TRANSCRIPT:
I’m Dawn Sangrey. I’m the Minister Emerita of the Mohegan Lake New York Congregation. When I was just beginning my ministry … I was ordained when I was 59. I came to the Metro district, which was where we lived and I told Howell Lind that I wanted a job. He arranged for me to have the only job there was, which was in Englewood, New Jersey.
The Englewood New Jersey congregation had just lost their minister in a tragic accident. She had been run over by a car on her way to a board meeting and they were in terrible circumstances. I was a brand new minister and I was in over my head. So fortunately, I had a mentor. Her name is Kay Greenleaf.
I think without Kay, I would not have survived those first years, they were so difficult for me. I was not skillful, I was earnest and well-meaning, and frankly, full of myself. So, I had a terrible time in this first placement and I struggled. Kay supported me and we used to meet once a month at a midway point between Poughkeepsie, where I lived and Bedford Hills, where she lived. Other way around. She lived in Poughkeepsie, I lived in Bedford Hills.
We would get together at this little breakfast place called Karen’s and I would pour out my heart and she would listen to me. I was getting my feet under me and getting it together and eventually decided that I would leave the congregation, because I wasn’t doing them any good and it was becoming more and more conflictual. So about that time, I also took another job.
These were halftime ministries. I took another job in Mohegan Lake, where they had been lay-led for more than 40 years and they decided that they wanted to have a minister. So, I went to Mohegan Lake to be their first minister. So this new ministry was starting up, I was extricating myself from Inglewood. Kay and I had one of our breakfast meetings and she said, “I’m going to Albany next week to lobby, I want you to come with me.” I couldn’t go, I had a board meeting or something.
So I said, “Okay, I can’t go this time, but the next time you do anything, I want to go with you.” She said, “All right.” The following week, she called me on a Thursday night and said, “I have 13 weddings to do in New Paltz on Saturday. Will you come with me?” And I said, “Yes.” That’s how I got into the weddings in New Paltz, which were a significant event for Unitarian Universalism and for lesbian gay rights and for marriage equality, and for me as a minister. All of that came together for me in New Paltz. Let me do the New Paltz background a little bit.
New Paltz is a town in the Hudson Valley in New York. It’s 90 miles from New York. It’s a university town, it’s a very liberal place and they had just elected a mayor who was 26 years old and a house painter. His name is Jason West. Jason realized that he was the mayor and that he could marry people. Some of his friends, his gay friends, wanted to get married. This is in 2004, it’s seven years before New York State legalized same sex marriage, and shortly after the San Francisco weddings, which was really where this started. So Jason said, “Fine, I’ll marry you.” Some other people signed up, and the next thing he knew, he had a whole lot of people who wanted to get married in New Paltz.
So the first weddings were in the parking lot in the town hall. After Jason did those weddings, he was arrested by the district attorney of Ulster County who said that Jason was violating the law, because the town clerk would not issue a marriage license to these people. So he was officiating for marriages without a license, which is a violation of the law. Jason said he was going to continue. Then the council, the town council said, “Well, if you continue, you’re going to lose your job.” That caused him to pause and decide that he could not go on and do anymore of these weddings.
Meanwhile, my friend Kay Greenleaf, was on the list of people to get married. Kay is a Unitarian Universalist Minister, so she called Jason and said, “Listen, I’m able to continue with these weddings, if you would like me to complete your list.” So, that was when she called me and I came up to New Paltz and met her and her partner Pat Sullivan the following weekend. Kay and I wrote the ceremony, it was a very brief ceremony of marriage. We wrote it by email, she proposed a line and I proposed a line and we put the thing together, and it was just a few lines of commitment.
Because they had had affidavits at Jason West’s weddings, they didn’t have licenses, because the town clerk wouldn’t give them a license, but they wanted to have a piece of paper to give the couples. So they had an affidavit. It laid out the circumstances of the wedding and the people who are witnesses signed and the people who officiated signed, and they were notarized. All of that was already in place, so we continued that practice. We had notarized affidavits for all of the couples that were married in New Paltz.
So Kay and I met up and one question that I remember I had was what were we going to wear? So, she was kind of informal and I wasn’t sure that I should bring my vestments, but I did bring them and it was a good thing, because she had everything on. She had on her robe and her collar and her chalice and her stole and the whole business. I thought, “Oh, good. I’ve got mine too.” So I went in the car and got all my stuff.
The weddings were held that first time at a little park, it’s kind of a pocket park. At the end of the Main Street in New Paltz, there’s a bridge that goes across the Wallkill River and this park is right there on the corner. It’s on the corner of Main Street and that bridge. They had a tent, they set up a tent. We had 13 couples and we did it … well, the first ceremony was Kay and Pat. I officiated for their wedding and that was the picture that was in the paper. Kay and Pat with their hands out in triumph and me with a big smile. Then we did 13 other couples. She did one and then I did one, and then she did one.
It was so touching. These people wanted to be married so much and they were so happy and we had all kinds of costumes and get ups. We had people in bridal dresses and we had people in veils that were rainbow colored and they had flowers. Some of them brought their children and some of them brought their moms, and it was really something. It was very moving and I was full of joy and beyond grateful that I could be involved in this wonderful act of civil disobedience, which is what it was.
