Miranda’s wedding news aims to break ‘isolation’

EDMONTON Tourism and Culture Minister Ricardo Miranda sits in his office, a gold engagement band studded with four diamonds on his ring finger.

“It’s because we met on the fourth,” he says, a grin splitting his face.

Miranda and his fiancé Christopher Brown went public with the news of their engagement last week. Although they’re private people, they saw it as an opportunity to share positive news and be a visible force for change.

It is, after all, somewhat of an historic moment: A sitting premier officiating a same-sex marriage for Alberta’s first openly gay government minister.

“Ricardo is more than a colleague — he’s a friend,” Premier Rachel Notley said.

“I couldn’t be happier to join him and Christopher as they embark on this journey together.”

The reaction to the news stories and the social media posts has been “overwhelmingly positive,” Miranda said, but it’s not all sunshine.

Take the bigoted and homophobic comments on news stories referencing Brokeback Mountain or “going against nature,” for example. Or last week, when someone in Slave Lake, where Brown lives, pulled over and berated him for being gay, telling him he was going to burn in hell.

At the end of the day, Miranda says he’s much more interested in the various elements of wedding planning — and making sure his mom doesn’t get too emotional and take over the microphone with a long speech in her native Spanish (Miranda’s family fled war-torn Nicaragua when he was 10).

There’s the venue (the Glenbow Museum on Dec. 28), the cake (multi-tiered vanilla and chocolate, with one layer swirled in a combination of their favourite flavours), and the music (salsa, along with traditional Jewish wedding songs as a nod to Miranda’s religious heritage).

“People don’t seem to understand the importance of being visible for our community,” Miranda said. “There’s a sense of alienation and isolation that’s very overwhelming, and there are people out there who have really outdated views on the issue. I see this is a positive and a good thing to show that we’re just like anybody else.”