September 2, 2014 (in Tammerie’s words)

My beloved M is back in Philly. We set about the task of finding someone to marry us; she takes the civil route, and I take the church route. While she is contacting judges’ offices and finding booked calendars, I call the first pastor on my list: Amy Yoder McLoughlin of Germantown Mennonite Church.

There’s a little bit of backstory here. I was in the Mennonite Church for about a decade; it’s where I came back to church after 20 years away, and was eventually licensed and ordained to ministry. All that came to a screeching halt when I figured out I was gay and an overly zealous conference minister tried to make that a cause for investigation. I left the Mennonite Church, although nothing could lift the Anabaptist imprint.

So, sometimes justice is a poet, and in this case, she is weaving a lovely irony into the loveliest of days, because Germantown Mennonite and its pastor also are renegades, kicked out of the Mennonite Church for accepting LGBT folk into membership and even – gasp! – ordaining a gay man.

So, the renegade Anabaptist calls up the renegade Anabaptist pastor of the renegade Anabaptist church and Pastor Amy says yes, she’d love to marry us. And the date is set: September 5, 2014.