NC woman to marry a year after paralyzing accident (AP)

RALEIGH, N.C. – A year after she was paralyzed in poolside horseplay at her bachelorette party, Rachelle Friedman knows one thing she would change about her life before the injury.

"I wish we had danced together more because I love dancing so much, and we didn't do it enough," she says of her soon-to-be husband. "Looking back, I would have done it every night."

Friedman will finally make it down the aisle on Friday, marrying the man who has waited with her to exchange vows since the accident. She is wearing the same gown she chose for the first ceremony but with her father pushing her wheelchair down the aisle instead of walking her down it, arm in arm.

Also joining her will be the bridesmaid who shoved her into the shallow end of a pool on May 23, 2010 — causing a freak accident that changed their lives. The 25-year-old from Knightdale has stuck with her friend and refused to reveal her identity even as newspapers, television and Internet sites carried the story around the world.

"She was tragically hurt, mentally and emotionally. And I was tragically hurt, physically," Friedman says on a day that a tailor is altering her strapless, simple wedding dress to fit her new, thinner, less muscular body. "It's harder to deal with when you're hurt emotionally sometimes than when you're hurt physically."

Friedman was celebrating with her girlfriends in Virginia Beach, Va., about a month before she was supposed to be married last year when she was injured. After being pushed into the pool, she awkwardly hit the cement bottom. She knew immediately something was wrong.

"I instantly just stopped moving," Friedman says. She floated to the top, face up. Her friends were already in the water to help. This isn't a joke, she told them. Call 911.

The horseplay was no different from the way her friends had goofed around many times. Friedman could have just as easily pushed her friend in the water, she says. She refuses to even call the act a prank because that would imply some devious intent.

"People look at it like this is something that happened to me, but it happened to both of us," Friedman said of her friend.

Friedman is moving on with her life, learning how to play wheelchair rugby and using her knuckles instead of her fingers for tasks such as texting and responding to email.

Neither she nor her fiance, Chris Chapman, ever considered deserting the other. They'd been together for almost five years when the accident happened.

"You have to know me and Chris to understand," Friedman says.

Chapman, a 28-year-old middle school science teacher in Spring Hope, echoes her.

"It was not, `What am I going to do?'" he says. "It was, `what are we doing to do?' ... I just didn't know what to do next. It was one step at a time."

The two will exchange vows in a ceremony at The Fearrington House in Pittsboro, with a reception in the village barn. Her favorite flowers, sunflowers, will take center stage. Wedding planning company 1-800-REGISTRY is paying for their ceremony and the honeymoon in Fiji.

"I'll be happy and relieved to see her coming down the aisle," Chapman says. "It's something we've been working on for quite a while."

The two grew up in Virginia Beach, but didn't meet until they were both students at East Carolina University in Greenville, becoming close friends while each dated other people. Once they started dating, he fell in love with her energy and personality.

"She was always positive, always upbeat, always ready to do something," he says. Now, he worries about keeping her active. He's learning to referee at wheelchair rugby, and she's trying to get a hand cycle so they can bicycle together. She also wants to learn wheelchair tennis.

"We're hoping to keep her active," he says. "And I'll go along and try to participate as much as I can."

Before she was injured, Friedman was a program coordinator at a senior activity center in Raleigh, where she planned parties and taught line dancing and light weightlifting. While the job didn't pay a lot, she felt blessed to be employed right out of college, to own a home with the man of her dreams and to be planning their wedding.

A typical day now is "kind of boring," she says. She often visits the senior center where she used to work and does whatever exercises she can at home. She has finished a round of rehab, but will get more advanced treatment in September, courtesy of a foundation called Walking with Anthony.

The foundation, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., will pay for Friedman and her mother to attend a three-week session at Project Walk in California. Founder Micki Purcell, whose son, Anthony, suffered a similar injury after diving in the ocean, says Friedman will get time to recover from that intensive treatment before the foundation pays for another session.

"It costs a lot of money to get out of a wheelchair," Purcell said Monday, adding that she believes Friedman is a perfect candidate to walk again.

An easier goal awaits Friedman after the wedding. The Beatles fan wants a tattoo of the peace sign drawn on the back of her neck, at the center, marking her injury. Underneath will be inked, "Let It Be."

"It symbolizes that I'm at peace with it," she says.

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Churches debate whether to marry gays (AP)

NEW YORK – After same-sex marriage becomes legal here on July 24, gay priests with partners in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island will head to the altar. They have to. Their bishop set a nine-month deadline for them to marry or stop living together.

Next door, meanwhile, the Episcopal bishop of New York says he also expects gay clergy in committed relationships to wed "in due course." Still, this longtime supporter of gay rights says churches in his diocese are off limits for gay weddings until he receives clearer liturgical guidance from the national denomination.

As more states legalize same-sex marriage, religious groups with ambiguous policies on homosexuality are divided over whether they should allow the ceremonies in local congregations. The decision is especially complex in the mainline Protestant denominations that have yet to fully resolve their disagreements over the Bible and homosexuality. Many have taken steps toward acceptance of gay ordination and same-gender couples without changing the official definition of marriage in church constitutions and canons. With the exception of the United Church of Christ, which approved gay marriage six years ago, none of the larger mainline churches has a national liturgy for same-sex weddings or even blessing ceremonies.

The result is a patchwork of church policies in states where gays can civilly wed — not only for lay people, but also for gay clergy who want to marry their partners.

"It's a challenge for us," said Tony De La Rosa, administrator of the Presbytery of New York City, a regional body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). "I think this is a moment of great tumult in the sights of the church."

The New York regional body of the United Methodist Church issued a statement reminding local congregations that the Methodist Book of Discipline bars any celebration of same-gender unions, but encouraged congregants to "extend God's love" to each other, "particularly those with whom we disagree."

