Gay Israeli diplomat to be married in Philadelphia
NEW YORK – When Elad Strohmayer and Oren Ben-Yosef stand under a chuppah at Philadelphia’s city hall on Thursday, wearing matching suits, purple shirts and pink ties, they will be making history as the first gay diplomats to be wed by the mayor of a large U.S. city.
Strohmayer, 33, who is from Bat Yam, is based in Philadelphia as Israel’s deputy consul general for the Mid-Atlantic region. Ben-Yosef, 42, who is from north Tel Aviv, is a tech executive who most recently worked for Microsoft, last year backpacked through Australia and New Zealand and in August moved to Philadelphia to be with Strohmayer.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will co-officiate alongside Rabbi Michael Beals, who leads Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in nearby Wilmington, Delaware. Strohmayer first met Beals at one of the rabbis’ roundtables periodically convened by the consulate.
He met his husband-to-be at last June’s Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, where Strohmayer had gone on vacation. They became engaged at a healthcare and media technologies conference held in Philadelphia in October. Mayor Nutter, who had met Strohmayer professionally, heard about it and offered to marry the couple.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.637023
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