After 35 Years, Washington Allowed Stuart And John To Get Married Today
var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Stuart Wilber and John Breitweiser got married today, the first day the state of Washington allowed same-sex couples to enter into the institution of marriage. Stuart and John have been together for 35 years — exactly 35 years. They met December 8, 1977, and so they begin their 36th year together as husbands.
There’s something very special about the institution of marriage. Perhaps it’s not for everyone, but clearly it is for Stuart and John, and they have lived their lives proving that point.
This wedding is especially important and gratifying to us at The New Civil Rights Movement, as Stuart is a beloved writer here. An LGBT activist, Stuart was instrumental last year in getting Seattle’s Space Needle to fly the gay pride flag. He wrote a great piece about it, and we invited him to become a contributing writer. Stuart’s response was that he’d be able to write an occasional piece. Eighteen months, more than three dozen great articles, countless story ideas, and a constant display of selflessness later, Stuart proved his dedication to the LGBT community is far more than “occasional.”
Stuart penned a beautiful and moving wedding announcement, which we’d like to share with you here:
If it wasn’t love at first glance; it was love at first dance – our road to Marriage
Stuart Wilber, a contributor to The New Civil Rights Movement, and John Breitweiser, an artist with an extensive résumé of solo and group exhibitions, met on a snowy night at a club in Chicago on December 8, 1977; (I’ll save you doing the math – it was 35 years ago.)
I spotted John chatting with a group of his friends; he was dressed in the uniform of the era: beard, checkered shirt, his jeans tucked into the red boot socks that were peeking out of his Doc Martens; adorable then as he is now. A couple of beers, and I worked up the nerve to ask him to dance; John likes to say that no one dances quite like I dance. After a couple of dances, I asked him if he wanted to go home with me – it was the 70’s, we were very direct in those days; he looked at me as if I had lost my mind and refused. Then I asked if I could join him and his friends, but he said no again. Sometime later, when I grabbed my coat and headed toward the exit; John, who says he had been keeping an eye on me, told his friends he had to leave, grabbed his coat and caught up with me as I was leaving.
Slogging through the still falling heavy snow, we were asked to help push a car free from a snow bank. John dislocated his knee and hobbled the few remaining blocks to my house. We spent the night in front of a roaring fire and despite his swollen, throbbing knee as well as rug burns… we have been together ever since.
In 1978, Stuart opened “In a Plain Brown Wrapper,” a gallery which exhibited cutting edge work by leading artists including Robert Mapplethorpe, Hollis Sigler, Keith Smith, George Platt Lynes, Charles Demuth, Janet Cooling, Paul Cadmus, and, yes, John Breitweiser; art that dealt with sexuality and gender identification. The next year Stuart opened the eponymous gallery, Stuart Wilber, Inc. with the same focus.
After five years of battling snow and ice, the couple relocated to San Clemente, California, seeking a friendlier climate. Instead, they encountered a climate of homophobia where life as an openly gay couple became a political act. Stuart served on the board of Laguna Beach Shanti and worked with GLAAD on letter writing campaigns. John’s art turned political; he began a body of work that dealt with violence against gays and lesbians. The paintings were widely exhibited on college campuses and galleries in Orange County, and in 1994, John was named Man of The Year by the Orange County Cultural Pride Committee.
The couple relocated to Seattle, where Stuart, concerned about the lack of publicity for the 2009 National Equality March, began promoting it and secured the endorsement of PFLAG and other national organizations for the D.C. event, as well as working with the activist group, Seattle OUTprotest, to organize a local march to promote the approval of Referendum 74. The bill was approved and granted domestic partnership rights to same sex couples in Washington State. In 2010 Stuart was invited to join a group of other LGBTQ activists at a retreat at the Highlander Research and Education Center, where, in the footsteps of Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they were schooled in techniques of non-violent civil disobedience, and strategized on the next steps to achieving full legal and social equality. The retreat was the genesis of GetEQUAL, an organization he continues to work with and support.
In 2011 he organized a successful effort to ask Microsoft to stop allowing the funding of Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate groups by removing its online store from the Christian Values Network, and with fellow activist Josh Castle whom he met at Highlander, spearheaded a successful campaign to have the pride flag raised on Seattle’s iconic Space Needle.
On December 9, the first day their marriage is permitted in the state they now call home and the first day of their 36th year together, surrounded by family and friends, John Breitweiser and Stuart Wilber will be married in Seattle. Mary Bacarella, Vice President Brand Management of Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass, who worked with Stuart and Josh to meet a $50,000 community grant to raise the flag on the Space Needle, will officiate.
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Images: Then and now, John Breitweiser, left, and Stuart Wilber. Wedding Day, by Joe Mirabella, via Instagram
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
