The Today Show Blinked

It wasn't much of a standoff, as standoffs go, but still............

The Today Show, which has a yearly event to feature the wedding of some lucky couple who wish to have their most prized moment immortalized by Matt Lauer, has always been gay-friendly.

Until this year.

Suddenly, same-sex couples were not allowed to enter the Wedding Lottery that is the Today Show. It seems that this year the “Modern Wedding Contest” application included only “bride” and “groom” as options for applicants to choose.

Huh? Bride and Groom.

Oh no honey. It should also be groom and groom, and bride and bride.

So, GLAAD got on the stick and organized a mini-revolution with petitions demanding that Today open the contest to all couple. NBC argued that it was excluding same-sex couples because “the couple must be able to be legally married in New York, which is where the wedding will take place.”

Yeah, but, um, NBC? You have a whole news division at your disposal, so you might have checked that, while marriage equality is not the law of the land in New York, same-sex weddings are legal. And, since same-sex couples can obtain licenses in Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington DC, they then can be married in New York, and their marriage recognized int he state that issued the license.

Got that, NBC? Stop focusing on the license and focus on the wedding.

Following a meeting between GLAAD and NBC executives, NBC announced that after listening to community concerns, i.e. a bunch of pissed of LGBT's with email access, it will open the contest to same-sex couples and extend the submission deadline until Monday, July 12. Finalists will be announced later this year and the wedding takes place live on the Today Show this October.

So, c'mon you gay folks looking for your fifteen minutes of fame, get busy and enter. Wouldn't it be a great thing if a gay couple won? Wouldn't it be amazing to have a gay wedding broadcast nationwide?

The only downside?

Ann Curry.