WEST POINT — Cadet Chapel, the landmark Gothic church that is a center for spiritual life at the US Military Academy at West Point, hosted its first same-sex wedding yesterday.
Penelope Gnesin and Brenda Sue Fulton, a West Point graduate, exchanged vows in the regal church in an afternoon ceremony attended by about 250 guests and conducted by a senior Army chaplain.
The two have been together for 17 years. They had a civil commitment ceremony that didn’t carry any legal force in 1999 and had long hoped to formally tie the knot.
The way was cleared last year when New York legalized same-sex marriage and President Obama lifted the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting openly gay people from serving in the military.
The brides both live in New Jersey and would have preferred to have the wedding there, but the state doesn’t allow gay marriage.
“We just couldn’t wait any longer,” Fulton said.
Cadet Chapel was a more than adequate second choice, she said.
“It has a tremendous history, and it is beautiful. That’s where I first heard and said the cadet prayer,” Fulton said, referring to the invocation that says: “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.”