Jeff Graham, the executive director at Georgia Equality, and Peter Stinner, a health educator at Grady Health System’s Infectious Disease Program, are engaged after being committed to each other for 25 years.
Jeff and Peter met when they were both enrolled at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. They were good friends, but were not romantically involved. In 1988, Peter was living in Atlanta while he worked as a resident volunteer at the Open Door Community and Jeff was attending graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin. When Jeff came to visit Peter over the holidays, Peter asked him if he would consider relocating to Atlanta and spending the rest of their lives together. While reluctant at first, Peter was very persuasive and Jeff said yes on New Year’s Eve.
For their wedding plans, the men have decided to have two celebrations. The first one will take place on December 31, in Washington, D.C., where they will be legally wed in a small ceremony attended by some of their friends from college who live in the area. A few days later, they will have a larger celebration in Atlanta with a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Joshua Lesser so that their friends and family can gather to celebrate their wedding and their 25th anniversary as a couple.
While the decision to marry is a very personal issue, given their history of activism, the politics of marriage equality and relationship recognition is something they are very familiar with. They’ve been reluctant to marry in the past because they wanted to make sure that a wedding license did not take away from the fact that they have been a long-term couple and they wanted to marriage to have more than a symbolic meaning. With the recent Supreme Court decision on DOMA coinciding with their 25th year as a couple, they felt it was finally the right time to make a legal commitment to each other and bring their friends and families together in celebration. They remain committed to doing the work that is necessary to ensure that their marriage, and the marriages of others, is one day recognized and respected by the State of Georgia.
Their niece Chloe scripted the couple this incredibly sweet and colorful handwritten note of congratulations.
