Video | Richard Jay-Alexander sings at Sam Champion & Rubem Robierb's Miami Beach wedding

• GMA's Sam Champion and artist Rubem Robierb celebrate marriage with Miami Beach reception

Producer-director Richard Jay-Alexander (Barbra Streisand, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth) on Monday night sang the Frank Loesser classic What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? at the Miami Beach wedding reception for Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion and Miami artist Rubem Robierb.

These are the special lyrics RJA wrote in honor of the grooms:

Maybe it’s much too early in the game
Ooh, but I thought I’d share with you the same
Look what we’re doing New Year’s
New Year’s Eve.

No guess whose arms will hold them good and tight
When it’s exactly twelve o’clock midnight
Welcoming EVERY New Year
New Year’s Eve.

Who could be crazy to suppose
These men would be the two who chose
Out of the millions of people out there
And found love.

Ooh, but it’s true for Rubem and for Sam
Like it was part of some big master plan
Look where we are this New Year’s
New Year’s Eve.

And we’re all here to witness this great bond
There is no question that we’re all so fond
Of Sam and Rubem New Year’s
New Year’s Eve ……

Blessings to you this New Year
New Year’s Eve

GMA's Sam Champion and artist Rubem Robierb celebrate marriage with Miami Beach reception

• Video | Richard Jay-Alexander sings at Sam Champion & Rubem Robierb's Miami Beach wedding

 

Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion and Miami artist Rubem Robierb on Monday celebrated their New York marriage on Dec. 21 with a New Year's Eve reception in Miami Beach.

MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts, himself newly married to Patrick Abner, performed a brief wedding ceremony at the Beach reception, which was attended Monday night by the grooms' mothers and about 100 friends and other family members.

Local TV newsmen Craig Stevens (WSVN co-anchor) and Chad Matthews (WTVJ’s assistant news director) toasted the new husbands; theater producer-director Richard Jay-Alexander and vocalist Nicole Henry sang.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was nervous. I don’t perform for a living,” says Jay-Alexander, who just co-directed Barbra Streisand’s sold-out North America tour. “I was thrilled to perform for Rubem and Sam. It felt very, very good and every word that came out of my mouth was utterly sincere. I felt privileged to be there.”

Photos by STEVE ROTHAUS / Miami Herald Staff.

Questions over sex change snag Arizona divorce case for 'pregnant man' Thomas Beatie and wife

BY JACQUES BILLEAUD, ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHOENIX -- An Arizona man who garnered national media attention for giving birth to three children after having a sex-change operation has hit a snag in his divorce proceedings that could prevent him from having his marriage legally dissolved.

A judge is questioning whether the state's same-sex marriage ban bars him from ending Thomas and Nancy Beatie's union - or even recognizing its validity. Thomas Beatie was born a woman and underwent a sex change but retained female reproductive organs and gave birth to three children.

Thomas and Nancy Beatie are eager to end their nine-year marriage, but their divorce plans stalled when Maricopa County Family Court Judge Douglas Gerlach said in late June that he was unable to find any legal authority defining a man as someone who can give birth.

"Are we dealing with a same-sex marriage?" Gerlach asked. He noted Arizona has banned such marriages and refuses to accept those performed in other states. The judge added no court here is allowed to declare same-sex unions valid.

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Same-sex marriage ceremonies begin in Maryland

BY BRIAN WITTE, ASSOCIATED PRESS

BALTIMORE -- Same-sex couples in Maryland were greeted with cheers and noisemakers held over from New Year's Eve parties, as gay marriage became legal in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line on New Year's Day.

James Scales, 68, was married to William Tasker, 60, on Tuesday shortly after midnight by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake inside City Hall.

"It's just so hard to believe it's happening," Scales said shortly before marrying his partner of 35 years.

Six other same-sex couples also were being married at City Hall. Ceremonies were taking place in other parts of the state as well.

The ceremonies follow a legislative fight that pitted Gov. Martin O'Malley against leaders of his Catholic faith. Voters in the state, founded by Catholics in the 17th century, sealed the change by approving a November ballot question.

"There is no human institution more sacred than that of the one that you are about to form," Rawlings-Blake said during the brief ceremony. "True marriage, true marriage, is the dearest of all earthly relationships."

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