First-ever same-sex marriage at Acadia’s Manning Memorial Chapel
It’s a changing world with a changed mindset, says Butler, pointing out how the wedding was a normal one for his nieces and nephews who attended.
“My kids have grown up never knowing anything else other than this. They get that we’re gay, and they get that it’s normal,” he says.
“I like this world my kids are being brought up in.”
It also looks as though the wedding is the first-ever same-sex marriage at Acadia’s Manning Memorial Chapel. It was definitely a first at the chapel for chaplain Tim McFarland, who Butler says booked the couple six years in advance — before they were even thinking of marriage.
“He told me he felt it in his bones that we’d be married, and said no matter where it happened, he’d meet us there,” laughs Butler.
He and Brunton are now settling back into their daily lives — Butler onstage in drag as Sharon Dalove and Brunton with his fitness business — and loving they can call each other husband.
“I called him husband this morning — that was fun,” laughs Brunton, a smile beaming from his voice as he speaks over the phone.
It’s an ease that comes naturally to the pair, and something they wish would come naturally to the wider community here in Kings County.
“It shouldn’t be hard or easy. One day, being gay will just be a thing that’s a thing,” says Butler.