Virginians' feelings about gay couples may be changing

Last month this newspaper finally started running marriage and engagement announcements for gay couples.

Of course, Thomas Brown and Joseph Jagodzinski Jr., the first couple celebrated, won't be getting married in Virginia. They can't. They'll tie the knot in Canada later this summer.

But when the announcement ran, supervisors here prepared for the worst, an incendiary wrath from readers. Instead, the reaction was practically nonexistent.

So much for that.

The same thing happened at Papyrus, the high-end greeting card shop at MacArthur Center, when it started carrying same-sex wedding cards three years ago.

Occasionally, the manager told me, people will look at the card and ask, "Is this what I think it is?"

It is. Two grooms or two brides. One warm congratulatory message inside.

The cards have largely gone without notice. They have lived in harmony with the other cards and have not lessened the meaning of the traditional wedding sentiments.

It may not sound like a big deal or very cutting edge that a boutique stationery company in Norfolk was carrying same-sex wedding cards, but it wasn't until the summer of 2008 that Hallmark announced it would release its own brand. Even today, those Hallmark cards cannot be found at my neighborhood drugstore. They're hardly mainstream.

I've been thinking about the greeting cards recently and a possible uptick in business now that a handful of states are allowing same-sex marriage. It has already been approved in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine and Vermont. Civil unions or domestic partnerships will be allowed in New Hampshire, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Coincidently, it was just about the time Papyrus started stocking those cards that Virginians passed a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage and

civil unions. It passed by 322,000 votes.

The law states: "Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions."

That was pretty standard. But the language also said the state could not recognize marriage in any other way. Not through civil unions or any other legal machination. In South Hampton Roads, the amendment passed by as much as 2-to-1 margins in every city but Norfolk.

Since the first same-sex wedding announcement ran in The Pilot, the paper has received at least four dozen compliments on the change. It's heard almost nothing negative, short of a few letters to the editor that weren't published because they were written by people too cowardly to sign their names.

It makes me wonder if maybe feelings have thawed, if the state is slowly changing, if some of the bitterness has dissipated.

In comparing results from polls conducted in 2008 and in 2005, more Virginians last year said they supported gays' and lesbians' right to teach in public schools, to inherit property from a partner and to share workplace benefits with their partners.

Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, who coordinated the campaign against the Virginia amendment, said the earliest reasonable expectations for repeal are in 2012, and most likely even later.

Any change of mind will simply take time. Meanwhile, greeting cards, wedding announcements and poll results will show what kind of baby steps the state has made, small signals that Virginia is inching toward respect and tolerance.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com