“Wed Me Up Scotty!” George Takei Weds
September 14, 2008
Heroes’ George Takei Weds Longtime Partner
Photo Courtesy of Tom Atwood Photography | Story by Damon Romine Los Angeles, September 14, 2008 - Actor George Takei (Heroes, Star Trek, The Howard Stern Show) wed longtime partner Brad Altman today in Los Angeles. The couple married in a religious ceremony in the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum, the museum Takei helped create to honor those forced, as he was, to live in WWII internment camps.
Officiated by a Buddhist priest, the ceremony featured koto music and the san-san-kudo sake ritual. Takei, 71, and Altman, 54, exchanged matching turquoise wedding bands designed by a Navajo silversmith Clyde Woody. As the couple exited the service, hands clasped, Takei declared in true Star Trek fashion, “May equality live long and prosper!” The famous Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles performed at the reception.
Among the 200 wedding guests were U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Los Angeles City Councilmember Jan Perry, humanitarian Dr. Sybil Jordan Hampton, the couple’s best man Walter Koenig, (Chekov, Star Trek), and “best lady” Nichelle Nichols (Uhura, Star Trek). News of the nuptials was celebrated by equal rights advocates fighting Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that seeks to ban marriage for same-sex couples.
“The lifelong promise George and Brad made to each other, in the presence of friends and family, is an affirmation of the love and commitment that they have shared for twenty one years,” says Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). The couple was the first to receive a marriage license in the City of West Hollywood when California began granting licenses to gay couples on June 17 of this year.
Takei and Altman will honeymoon in Argentina and Peru.
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14 Responses to ““Wed Me Up Scotty!” George Takei Weds”
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I am so disappointed that one of the men who I grew up admiring on Star Trek has done such a vile deed. Yes, social conscience and equality are good things to strive for. But at what cost does total equality come?
What if a person wishes to walk around naked in public? Is that not acceptable? Why do we have a right to tell that person he cannot do that? Who are we to say he has to cover himself? It’s his life and he can choose to live how he wants. If he doesn’t wish to wear clothes on his body then he should be allowed to be that way.
Unfortunately the above sort of thinking is deleterious to mankind. Al Dharmm Alaam Musat Der Ed Leeleed Ealleda Muaan Shet Yassen. Roughly translated, this means that man is entitled to many benefits but not all. Society cannot function without certain rules in place. Star Trek wasn’t about freedom at any cost. It was about learning to co-exist within an environment in which everyone followed certain rules. When joining Starfleet, the good of the Federation was always held above the good of one’s emotional response to a situation.
I will always think of George Takei as Sulu the helmsman. Not this. This leaves me crestfallen.
Wish George and Brad the best. Way to go! They have done a great deal for GAY RIGHTS! Hooray for social conscience and equality for ALL!
Sorry, man, but EVERYthing and EVERYone is/are ambivalent, as in there-but-for-the-grace-of Allah, go I. And you. AND Sulu the helmsman.
Look beyond and beneath what you believe you see and hear and believe.
It’s all perception. And conviction. As in “belief.”
P.S.: Would you wish Takei ill? Nor should you.
Congratulations to the both of you! Live long and prosper!
To each Of Them,Good Luck & Enjoy Your Lives Together.
I loved Takei growing up and now he is happily married! I am happy for him and his spouse. I hope they enjoy there marriage and live happily together for a long time. Congrats to the happy couple. :)
Awesome! Let’s hope the fanatical religious groups don’t pass the vote in Nov. It is a truly sick mind thanks THINKS the action of love is a “vile” act.
Sorry, man, but EVERYthing and EVERYone is/are ambivalent, as in there-but-for-the-grace-of Allah, go I. And you. AND Sulu the helmsman.
Look beyond and beneath what you believe you see and hear and believe.
It’s all perception. And conviction. As in “belief.”
P.S.: Would you wish Takei ill? Nor should you.
–Frank Eng on Sep 15, 2008
TRANSLATION NEEDED!
Dear JJ.o:
Yeah, sometimes I KNOW I fail to “understand” myself.
Among Freud’s psychological/psychic dicta is the one proclaiming the obvious, at least to me, “fact” that it is impossible for the individual to “see” (perceive) beyond the perimeters of his/her “vision,” like the blindered horse. I think he called it analytical “scotoma.”
Furthermore, the individual’s subconscious, the “id” if you please, which I loosely take to be one’s “gut” or visceral response to what is being “experienced,” said response ever “emotional” and almost never “rational,” is always several jumps ahead of the arrogant know-it-all “ego.”
Bottom line here: the perceptions and responses are preconditioned by the individual’s beliefs.
The last, actually, I cribbed from that august noncorporeal philosopher, “Seth,” alter-ego writer/poet Jane Robertses’ creation/creator, or, as most of the literary establishment chooses to classify as Yankee voodoo? At least they have mostly, generally ignored her AND “Seth.”
My personal esperience/perception is that Seth is closer to the truth than either science OR philosophy, in that everything and everyone I have met or experienced fall neatly into that observation.
We are what we believe.
In that regard, the poor fans of a fictional character whose portrayer in “real” life turns out to be, gasp!, a homosexual, are to be pitied.
Especially since they are apparently still lost in the swamps and bogs of conditioned human beliefs about themselves. And society. And “morality.”
Extending this landscape, human sexuality is sadly and sorely in need of the searchlight of open and honest perception, which could lead to understanding, and, thence, to avoiding the claptraps of such as “religious” and judgmental anathemas and revulsions.
Most homophobes fear and hate the subconscious recognitions of homoeroticism within their own psyches. And they project it outwardly. To the point of mayhem and muider, as in too many cases to be denied.
The fact is, according at least to one “authority,” I believe, one Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, an associate/colleague of Papa Freud himself, posited the theorem that ALL individuals are, innately “bisexual,” and that almost all suppress one element to the overt expression of the other, more or less exclusively, or at least in public.
It’s obvious even physically, in the full range of “body types” and the existence of physical hermaphrodites.
So the revulsion and hatred are imposed by fiat and tradition and social consensus.
All of which is to say to begin with, that Takei’s and Axelrod’s “wedding” is their own business, even as it is, because of all the foregoing, also a brave and conscienced act on behalf of literal millions of gays and lesbians and bisexuals and transsexuals, the last further evidence of the angst and suffering of individuals who don’t fit into the accepted beliefs of what sexuality SHOULD be, but patently is NOT.
Frank Eng
P.S.: As for ambivalence, hey!, that’s common to all and everything. Nothing is total or absolute. Here, the ancient yin/yang, and please note the precedence of the female, symbol says it all. The microcosmic germ of the “other” lies within the mated macrocosm.
Congradulations to both of them ! God is too busy forming Hurricanes and misery for mankind to worry about men getting married .
Bravo! Jorge:
But I don’t think it’s “God” doing the “Devil’s”
” work,” it’s those friggin’ fundamentalist idiots, of ALL stripes and ALL intolerances, “holy” “scripts” be “damned.”
Frank
Good on them. My wifes and my marriage will still be secure and these two guys will have a greater life. I am old enough to remember clearly segregation and how wrong it was. So is denying any individual the act of making formal their relationship. No one should ride in the back seat, for any reason.
Keep fighting for what you believe in, that is the spirit of freedom and democracy in action. :)
Patria Deo!
Proposition 8 is a proposition of social terrorism.
Al-Jur-Ari Mudeet. You are an idiot. I’m sorry to break your heart but Star Trek isn’t real and stop being a homophobic.
I wish George and Brad all the best and I wish George good luck in the jungle!!