Just last Sunday, the Presbyterian Church formally lifted barriers to ordination for gays and lesbians who are not celibate, although individual congregations had been hiring gay pastors and conducting same-sex blessing ceremonies for years. De La Rosa expects a similar mix of responses to gay marriage laws, even though a minister who conducts a same-gender marriage is at risk of possible disciplinary action by the denomination since the ceremonies are not officially authorized. De La Rosa, who is gay, said he does not plan to wed because the marriage would not be recognized in California, where he and his partner are residents.

New York churches can look for guidance to religious leaders in the five other states where gay marriage is already legal: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa, plus the District of Columbia.

The New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which includes four of the five states with gay marriage, issued a document stating that pastors can choose to solemnize same-sex marriages in individual churches that give their approval. The Upstate New York Synod, which oversees Lutheran churches in the Albany area, distributed that document to local leaders ahead of an upcoming discussion on the gay marriage law. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America formally abolished a celibacy requirement for gay and lesbian clergy more than a year ago, but still defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

The Rev. David Preisinger, an assistant to the Upstate New York bishop, said the bishop has indicated that she will not take action against clergy who perform the ceremonies. He said churches in his region have already received several requests for weddings and believes they will take place soon.

"There are some congregations that are very open to it and others that don't want anything to do with it," Preisinger said.

The Episcopal Church blazed a trail, and enraged fellow Anglicans worldwide, in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. On same-sex marriage, Episcopal dioceses have been guided by a 2009 resolution from the General Convention, the church's top national policy body, that asked for a "generous pastoral response" to gay couples, especially in states with same-sex marriage or civil unions.

However, bishops disagree about what the resolution means. Each has cited the measure when issuing dramatically different policies.

Even before the New York legislature had passed the gay marriage bill last month, Bishop Gladstone Adams, who leads the Syracuse-based Episcopal Diocese of Central New York, had asked the local liturgy committee to draft a rite for same-gender marriage. Adams said individual priests and parishes could decide whether to conduct the ceremonies. He has not yet set a policy on marriage for clergy living with same-gender partners.

In the Diocese of New York, Bishop Mark Sisk said local priests could bless couples who marry elsewhere in a civil ceremony, but could not solemnize the marriages.

"I do not believe that resolution ... empowered bishops to authorize clergy to perform such marriages," Sisk wrote in a statement. "Nor do I believe that it is appropriate for clergy to circumvent the vows we have taken by becoming separately licensed by the state to perform such marriages."

His position stunned many Episcopalians. The New York diocese is considered so gay-friendly that the local chapter of the national Episcopal gay advocacy group, Integrity, focuses instead on outreach to other gay and lesbians seeking a religious community, according to Mary O'Shaughnessy, New York City coordinator for the organization.

Sisk's spokesman said the bishop won't move forward without an approved liturgy. Episcopalians are drafting prayers for blessing same-gender couples that advocates hope will be accepted next year by the General Convention.

O'Shaughnessy said she was disappointed by Sisk's decision, but said he has "unequivocally" supported gay and lesbian rights and she understands that he has a broad constituency to consider, including parishes in the diocese that lie outside of Manhattan.

Long Island Episcopal Bishop Lawrence Provenzano said there is nothing "punitive" about the nine-month period he set for clergy to marry their partners — a length of time he said was similar to an academic year. No one will be disciplined for failing to meet the deadline. Instead, he said he would handle each priest's situation on a case-by-case basis. He noted that some private employers are considering restricting domestic partner benefits to those who are legally married.

"I need to be mindful that the church has always asked people to live in committed monogamous, faithful relationships," Provenzano said. "I won't allow heterosexual clergy to live in a rectory or church housing without the benefit of marriage. When one puts it in that context, then you see how it all begins to make sense."

The Rev. Christopher Hofer, pastor of the Episcopal Church of St. Jude in Wantagh, on Long Island, said he has heard no complaints from other gay or lesbian clergy about the policy. Hofer plans a "big" August wedding in his parish with his partner of 17 years, Kerry Brady. They live in the church rectory, where on a recent evening they waited together for a messenger to deliver their wedding rings.

"I think Bishop Provenzano's statement was not only fair, but beyond generous. It gives people time, acknowledging that there's a financial component involved, and recognizing that some may not choose to live together," Hofer said. "Now that the state is recognizing civil marriage, we as priests, perhaps deacons too, who are in committed relationships, have a choice: We either live what we preach, to become civilly married, or we choose to live apart."

No other Episcopal dioceses in states with same-gender marriage have set an explicit deadline for gay clergy to marry their live-in partners.

Episcopal Bishop John Chane, of the Diocese of Washington, allowed local priests to perform same-sex marriages in parishes that approved the ceremonies, but did not ask clergy to marry or live alone. He said it wouldn't be fair, since so few states recognize the marriages, and state and federal laws like the Defense of Marriage Act are still in effect and "deny the human rights and disrespect the orientation" of gays and lesbians. He said five gay clergy have married in the Diocese of Washington since same-sex marriages started last year.

. At St. James Episcopal Church, Fordham, in the Diocese of New York, the Rev. Tobias Haller, plans to wed his male partner of more than three decades at the end of this month, but not in his parish. The couple plans a civil ceremony only.

"We had our church wedding 31 years ago," Haller said, of a private blessing they had received from a rector.

Haller said he understands and accepts Sisk's approach to the issue. The bishop meets with gay and lesbian clergy in the diocese every few months and had previously discussed his hope that they would marry their partners if they had the chance, Haller said.

"It makes sense to me," Haller said. "It's certainly a standard bishops would expect of heterosexual clergy."

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Rachel Zoll can be reached at twitter.com/rzollAP

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