So the next thing that happened was that we got arrested. The district attorney, the same guy who had arrested Jason West, came and arrested us. He sent the police to arrest us. They didn’t take us into custody, but they placed us under arrest and told us that we had broken the law and told us that we needed to report for-
Speaker 2:
Quick question.
Dawn Sangrey:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
Did they do that right there at the park or was it a day later when they came to the church? Did they just show up at the park after you’ve done all the weddings.
Dawn Sangrey:
I think it was later, because I remember it being on the porch, so it might even have been the following week. Because we didn’t stop, I should say that. By this time, some momentum was developing around this event. There was a bed and breakfast up on the hill in New Paltz and they told us we couldn’t do the weddings on town property anymore, so we moved to this private property to continue doing the weddings. In fact, the weddings went on that whole summer. The first weddings that we did were on March 6th of 2004, and the weddings continued through October of that year up at the bed and breakfast.
They were officiated by many clergy, first other Unitarian Universalist Ministers who wanted to be part of this, and then eventually colleagues from different faiths. So there was a whole procession of weddings that went on all summer. I think it was the second week when we were up on the porch of the bed breakfast that the police came and served us with our papers. “You’re hereby arrested.”
By this time, we had a lawyer. Because the first week as we were finishing up with the weddings, an attorney came up and he presented me with his card. His name is Robert Gottlieb. He said, “I’m an attorney and if you need somebody to represent you, I will represent you.” He had come from Long Island and it turns out that Bob Gottlieb usually handled rather notorious criminals of one kind or another. So he always liked to say that we were the least notorious criminals that he ever had to deal with.
He was a delight and he’s on my cell phone to this day. He was there for us in every way all the way through, and so we felt quite relaxed, because we had this representation from the beginning. So the next thing that happened with the legal case was that the district attorney, the Ulster County District Attorney called us into his office, because he wanted to talk us out of it, basically. By this time, there had been an enormous amount of publicity and Kay and I were in all the papers, we were on television, we were on Good Morning America. It was a very, very big press thing, and he clearly just wanted to back away from all of it.
So he called us into his office and we had our attorney with us, and he said, “You didn’t really mean for this to be a legal marriage, right? You were just doing a religious thing there.” We went out in the hall and talked to our lawyer and he gave us a statement to read, the essence of which was, “Indeed, we meant for this to be a legal marriage, we meant for this to be the real thing.” We were deeply committed to marriage equality and we thought everybody should have a right to get married.
So then he had to charge us, so he did charge us. There were 13 counts. Each count carried a year of prison and $100 fine or something. So, there was technically some legal risk and we were eventually tried in New Paltz in the town court and acquitted on constitutional grounds.
Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:00:14:43].
Dawn Sangrey:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
Was it a jury trial or-
Dawn Sangrey:
No, it was a judge trial, a bench trial, yeah. I actually have the paper. I brought my files, because I wanted to share some of the stuff. One of the things that’s in here is the district attorney’s invitation, the lawyer’s memorandum and the judgment, which dismissed the complaint. All of this material’s going to end up at Harvard, at the library. But if I may read … I misspoke. We were not charged. Jason was charged with all of the weddings, we were only charged with one count. So, the most we could have gotten was a year.
The judge basically said that it was unconstitutional for us to be charged in this matter because of the 14th Amendment, equal rights.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Dawn Sangrey:
The free exercise clause of the First Amendment in article one, paragraph three of the New York State Constitution, which said, “Everybody had a right to the same rights.”
Speaker 2:
And protections.
Dawn Sangrey:
And protections. We asked for dismissal on the equal protection and due process clauses, and that’s what she said. It was very exciting, the trial was very exciting. Unitarian Universalists came to the courthouse and sang and had banners, and they were very excited about it. This new congregation that I had just started to serve was over the moon about the fact that their new minister was on the front page of the paper and making this action, and that they were visible in a way that they had never been visible before.
I think it really cemented and moved forward the relationship that I had with them. I stayed in that congregation for seven years. I had I thought was a very successful ministry there. As I said, they made me Emerita. So the outcome in terms of my ministry could not have been more positive. Because I really think that I was beginning to doubt my vocation at the point before I got involved in this. I was so discouraged and it was really just a case of an inexperienced minister in over her head.
Then I got this second chance. Then because of the second chance and the experience of doing the New Paltz weddings, I just went from there and had successful years as a minister. So it was really quite wonderful.
Speaker 2:
What a great story.
Dawn Sangrey:
It was a great story, it’s a happy story. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
They have all the supporting documentation to also be an enterprise is terrific.
Dawn Sangrey:
Yeah, we’re really glad to have it, I’m glad to have it. We had so much support. I had letters from people in Europe and letters from people that I hadn’t seen for years and letters from people I’d never heard of. It was just amazing how many people were excited about it. I’m grateful to this day that I had that experience.
Speaker 2:
What a wonderful affirmation, both of your ministry and of marriage equality generally.
Dawn Sangrey:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Terrific.
Dawn Sangrey:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for coming.
Dawn Sangrey:
You are so welcome.