Well, now. If President Bush insists marriage is between man and woman only, then by God the namesake host of The Darren Austin Show is going to make his president happy and marry a woman, and at January's Internext in Las Vegas. There is just one catch: Austin is gay, and so is his bride-to-be, Holly Ruprecht.
"What I'm doing," Austin told AVN.com on November 13, "is marrying a woman as lesbian as I am gay. And there's going to be cheating, naturally. And it will be a legal marriage."
And the blushing bride? "Oh, I am blushing, I will tell you that," Ruprecht told AVN.com. "He's more girl than me in this wedding. We're both wearing tuxes." Asked why she at least didn't think about wearing a proper wedding gown to enhance the effect, she said it would have been out of character for her. "I don't own a dress," she chuckled. "I'm a good lesbian woman."
To Austin and Ruprecht equally, it is a sad reality that America is more accepting of a woman spending time meeting eight millionaire strangers in a week for television to marry a complete stranger, than of gay marriage. Therefore, Austin said in his own arch manner, he was going to do the right thing and marry a woman – a gay woman.
Both Austin and Ruprecht said the marriage was a political statement. "Good old George W says marriage is between man and woman, which is people's beliefs aside is such a farce," Ruprecht said. "The divorce rate in the United States has never been higher. What institution are we really worried about killing? Women are cheating on men, men are cheating on women, and two loving gay people can't get married? Are we living in the Ice Age? We're supposed to be living in the U.S. where everyone is granted the same rights."
"Don't get me wrong. Our president is a great president," Austin said of Bush, whose presidency he has otherwise admired. "But his stance on gay issues has struck the gay community in a strong way. What he's preaching to the closeted men out there is, marry a woman, deny who you are, then in twenty years or so come and admit you're gay and hurt her. That ruins women's lives. Especially when you know what you are and you deny it anyway."
Austin won't deny the shock value of his forthcoming nuptials, but he insisted he isn't doing this for that reason alone.
"I want people to think," he said. "I'm doing this because people will talk about it and complain about it but never do anything about something like this. When you roll up your sleeves and get down to the dirty work, are the majority going to be there? No. Therefore, I'm doing exactly what (Bush) said to do. I'm going to marry a woman. And I'm a flaming gay man and she's a flaming lesbian woman, and this issue needs to be brought to people's attention. And there's no place better to do it than in Las Vegas."
Austin promised, however, that the entire marriage will be done with "the class and dignity that people know me for. This is not going to be a Dennis Rodman in a dress kind of thing. For one thing, we'll both be in tuxes, and the wedding bands will be exclusively from Tiffany's.
"But will we ever sleep in the same bed? Absolutely not," Austin continued. "Will we ever have love and romance? Absolutely not. But will Bush be happy? Yes. It will be marriage between a man and a woman and not of the same sex."
Asked whether he thought his marriage to Ruprecht would begin something of a new trend among gay Americans, with more opposite-sex gay couples marrying Austin said he hoped it would. "I would love for it to start such a trend," he said, "that the rest of our country, including our fearless leader, would see how asinine it is (to thwart same-sex marriage) and that people are people."
"There's not a lot of other options for (gay couples)," Ruprecht said. "And I hope it sends the message that you cannot deny us the same rights as everybody else because you don't believe in our lifestyle."
But asked what he might do for an encore, Austin would say only this: "Oh, it only gets better."
"I cannot wait for that one," said YNOTMasters's YNOTBob, who will perform the ceremony as an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. "As long as they're happy, I'm happy for them."
He said he was also scheduled to perform a similar marriage ceremony in Canada in June. "As long as they're happy and can fulfill their needs and wants and desires and have a good life with each other, I'm all for it," he said.
As for children, Ruprecht said not at this time. "I'm kind of like a kid myself, and so is Darren," she said. "And we have long careers ahead of us, hopefully, knock on wood, so it wouldn't be really prudent at this time. But I don't see anything wrong with a gay couple having children. Gay couples cannot adopt children is another absurd law."
