Watch: Nevada Senator Who Came Out On TV Last Year Pops The Question On TV

Nevada State Senator Kelvin Atkinson proposes to his fiancé and long-time partner in the middle of a televised speech.

Last year, in the middle of a heated debate on same-sex marriage, Nevada Democratic State Senator Kelvin Atkinson stood up in front of his colleagues and for the first time, said, “I’m gay.”

“I’m black, I’m gay, I have dealt with a lot of what you folks are talking about,” Atkinson told his fellow Senators. “I know some of you,” he said, for first time are “hearing me say that, that I am a black gay male.”

Atkinson added he had “heard some people say some nasty, ugly things, because they didn’t know” he was gay.

Yesterday, speaking at an event hosted by Freedom Nevada at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, Atkinson again surprised his audience who were celebrating the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling striking down marriage bans in Nevada and Idaho.

“I didn’t want to go to another state,” Sen. Atkinson told the audience.

He said he always felt he’d stay in Nevada and would “stick it out,” until marriage came to his state, “and hopefully Woody would stick it out with me and we’d wait until this was done so that I could do what I thought that I wanted to do, and that was to propose to him.”

The crowd began to cheer, and Woody, Atkinson’s partner of six and a half years, Sherwood Howard, smiled, and looked surprised. 

Atkinson observed that the cameras were “live right now,” and the audience screamed, “Do it!”

Howard nervously made his way on stage, and Atkinson said, “Woody, I know it has been six years, they haven’t alays been great, but we’ve been great partners.” He added that Woody does a lot of his political work and he is “the one person I trust the most toy be there with me, to be there for me, to be that confidant, to be my friend, and my partner.”

“So I’ll say it in front of everybody, will you marry me?”

Woody said, “Yes.”

Early this morning, before the Supreme Court placed a stay on the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling, temporarily blocking same-ax marriages in Nevada and Idaho, CNN reported that the “two haven’t set a date.”

They could be Nevada’s first same-sex married couple if they decide to wed Wednesday.

“We have been asked to be Nevada’s first same sex-couple to get married tomorrow, but we haven’t decided yet. I’m going home to talk about it right now actually,” he said.

Perhaps soon.

Video by Christopher Preciado via Facebook 
Hat tip: On Top
Image © Oscar Nonis. Used with permission.