapped, smiled and snapped pictures during and after the ceremony.

"It's so refreshing," he said, after eight years of national intolerance that has left him uneasy and angry, he said.

Sobieski always has been accepting of gays, despite growing up with narrow-minded parents in Philadelphia, he said.

He’s a scientist, and the skeptical attitude that goes along with that leaves no room for closed-mindedness, he said.

Alexandra D’Urso is straight and married but believes "unless all are free, none are free."

Welch had no problem officiating, viewing the ceremony as one of his many community functions and a helpful antidote to the "weasel words" that help prevent gay commitments from counting legally in Pennsylvania.

Altoona pastor Gary Dull organized what he called a "Family Values Rally" nearby to protest.

"They can overcome it and have a life worth living," he told a group of about 100 people who attended the rally on the steps of Old Main. "The hope of the homosexual is Jesus Christ."

Three representatives of the Penn State Atheist Agnostic Association staged a counter-demonstration at Old Main, carrying placards citing Leviticus, proclaiming sarcastically that shrimp and shaving are "abominations."

Dull’s protest is "tantamount to being in bed with bigotry," said Dan Farbowitz, an association advocate.

Full article: Official: Gay ceremony largest in Pennsylvania | Altoona Mirror