Truly. And they also look a little more gay and a little less sourdough with their wedding suits on!

Otherwise I'da thought they'd come right off a six-week shift on the North Slope!

I have to laugh at myself when I first saw them getting their license, I thought of the cough drops.....

Much more handsome at the wedding.......

To Chris Boese: I gotta say I take offense to the term 'looking gay'. Im sure you didn't mean anything derogatory by it, yet it's just something we say that actually doesn't mean anything other than to further some kind of stereotype :O(

How could someone LOOK gay? What you probably mean is effeminate. Otherwise all gay men would look the same, and of course that's not true. It's like saying someone looks 'more black'. what they would mean is probably they look more ghetto. Let's stop the stereotypes and just see people for who they really are: unique, and not at all like the labels we so simply put on them!

Ha ha, yes!

I must admit my joy leaked out of my eyes a bit.

I think I'd marry both of them, or is that too Mormon?

(laughing) I was just thinking they cleaned up good. lol. I'm so happy for these two. They look so happy and excited in this pix. Pictures like this are what makes it so worthwhile to just make sure people around you know your viewpoints.

Me, too !

There's more than one gay stereotype -- or, perhaps better, archetype, since the "types" I'm talking about are not necessarily reductive or derogatory. Watch "Queer As Folk" some time, you'll see a lot more of the different ways gay men present themselves to the world than in any media not primarily about gay life. Of course, not all gay men fall within any such archetype, any more than all straight men do (or, for that matter, bisexual men, or lesbian, straight, or bisexual women, or transgendered or intersexed or asexual humans of any sort -- archetypes represent statistical clusters that don't by any means include everyone). However, these gentlemen do fit very well into one of the common gay male archetypes: that of the "bear." Big, burly, bearded, and partial to rugged, practical clothes like jeans, flannel shirts, and baseball caps, as well as Harley-Davison motorcycles and other icons of rural, blue-collar American culture (note that the caps they're wearing in the first photo say "Winchester" and "GMC"), bears are perhaps the furthest of any group of gay men from the "twink" or "swish" stereotype most straight people unfamiliar with gay life tend to imagine.

Bear? I guess I don't see them as being that way. I'd have a beer with them in the first pic, and something bubbly in the wedding pic, but that's cultural, not genderal. (New word?) I'm just happy that they're happy.

Despite what the media tries to shove down your throats, heterosexuals, not all gay men look like Ricky Martin and talk like RuPaul. Most of us are real men.

Darren, I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but I hope you realize how incredibly insensitive it is to say that "most of us are real men" as a contrast to Ricky Martin and RuPaul. Mr Martin and Mr Charles are both real men, every bit as much as the big burly bearish types who, in the words of another reader, "look like they'd come right off a six-week shift on the North Slope." Manhood is too various to be crammed into such a narrow definition. Be nice to the twinks, my friend.

Diversity is wonderful and remember these guys are from the Pacific NW where it's a lot more common to see people dressed like the first picture. When I first moved to Seattle back in the day it was hard to tell who the lesbians were, so many straight women dressed the same and looked the same. Been awhile since I lived there but not that far away in Portland and these two would fit right in.

Congratulations gentlemen, you look good in both pics.

I know, that's what I was thinking. There probably aren't many Baptist Churches that would do this, unless the world is changing much faster than I thought. I went to a wedding in the Methodist Church in my town, and I noticed that all of a sudden he is using gender neutral terms a lot. He says "your partner in love, " etc. not woman or man. So I am thinking he is prepared for the future. As I do live in Iowa, he could be marrying same sex partners, I haven't asked him yet. Times are sure changing, aren't they?

Theresa: I too did a bit of a double-take when I saw that the wedding took place in a Baptist church. It is good to be reminded that progressive Baptist churches do exist. The website of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists lists about 80 or so gay-friendly Baptist churches in the US. I also see that the First Baptist Church of Seattle boasts of having been a gay-friendly church even before Stonewall. And Willow--I see that that the First Baptist Church in Iowa City advertises itself as being gay-friendly.

There is one thing we can definitely count on--a gay-friendly Baptist church will NOT be Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist Convention still affirms that homosexuality is a sin and that same-sex marriage is un-Biblical. The First Baptist Church in Seattle is a member of the American Baptist Churches USA, which is a "mainstream" denomination.

The Southern Baptists split off from the American Baptists back before the Civil War over the American Baptists' opposition to slavery. The SBC would like us all to forget that origin, but they opposed civil rights for non-whites until it became politically suicidal to do so, and they'll doubtless be among the last Christians to give up on oppressing LGBT people as well, if they ever do.

Excellent post and historically accurate. Thanks, Alex.